Billing Analytics 

Use

You use this business process to execute billing analyses. The analysis of billing and invoicing data is generally required for legal and certification reasons but also to meet internal guidelines. Therefore this process is different for legal reporting and reporting that supports internal processing and management.

The internal analysis is particularly important for gaining a better overview of billing transactions and figures, supporting sales activities, identifying critical transactions, and realizing improvement potential.

Process Flow

The following business process runs in SAP R/3:

       1.      Prepare BW data

Depending on the applications you use, you have to make the settings for SAP BW in the applications yourself. This is the only way to ensure that the correct data is analyzed. Make the necessary settings for SAP BW and check whether any internal processes necessitate further adjustments.

       2.      Schedule BW extraction

In most cases, the extraction of data to SAP BW is asynchronous. This means that master data and transaction data is created and changed in the source systems, without this information being immediately loaded in SAP BW. The background to this is that current processes in the source systems often do not correspond with utilization times in SAP BW.

The SAP BW administrator only extracts data to BW if the corresponding system resources are available.

Due to the high number of possible scenarios, it is necessary to schedule extraction of data to SAP BW for the different analysis processes in order to:

¡        Guarantee that the data is up-to-date

¡        Avoid bottlenecks in system resources

¡        Make the loading process clear.

       3.      Analyze billing/invoicing processes

It is essential for a utility company that billing and invoicing processes are executed successfully. This is because errors and inefficient processing results in bills being sent out late, or not at all, to customers, which in turn results in the cash flow being delayed. This affects the liquidity and the interest the company misses out on. However, the direct costs, which exist due to the non-optimal billing and invoicing processes resulting in higher workloads, also have a negative effect on the company's revenue.

You should regularly analyze billing and invoicing processes, particularly early on. After you have optimized the processes, periodic analyses will suffice.

       4.      Analyze billing/invoicing cases

Generally, clearing cases mean that exceptional conditions were recognized in the processes, and that these conditions must be processed specially. These are normally errors that have occurred within an automated process.

For this reason, the person responsible for the process should periodically analyze the clarification cases in billing and invoicing, in order to highlight overdue cases early on, recognize critical points, and introduce necessary measures.

       5.      Analyze sales statistics

The sales statistics consist of revenues resulting from the billing and invoicing of utility contracts. Billed quantities and net amounts, as well as tax amounts based on these figures, are available here.

The sales statistics are used in different departments with different expectations. This means you can use them for comparing amounts with the general ledger, in order to identify incorrect billing rules at an early stage, or to discover differences between consumption billings and the general ledger. The quantities and amounts are also necessary for the sales statistics for end-of-quarter and end-of-year closing. These figures are subject to auditing.

You can also use sales statistics to support campaigns, customer consulting, and key account management. One of the strengths of this analysis is the determination of quantities and revenues for each customer, regional data, and rate components with their respective consumptions.

       6.      Analyze unbilled revenue

Unbilled revenue reporting is used to determine and evaluate quantities billed and extrapolated for the balance sheet of the closing accounting period. This may involve the company’s fiscal year or quarterly / monthly balance sheet.

Result

Billing analytics is important for optimizing a company and its business processes. The significance of billing analytics increases following restructuring as a result of market changes, as well as implementing legal requirements.