You will find an Overview of B2C Processes following this LINK.

If you click on the process you are looking for, you will find a short description including the most recent methods for the selected process.

Any comment is really appreciated.

Read the blog series on customer engagement from Juergen Kuhmann, Solution Management Utilities at SAP. He describes the fundamental changes utilities globally are facing and what you can do to stay relevant to consumers.

• New:Mastering customer engagement - Part 3 of 3: What utilities and retailers should do and how enterprise software can help them win by Juergen Kuhmann on December 14, 2014
• Mastering customer engagement - Part 2 of 3: New technologies are driving consumers away from the utility by Juergen Kuhmann on December 5, 2014
• Master customer engagement & commerce–or die!(?) - Part 1 of 3 by Juergen Kuhmann on November 15, 2014

I am recently performing an upgrade activity from CRM 5 to CRM 7 Ehp 3 for utilities. In this blog I would like to share the list of activities which are a “Must Do” for the Utilities interaction centre and the sales process to run. Without these activities the search process for existing master data would not work.

SAP has done a lot of structural changes for technical master data from CRM 5 to CRM 7 Ehp3. Few of the key tables such as ISU_POD and IBIN structures have changed and few new tables such as ECRM_ISU_TO_IDX and ECRM_ISU_EVBS has been introduced for performance improvement in search criteria .Thus the existing data needs to be remediated as a part of upgrade activity in order to use it in the new environment .

Thus the following steps needs to be followed to remediate the existing data .In CRM, go to SPRO>Customer Relationship Management >Industry-Specific Solutions>Utilities Industry>Adaption Reports for Address and Performance Improvements

This configuration opens up an array of programs which is required for existing technical master data remediation:

• The first option changes the address group of the existing connect object and POD in ADRC in CRM from IB01 / IB02 to ISUA and ISUB respectively.
• The second program is being run to fill the premise index table ECRM_ISU_EVBS.  This table is required for the premise search to be successful in the technical master data search profiles and in identification profiles.
• The third program fills up new index table ECRM_ISU_TO_IDX. This table stores important keys for table joins. This table also should be filled up for existing data for search to be enabled. This program runs in foreground and creates queues in CRM.
• The fourth program converts the IN_GUID in IBIN table from RAW 22 to RAW 16. This is also required for existing technical master data search.
• The fifth program is required to switch of the index table update during data migration. This is not required to be run during upgrade
• The last program fills the premise GUID in the ISU _POD table. This is also required to be run for all existing technical master data.

There is no order of running these programs.

Apart from the technical master data changes mentioned above SAP has also provided the table BUTADRSEARCH which enhances the business partner search. This functionality gets activated by activating the business function CRM_PERFORMANCE_2 which provides the program BPADRSEARCH_FILL to fill up the table for all existing business master data.

Hope the information shared will help others in the community.

The enhanced identification profile in Interaction Centre is one of the new features provided by SAP in CRM 7 EHP3. The enhanced identification profile could also be made to work as a free text search profile with SAP HANA integration, but in this blog I would like to discuss about the key features of the enhanced identification profile and its differences from a non-enhanced profile.

The enhanced identification profile can be activated through the following settings in SPRO. Go to SPRO>Customer Relationship Management>Industry-Specific Solutions>Utilities Industry>Settings for User Interfaces>Identification>Define Identification Profiles

The check box for the enhanced identification marked above activates the enhanced identification profile. If the enhanced identification profile is activated then the search profiles for business master data and technical master data can be configured and assigned as shown in the marked section above. The enhanced identification profile looks as shown below:

The business partner search profile and the technical master data search profiles can be defined in SPRO>Customer Relationship Management>Industry-Specific Solutions>Utilities Industry>Settings for User Interfaces> Define Object Workbench Profiles. I will be discussing more about the search profiles in a separate document .

The identification profile is assigned to the function profile IUICMD in the business role.

The enhanced identification profile can be switched off by unchecking the box in the identification profile. In the non-enhanced identification profile only technical master data search profile is allowed. Thus the search profiles assigned to the identification profile as shown in the above configuration screenshot will not work .For the non-enhanced identification profile the technical master data search profile should be assigned to the function profile IUICOBJD.

The non-enhanced profile looks as shown below

The enhanced and the non-enhanced profile have their pros and cons and the implementation depends on business requirements.

Hope the information shared will help others in the forum.

After the Support Package update we are facing incorrect lock entries for example for CRM_ISU_POD_LOCK or CRMD_ORDERADM_H, which blocks users to perform any utilities processes.

The note 1941803 changed the enqueue mechanism so that the enqueue argument changed.

To solve the lock issue apply note 2025948 and 2069753

This was an ASUG webcast given by the ASUG Utilities SIG last year.  Below are my notes.

The SAP speaker said “we are living in a digital age”.

Long gone are the days when people walk into a bank to pay a bill or call into a call center to start /stop a service.

Just having a simple website for a utility is not enough, said SAP

Customers today have expectations; they want it now “on their fingertips”

More about millenials – Facebook, Twitter – users are connected everywhere and at all times

They are socially networked; they are channel agnostic and expect great user experience across all channels.

They expect apps

Figure 1: Source: SAP

“Old channels never die” they just become complementary to new channels

There is a “Galaxy of applications”

Utility needs to support its applications and third parties

How does a utility do all that without breaking the bank?

Figure 2: Source: SAP

If there is a requirement to have a self-service portal, becomes a big implementation project

Then the requirement for to support a third party application for energy comparisons

Utilities have “point-to-point” clutter – it is expensive and does not scale

Figure 3: Source: SAP

With multichannel foundation for utilities it is channel agnostic; if outages due to storm and traffic to your website – it is scalable.

It offers out of box features for self-service billing, payment outages

It uses open standards REST and OData

It is robust and comes with ready-to-use applications

Figure 4: Source: SAP

SAP provides apps on various channels like web and mobile

SAP is working with partners to develop consumer applications that take advantage of MCF

SAP will continue to enhance multi-channel applications – continue to provide simplified and unified access to the apps

Figure 5: Source: SAP

Demo: MCF in action

Customer has moved to a new house

He is shopping but has not signed up for utility

He sees kiosk in store; equipped with product finder tool – search for products and sign up

Figure 6: Source: SAP

He can search for products and sign up for the service

He sees consumption cost changing in real time

Figure 7: Source: SAP

He walked out of store with gas and utility contract

He logs to customer self-service on his iPad, clicks on alerts

Figure 8: Source: SAP

Figure 8 shows an overdue invoice

Figure 9: Source: SAP

Then the logs on to desktop utility site to make payment

Figure 10: Source: SAP

Customer sees consumption history

More to come.

Overview

Technical Info

Best Practices

Learning        Material

Additional Info

Overview (Back to top)

• SAP HANA Live for Utilities Q1/2015 is now available!
• SAP HANA Live for Utilities Q4/2014: New Insights for Device-Related Activities and Utilities Quotation
• SAP HANA Live for Utilities Q3/2014by Tanja Bader on August 4, 2014

• Now on YouTube: SAP HANA Live for Utilities (edition for SAP ERP) by Stefanie Becker on May 13th, 2014

Video on YouTube:

Technical Info (Back to top)

• Virtual Data Model for Utilities

Best Practices (Back to top)

Getting Started with SAP HANA Live for Utilities by Silvia Wille on July 14, 2014

Learning Material  (Back to top)

Take a look at the material available for the different Product Features in the Innovation Discovery:

• Edition for SAP ERP
  • Device Management
  • Process Monitoring for Meter to Bill process
• Edition for SAP CRM
  • Utilities Contract

Additional Info  (Back to top)

• Further Information for SAP HANA Live for Utilities:

  • SAP Help Portalfor product information
  • SAP Service Marketplace (SAP Service Marketplace is just for customers and partners: read what it is and how you can get access SAP Service Marketplace Overview and FAQ)

• General information about SAP HANA:

  • SAP HANA webpage
  • SAP HANA Live for SAP Business Suite - SAP Help Portal: Release Notes, Installation, security, configuration and operations information
  • SAP HANA Live Webpage

• Finding SAP Innovations: Where Can I Find Information on SAP Innovations?

• Follow us on Twitter @SAP Industries

Overview

Technical Info

Best Practices

Learning       Material

Additional Info

Important information: If you would like to get notifications just for this document, please click on "Receive email notifications" in the action box on the right upper corner. You need to be logged in to be able to activate this function.

Overview (Back to top)

• Learn more about Multichannel for Utilities at IUC 2015 in Berlin by Michael Ernzerhoff on February 3, 2015
• SAP Multichannel Foundation for Utilities SP03 offering a brand new responsive UI out-of-the-box, is now available by Asif Dogar on September 26, 2014
• Release Strategy for the SAP Multichannel Foundation for Utilities by Nicole Huth on July 22, 2014
• SAP Multichannel Foundation for Utilities just got better with Sp02by Mohammed Wasim Arafat on July 2, 2014
• SAP Delivers Multichannel Foundation, Example Apps and Free Workshop!byHenry Baileyon Apr 9, 2014
• SAP Multichannel Foundation for Utilities 1.0: What’s under the hood? by Mohammed Wasim Arafat, Jan. 23, 2014
• Multichannel self-service for Utilities from SAP is about more than just adding apps by Juergen Kuhmann, Sept. 24, 2013

Technical Info (Back to top)

• SAP Multichannel Foundation for Utilities: Analytics by Olga Esipova  on October 2, 2014
• SAP Multichannel Foundation for Utilities: Implement Custom Logic for an Existing Entity by Ming Hao Xie on August 1,2014
• Extending the Interface of an OData Entity Using Custom Fields by Simon Xu on July 30, 2014
• How to customize sample UI application in the standard Multichannel Foundation for Utilities packageby  Satish Srirambhatlaon June 5, 2014
• Multichannel Foundation for Utilities OData services consumption with AngularJS application by Aleh Autushka on May 16, 2014
• Consuming SAP Multichannel Foundation for Utilities OData services through C# and a .NET Client by Ahmad Sebak on May 13, 2014

Best Practices (Back to top)

• coming soon

Learning Material  (Back to top)

• New: Feb 9-10, 2015 - New Training "SAP Multichannel Foundation for Utilities" Now Also in North America
• Updated: Further WDEUMC training sessions with the same content are offered in Europe, too. They will take place in 2015 e.g. in Walldorf on March 19-20, June 22-23 and Oct. 5-6. For more details and registration visit  https://training.sap.com/shop/course/wdeumc-sap-multichannel-foundation-for-utilities-classroom-010-de-en/
• Ramp-up Knowledge Transfer Release 1.0 >>LINK to webpage

Additional Info  (Back to top)

• For Online Help please visit our >>SAP Help Portal
• To access the Administrator´s guide (updated mid-July 2014) including configuration details, visit >>SAP Marketplace (choose Industry Solutions > Industry Solution Guides > SAP for Utilities)
• Sizing guide onSAP Service Marketplace: See the Guide under Products > Performance and Scalability > Sizing > Sizing Guidelines > Industries

The SAP Service Marketplace is just for customers and partners. Read what it is and how you can get access SAP Service Marketplace Overview and FAQ

Since July we have been publishing important Knowledge Base Articles (KBA) which are intended to help you have a stable running system or solve existing problems.

Now we are very interested in your feedback regarding our KBAs.This way we can improve and give you exactly what you are looking for.

Your vote counts. This is how it works:

1. Out of the KBA list below, click on the number of the KBA or KBAs that you find most interesting and helpful.
2. In the top right-hand corner in the Overall Rating field, cast your vote by choosing stars.

Thank you so much for your feedback. We really appreciate it.

Most recent KBA's:

KBA's from December:

KBA's from November:

KBA's from October:

KBA's from September:

KBA's from August:

KBAs from July:

What is a KBA?

SAP Knowledge Base Articles (KBAs) are support documents that help you find answers to questions arising from your daily work with SAP software. In a KBA you will find an incident-specific solution and How to FAQ documents. No coding corrections and modifications are provided.

What is the difference between KBAs and SAP Notes?

An SAP Note is a technical document that describes a software issue and its solution. SAP Notes include a description of the symptoms, the cause of the error, and the SAP Release and Support Package level in which the error occurs. Depending on the type of error, an SAP Note may also include workarounds, descriptions of how to correct repository objects in the ABAP workbench (known as correction instructions), and/or links to Support Packages that solve the problem. 80% of SAP Notes contain coding corrections.

Most recent KBA's:

KBA's from December:

KBA's from November:

KBA's from October:

KBA's from September:

KBA's from August:

KBAs from July:

Look forward to more KBAs coming up soon.

This document provides newest Information from Product Support, helping you to keep your system well running.

• New :Incorrect lock entries after Support Package! by Gabriele Datzmann on February 06, 2015
• Updated :Your Vote counts. Are KBAs Helpful? by Joerg Gotthardt on February 03, 2015
• New: IS-U Invoicing: Solving issues in billing and invoicing after upgrade to EHP7 by Kerstin Hecht on December 17, 2014
• New: FI-CA: Interest „To-Date“ determination during the interest calculation by Ronny Friedericks on December 17, 2014
• CRM: B2C Process Overviewby Katrin Frenzel on December 09, 2014
  
• FI-CA: Dunning statistics missing or incomplete by Ronny Friedericks on October 22, 2014
• How to create a perfect incident by Katrin Frenzel on July 25, 2014
• Recommendation: For utilities products (like electricity, gas, …) SAP strongly recommends to use PMU instead of PME! by Joerg Gotthardt on July 15, 2014

Further information

• for further information see also the Key Topic CRM for Utilities

Overview

Technical Info

Best Practices

Learning        Material

Additional Info

You will find learning material for different features and functions in SAP Service Marketplace under SAP for Utilities - Product Information -> SAP CRM for Utilities -> Learning Material

(SAP Service Marketplace is just for customers and partners: read what it is and how you can get accessSAP Service Marketplace Overview and FAQ)

• SAP Help Portal for product Information
• SAP Service Marketplace (SAP Service Marketplace is just for customers and partners: read what it is and how you can get accessSAP Service Marketplace Overview and FAQ)

Henry Bailey, Global Vice President of the IBU Utilities shares his insights from customer and event visits.

Here is the summary of his latest updates. Enjoy reading!

New: Henry Bailey about "Why is this year’s International SAP Conference for Utilities in Berlin so important?" (February 2015)

Adapt And Run Simple: How The Utilities Industry Is Using Technology To Face The Future (January 2015)

Top Utility Industry Trends Driving The Need For Ongoing Innovation (November 2014)

The Digital Utility and The Internet of Things: Converging at the Right Time! (August 2014)

At CS Week, an estimated 1500 Utility Customer Service professionals came together in San Antonio (May 2014)

SAP Delivers Multichannel Foundation, Example Apps and Free Workshop! (April 2014)

Utilities are moving to the intelligent level of Transmission and Distribution  (March 2014)

The Convergence of Information Technology and Operational Technology is Already Happening – How Can Utilities Best Adapt? (March 2014)

Insights with Henry - The Digital Utilities on YouTube, published on July 2014:

SAP Innovation Video for Utilities on YouTube, published on June 2014:

"Insights with Henry" video on YouTube, published on May 2014:

Follow us on Twitter @SAP Industries

Maybe you are familiar with Speed Dating? This concept also works terrificly in the business context and is called Speed Networking. Howewer, that does not mean you will necessarily find the partner for your life there.

Have you ever encountered one of the following situations at a conference?

Have you ever been:

• wandering around aimlessly at a conference either alone or only with those you already know?
• wanted to speak to an expert but didn´t know who he or she was?
• willing to meet others with the same issues and profit from their experience but couldn't identify them?

Here is our answer to overcome these hurdles and become part of our Utilities family.

Try out our new Speed Networking offer, a combination of speed dating and business networking.

Speed Networking: What is it exactly and how does it work?

It is a meeting format designed to accelerate business contacts, generally with a bell. Primarily, the practice involves multiple people that gather in a single space in order to exchange information.

Participants greet each other in a series of brief exchanges during a set period of time. During an interaction, attendees share their professional backgrounds and business goals. (Source: Wikipedia)

At the International SAP Conference for Utilities, we will be offering various Speed Networking sessions on both days.

Here is our schedule:

Your are more than welcome to drop by.

We are looking forward to speed networking with you!

Yours truly,

Melanie Fiolka, Nicole Huth & Susanne Schlenker

The International Utilities conference 2015 in Berlin is soon approaching.

How to achieve operational excellence in managing your valuable assets is a key topic at this conference. Of course we have dedicated a complete track on day 1 and day 2 for this important topic. Please visit track B starting at 2:45 pm on day 1 and 11:15 am on day 2.

I will kick off the track on day 1 with an overview presentation on 'How to Manage the Utilities Infrastructure with SAP Solutions'. The focus of this presentation is to provide insights into new SAP funtionality as well as new user experience with SAP Enterprise Asset Management.

Besides the dedicated asset-centric tracks, I would like to provide you with an overview of where else to find even more content on Enterprise Asset Management throughout the whole event.

Did you know that we have pre-conference workshops covering many aspects of Asset Management as well.

Here is an overview of those workshops:

Last but not least, did you know that for the first time we have joined forces with our Oil&Gas industry to provide even more insight into SAP Enterprise Asset Management from a cross-industry perspective.

As an attendee you can also visit the Oil and Gas tracks. Therefore, I am providing you with a list of interesting asset-centric sessions from the Oil and Gas track, which are also applicable to the Utilities Industry:

Day 1

A1     14:45-15:25     Managing Your External Workforce

D2     15:30-16:10     Governing Structured and Unstructured Data for Asset Master Data Management

D3     16:45-17:25     Intelligent IT for Energy Pipeline Integrity Management

Day2

C5     12:00-12:40     Empowering the Mobile Work Force with SAP Work Manager

C6     14:15-14:55     Optimizing your Shutdown, Turnarounds, and Outage Events

I am looking forward to interacting with you in Berlin,

Bernd

In the past some customers were not satisfied with the result of the interest calculation (transaction FPI1 and FPINTM1) for cleared documents. They believe that the interest “To-Date” is not correctly determined for certain FI-CA documents.

For already cleared receivables the interest functionality uses the clearing value date (field DFKKOP-AUGVD) as the interest “To-Date”. But the clearing value date is not filled during the clearing with the account maintenance functionality (transaction FP06 or FPMA) because with the account maintenance it is possible
to clear more than one receivable with more than one credit. Therefore, the interest functionality has to find the best interest “To-Date”.  From technical point of view the FI-CA event 2065 calls the function module FKK_GET_VALUEDATE_FOR_INT_CALC if the clearing value date is empty. This function module uses the due date of the item with the highest amount in the clearing process as interest “To-Date”.

With a customer function module for FI-CA event 2065 it is possible to implement your own requirements. More information about this topic is available in KBA 1511725.

A new KBA was created to provide solutions for various problems concerning selections, error messages and dumps in billing and invoicing processes after implementing EHP7. Convergent Invoicing was integrated into IS-U Invoicing with enhancement package 7. Now it is possible to process IS-U billing documents and source documents from Convergent Invoicing in IS-U Invoicing, and combine them into one invoice. It was necessary to change the existing source code for IS-U invoicing. The result was that some cases of the IS-U invoicing don’t work anymore as expected and before applying EHP7 as for example the selection of IS-U billing documents for the invoicing process. An error message EB-056 “No bill documents for selection” was raised although the created billing documents were invoicable. Other transactions as VF01 terminates with a dump MESSAGE_TYPE_X or a certain selection parameter as “Portion” is not saved and thus not taken into consideration while running EA27.Therefore, it is recommended to apply the corrections provided inside of this KBA2071296 in the “Resolution” part.

Most of the time we struggle to find the right transaction code .

Although there are alternate ways to find the tcodes.

1)Using SE93 (Maintain Transaction).

2)Navigating through SAP easy access .

3)Through Google.

There is a tool / t- code which can be used to search and call up SAP ISU transaction quickly using search term.

The Transaction code is “EASY”.

How to find transaction code(s).

Just provide the search term and select the respective ISU Module checkbox.Suppose you want to find the t-code related to device. Provide Device* in the search term am click on execute.

All SAP ISU transactions related to devices will be displayed.

Double clicking on the transaction code will navigate you to that transaction.

I hope this document  will help you in finding the right transaction code easily and quickly.

I am recently performing an upgrade activity from CRM 5 to CRM 7 Ehp 3 for utilities. In this blog I would like to share the list of activities which are a “Must Do” for the Utilities interaction centre and the sales process to run. Without these activities the search process for existing master data would not work.

SAP has done a lot of structural changes for technical master data from CRM 5 to CRM 7 Ehp3. Few of the key tables such as ISU_POD and IBIN structures have changed and few new tables such as ECRM_ISU_TO_IDX and ECRM_ISU_EVBS has been introduced for performance improvement in search criteria .Thus the existing data needs to be remediated as a part of upgrade activity in order to use it in the new environment .

Thus the following steps needs to be followed to remediate the existing data .In CRM, go to SPRO>Customer Relationship Management >Industry-Specific Solutions>Utilities Industry>Adaption Reports for Address and Performance Improvements

This configuration opens up an array of programs which is required for existing technical master data remediation:

• The first option changes the address group of the existing connect object and POD in ADRC in CRM from IB01 / IB02 to ISUA and ISUB respectively.
• The second program is being run to fill the premise index table ECRM_ISU_EVBS.  This table is required for the premise search to be successful in the technical master data search profiles and in identification profiles.
• The third program fills up new index table ECRM_ISU_TO_IDX. This table stores important keys for table joins. This table also should be filled up for existing data for search to be enabled. This program runs in foreground and creates queues in CRM.
• The fourth program converts the IN_GUID in IBIN table from RAW 22 to RAW 16. This is also required for existing technical master data search.
• The fifth program is required to switch of the index table update during data migration. This is not required to be run during upgrade
• The last program fills the premise GUID in the ISU _POD table. This is also required to be run for all existing technical master data.

There is no order of running these programs.

Apart from the technical master data changes mentioned above SAP has also provided the table BUTADRSEARCH which enhances the business partner search. This functionality gets activated by activating the business function CRM_PERFORMANCE_2 which provides the program BPADRSEARCH_FILL to fill up the table for all existing business master data.

Hope the information shared will help others in the community.

The enhanced identification profile in Interaction Centre is one of the new features provided by SAP in CRM 7 EHP3. The enhanced identification profile could also be made to work as a free text search profile with SAP HANA integration, but in this blog I would like to discuss about the key features of the enhanced identification profile and its differences from a non-enhanced profile.

The enhanced identification profile can be activated through the following settings in SPRO. Go to SPRO>Customer Relationship Management>Industry-Specific Solutions>Utilities Industry>Settings for User Interfaces>Identification>Define Identification Profiles

The check box for the enhanced identification marked above activates the enhanced identification profile. If the enhanced identification profile is activated then the search profiles for business master data and technical master data can be configured and assigned as shown in the marked section above. The enhanced identification profile looks as shown below:

The business partner search profile and the technical master data search profiles can be defined in SPRO>Customer Relationship Management>Industry-Specific Solutions>Utilities Industry>Settings for User Interfaces> Define Object Workbench Profiles. I will be discussing more about the search profiles in a separate document .

The identification profile is assigned to the function profile IUICMD in the business role.

The enhanced identification profile can be switched off by unchecking the box in the identification profile. In the non-enhanced identification profile only technical master data search profile is allowed. Thus the search profiles assigned to the identification profile as shown in the above configuration screenshot will not work .For the non-enhanced identification profile the technical master data search profile should be assigned to the function profile IUICOBJD.

The non-enhanced profile looks as shown below

The enhanced and the non-enhanced profile have their pros and cons and the implementation depends on business requirements.

Hope the information shared will help others in the forum.