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 Utilities, General Enhancements

Technical Data

Technical name of business function

ISU_UTIL_1

Type of Business Function

Industry Business Function

Available As Of

SAP Enhancement Package 2 for SAP ERP 6.0

Technical Usage

Utilities/Waste&Recycl./Telco

Application Component

Utilities Industry (IS-U)

Directly Dependent Business Function Requiring Activation in Addition

Utilities, Waste and Recycling (ISU_UTIL_WASTE)

This business function contains a set of new and enhanced functions to enable you to operate with greater speed and flexibility on the market. The automation of business processes and the improved collaboration between systems with high data volumes mean that your business processes are handled more efficiently. Since the enhancements contained in this business function also help you comply with market rules, the use of SAP Utilities ensures that you remain compliant in future.

This business function provides the following modifications and enhancements:

  • Utilities Customer Care: Supplier’s View of the Deregulated Energy Market

  • Enhancement to the Deregulation Infrastructure for Electricity and Gas

  • Enhancements to Credit Risk & Collections Management

  • Service-oriented process support (AMI services)

  • Enhancements to Utility Customer E-Services

  • Localization for China (Device Management)

  • Realization of Customer Requests

Integration

You can enhance the functions in this business function with the Business Intelligence Content as of SAP NetWeaver 7.0 BI Content Add-On 3 SP 06.

Prerequisites

You have installed the following components as of the version mentioned:

Type of Component

Component

Software Component

IS-UT 600

SAP Enterprise Services

As of IS-UT 602

  • You have activated the business function Utilities, Waste and Recycling (ISU_UTIL_WASTE).

Features

Utilities Customer Care: Supplier’s View of the Deregulated Energy Market

In customer service, simplicity is the key to user acceptance and success. With the IC WebClient utility customers can react quicker and more efficiently to customer problems. For routine business processes your call center agents can access manageable single-screen processes. However, predefined processes and workflows are also provided for business processes that do not occur regularly.

With this business function, the supplier view has been added to the back-end functions for the IC WebClient. The described front-end functions are available with the corresponding CRM release.

Enhancement to the Deregulation Infrastructure for Electricity and Gas

With the aim of harmonizing European conditions for deregulation, a number of European organizations are working together to define a liberalized energy market model. This model describes the various roles that market participants will have to assume in the future energy market as well as the relationships between the market participants. This model will provide the basis for business processes, data exchange processes, and IT data models.

In close collaboration with the European institutions and organizations, SAP is using this model as a foundation for its deregulation infrastructure architecture and for modeling the business processes for the Utilities solution.

With this business function, the deregulation infrastructure has been enhanced as follows:

  • Possibility to map multiple deregulated divisions simultaneously (for example, by defining division-specific switch processes for electricity and gas)

  • Enhancement to the framework of the EDM calculation workbench

  • Enhancement to the formula profile calculation to allow the use of flexible input parameters (variables)

For more information, see the release notes.

Enhancements to Credit Risk & Collections Management

This business function provides enhancements to Credit Risk & Collections Management that take into account the special requirements of the utilities industry with regard to evaluating credit risk as well as enhancements to Receivables Management:

  • Dunning based on collection strategies that can by defined flexibly in the Business Rules Framework

  • Grouping of contract accounts or contracts and allocation of a collection strategy for the group

  • Creation of collection work items from dunning

  • Capacity planning and restriction for collection activities

  • Processing of collection work items from IC WebClient interface

  • Management of worklists:

    • Automatic or manual creation and release

    • Automatic or manual allocation of teams or processors

  • Update of dunning success (in %) for each dunning header

  • Enhanced dunning history

  • Creation and follow-up of promises to pay

Service-Oriented Process Support (Services for Advanced Meter Infrastructure)

Enterprise SOA is the catalyst for converting the Utilities solution to meet the many market rules and new technical requirements.

With this business function, SAP delivers a bundle of enterprise services for the Advanced Meter Infrastructure .

In the energy market it is becoming more and more of a trend to implement intelligent meters for residential customers, whereby two-directional communication between Customer Care Systems and MeterWare Systems increases. With relation to this, the implementation of Enterprise Services results in automation and improved efficiency of processes within the energy market.

The AMI services improve the integration of external systems (MeterWare systems) in the back-end and automate the disconnection and reconnection processes of meters. They also enable you to upload and download profile values (energy data).

Utility Customer E-Services

This business function provides you with the following new developments to the Utility Customer E-Services 6.02:

  • New service Bill Simulation

  • New service Rate Simulation

  • Anonymous meter reading entry

    As well as the following enhancements to the move-in, move-out, and move-in/out processes:

  • Support for different business partners

  • Credit cards as payment method

  • Note field for entry of any text

  • Enhanced checks and configuration options

Localization for China (Device Management)

SAP incorporates permanent country-specific requirements into the Utilities solution.

Some of the requirements for China have been realized with this business function. You can now manage power transformers as devices in the system.

Realization of Customer Requests

SAP incorporates permanent customer requirements into the Utilities solution.

Some of these requirements have been realized with this business function.

New Extractors for IS-U in the BI System

In the BI system you can find new extractors for IS-U. You can find more information in the release notes in the BI system.

You can find more information on BI Content for this business function in the SAP Library for NetWeaver 7.0 BI Content Add-On 3 SP06 under Start of the navigation path BI Content Next navigation step Industry Solutions Next navigation step Utilities End of the navigation path .