2017 SAP for Utilities Conference topics: FERC and C4C

At next month's 2017 SAP for Utilities conference, HPC America will discuss two topics of considerable interest to utility customers:

Real-Time FERC on SAP S/4HANA. Utilities have a number of options for regulatory accounting on S/4HANA. The delivered solution still relies on the legacy FI-RRU (a.k.a., the "FERC module") which uses a derivation-based model to generate regulatory data in batches at period-end. In contrast, S/4HANA is ideally suited to a transaction-based ("real-time") FERC model with line-item granularity. It doesn't, however, deliver such a design out-of-the-box. (Request our FAQ for more info.) At the conference, you can learn from HPC America's 20+ years of subject matter expertise how your utility can realize transaction-based FERC on S/4 either through configuration and/or code block changes, or with our latest add-on solution, HPC DECIPHER, which runs natively on S/4HANA and delivers the most comprehensive functionality for real-time translation, allocations, adjustments, cost flow forensics, and more. Before the conference, you can request our FAQ about FERC on S/4HANA.

SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer. We're currently leading the first Cloud for Service deployment at a utility company in the United States, and will share our SAP C4C implementation and integration experience with conference attendees. SAP C4C is incredibly important for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the replacement of transaction CIC0 Customer Interaction Center (CIC) in the legacy IS-U/CCS with the C4C Utilities Contact Center (UCC) connected to the IS-U in the ERP. See a live demo of our system at the conference, and learn from the technical challenges we've surmounted by working closely with SAP Support.

To schedule a meeting with HPC at the 2017 SAP for Utilities conference, please contact us directly.

SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer - utility company project update

HPC America's implementation of SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer at a utility company is progressing nicely (read prior posts 1 and 2). We now have the following functionality working in SAP C4C:

Guided Move-In / Move-Out
This is one of the most important aspects of utility company customer relationship management, and in SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer the functionality steps the end-user through the move-in/move-out process. Initially, there were challenges around meter read estimation and inputs, but we’ve resolved them. We also developed some BADis to streamline the process. For example, out of the box, C4C’s move-in function was creating multiple Service Orders, instead of a single one as the customer required. By modifying the BADi, we've enabled SAP C4C to generate a single Service Order.

Payment History
Customers’ payment histories were initially not replicated fully in SAP C4C, due to the select query working only on certain ECC payment entry configurations. Our utility customer’s ECC payment input is configured to allow multiple entries, so we worked closely with SAP Technical Support to update Cloud for Customer to meet this requirement.

Editing/Creating Meter Reads
Input of meter reads by contract is now operational in SAP C4C. This update is manual, but the system can also make estimates automatically. If a customer’s account has a smart meter, uploaded readings may be edited or overridden.

Testing of Responsive U/I
We’ve now tested SAP Cloud for Customer's Responsive U/I on various mobile devices, including Apple IOS phones and iPads and Android LG phones. The results are excellent, and the user interface makes for a very rewarding experience. The responsive interface in combination with critical functions, such as manual meter reads in territories without AMI, will provide tremendous benefits. In such a case, for example, field technicians will be able to input meter reads in real-time while at a service address without using any other software by SAP C4C.

Tickets and Customer Interaction groupings
In SAP C4C, the ticket is the main record of all customer interaction. We’ve now configured tickets and work tickets to align with our customer’s “Customer Interaction” groupings, which define categories such as Outage, Disconnects, Payments, Billing, and Service Request. All phone calls and emails between a CSR and a customer will be recorded and linked to the customer account in SAP Cloud for Customer.

To learn more about SAP C4C's benefits for utility companies, please contact HPC America.

SAP C4C Implementation - Technical Accomplishments to Date

Following up on our recent post about implementing SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer—which as we understand it is the first SAP C4C implementation at a utility company in the United States—we now have several new use cases running:

• Customer/Contract Account Search
• Utility Financial view/360 view
• Create a new contract account in C4C with synchronous update to ECC/CCS
• Create an installment plan in C4C with synchronous update to ECC/CCS

We have a total of 72 “iFlows” activated in C4C. An iFlow is a set of instructions to map the ECC to C4C, and the other way around, using SOAP messaging. Here’s an illustrative example of an iFlow:

Of these 72 iFlows, 37 are IS-U-specific: they integrate the ECC-CCS billing module to C4C. The HANA Cloud Integration (HCI) middleware has to be tested for each iFlow to determine if the webservice or IDoc is able to get through from sender to receiver. We’re working closely with SAP Support on HCI, URL address assignments, port assignments, and HTTP/HTTPS and SOAMANAGER issues that arise.

We also have 33 “Communication Arrangements” activated in C4C. A Communication Arrangement is a composition of one or more iFlows that collectively complete a business process between the ERP and C4C. They also define the inbound and outbound communication protocols.

We have replicated 150 customers in C4C from ECC. Replication is used to load the master data into the C4C running on an in-memory HANA database on the SAP Cloud Platform (SCP). This enables faster searching and fewer calls to the ECC to reduce I/O traffic on the on-premises ERP.  We will ramp up the number of replications in test once the iFlows are proven to be error-free.

Beyond these technical accomplishments, we start functional testing next week with the utility company’s call center team. After presenting some of the screens for customer searches, bill/balance analysis, and call/task/notification functions, the feedback we’re hearing is that the SAP Cloud for Customer user experience is excellent! The ability to customize screens to the user’s liking is very robust. Based on our experience so far, we expect that the learning curve for C4C will be a lot shorter than it is for CIC0 in classic SAP CCS.

Check back here later this summer for further updates on our SAP C4C implementation at the utility company.