SAP® C/4HANA Service Cloud Case Study at the 2018 SAP for Utilities Conference

On Tuesday, October 16 at the 2018 SAP for Utilities conference, Navajo Tribal Utility Authority and HPC America will present NTUA’s case study on the first-ever integration of SAP C/4HANA Service Cloud (formerly Hybris Cloud for Customer and SAP C4C) with a utility’s on-premises SAP ECC ERP and IS-U billing module. NTUA’s Deputy CFO, Gerard Curley, and HPC’s CEO, Jerry Cavalieri, will share the project’s strategy, results, and lessons learned.

NTUA had a mandate to implement a new call center to increase operational efficiency and improve customer satisfaction across its 27,000 square mile territory. In April 2017, NTUA made a cutting-edge choice: rather than implement an on-premises CRM that would further stretch its IT resources, the call center would use SAP C/4HANA Service Cloud connected to the utility’s on-prem ECC 6.0/IS-U system via SAP Cloud Platform middleware. Nine months after kickoff, NTUA became the first utility in the U.S. to put such a system into production.

This session at the SAP for Utilities conference will showcase…

• How utilities can benefit from SAP C/4HANA even before upgrading to S/4HANA
• NTUA’s business case for selecting C/4HANA Service Cloud
• Lessons learned from the implementation and subsequent 90-day upgrade cycles
• Results since the January 2018 go-live, since which time NTUA’s customer service representatives have logged more than 15,000 tickets in C/4HANA Service Cloud

NTUA’s HANA-powered, cloud-based CRM now tracks customer interactions in detail, improves responsiveness to payment inquiries, reduces the chance of unnecessary shut-offs, and establishes a mobile-ready foundation for field technicians—all while leveraging NTUA’s existing SAP ERP. NTUA's customer service representatives are no longer dependent on the Customer Interaction Center (CIC0), which is not offered in S/4HANA. The SAP C/4HANA Service Cloud supports NTUA's new call center with a modern, feature-rich CRM to improve customer satisfaction; provides customer-facing team members with a great UX — anywhere, on any device; and, longer term, establishes an infrastructure for NTUA to standardize customer service practices across its headquarters and district locations.

To learn more about SAP C/4HANA Service Cloud integration with the IS-U, register for the 2018 SAP for Utilities conference and attend this unique presentation on Tuesday, October 16 at 2:40pm. Contact HPC America if you'd like to discuss C/4HANA prior to the conference.

ASUG Webinar for Utilities: SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer (C4C) Integrated with On-Prem ECC/IS-U at NTUA

On Wednesday, January 24, ASUG will host a Webinar about NTUA's implementation of SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer (C4C). Register for the SAP C4C Webinar online so that you can hear NTUA's Deputy CFO, Gerard Curley, and HPC America's CEO, Jerry Cavalieri, discuss this exciting project, which we have chronicled this year.

The Navajo Tribal Utility Authority (NTUA) had a mandate to implement a new, centralized call

center to increase operational efficiency and improve customer satisfaction across its 27,000 square mile territory.  As part of its Customer Experience Initiative (CEI), NTUA desired to have a modern HANA-powered, mobile-ready user interface to track customer interactions, while still leveraging its existing investment in its SAP ERP running on a relational database.

In early 2017, NTUA’s Deputy CFO, Gerard Curley, made a cutting-edge choice: rather than implementing an on-premises CRM solution that would further stretch the utility’s IT resources, the call center would use SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer (C4C) running on the SAP Cloud Platform and connected to the utility’s on-prem ECC 6.0 system and IS-U via SAP Cloud Platform Integration middleware (formerly known as SAP HANA Cloud Integration).

NTUA is the first utility company in the U.S. to use SAP’s cloud middleware to connect C4C in the

front office with on-prem IS-U in the back office. The project showcases how utilities can connect HANA-powered cloud solutions like C4C to their core SAP ERP running on any database.

The Webinar will review NTUA’s business case for selecting SAP C4C, including functionality released in the project’s first phase; key lessons learned from integrating on-prem IS-U with C4C via SAP Cloud Platform Integration; and initial results from the January 2018 go-live. In addition, the presentation will discuss NTUA’s integration of third-party payment solution Paymentus with IS-U using SAP’s cloud middleware to support cloud-to-cloud integration. Register for ASUG's SAP C4C Webinar today.

SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer (C4C) Nearing Go-Live

Following up on our prior posts about HPC America implementing SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer (SAP C4C) at a utility company, we’re in the final stages to go-live later this month. This is the first-ever — in the world! — integration of SAP C4C with on-premises ECC - IS-U via the SAP Cloud Platform Integration (formerly known as SAP HANA Cloud Integration or HCI).

After building a fully populated PoC with all customers connected to the sandbox ERP and performing exhaustive user acceptance testing, the utility company’s C4C production tenant has been requested and created. We’ll connect it to their on-prem SAP production ECC 6.0 system, move transports from QAS into PRD, install the cloud connector, install SOAP runtime, add the communication arrangements to the middleware, set up Webservices, and start replicating business partners. We’ll then validate that the data is correct.

One of many unique aspects to this project is that the utility company will NOT transition all users off of CIC when C4C goes live. Some will continue to use the legacy CIC0 functionality. HPC configured C4C and CIC to communicate back-and-forth, such that the contact log in CIC is automatically updated with data from C4C, and vice versa. The project team chose this approach to minimize risk and moderate costs. Once C4C is running in production and the call center team has real-world hands-on experience, we’ll roll it out the the rest of the organization.

For this first phase, the following Hybris Cloud for Customer functionality will be live:

• Utilities Financials
• Utilities 360
• Utilities Overview
• Installment Plans
• Ticketing

This feature set will enable the utility’s call center reps to search for customers, check balances due, check meter reads, create installment plans, make real-time payments, create tickets, and create service notifications. Next quarter, we’ll add even more functionality by going live with Move In/Move Out, Bill Reversal/Rebill, Service Orders, and Transfers.

Learn more about HPC America's expertise in SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer (C4C) for utility companies on SAP.

Utilities Contact Center in SAP C4C - Rich Feature Set for Utilities

The Utilities Contact Center (UCC) in SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer offers truly rich functionality for utility company Customer Service Representatives. In our current C4C implementation, we've activated the features outlined below. We'll also be demonstrating them at the SAP for Utilities conference in Huntington Beach next month, running C4C off an iPad to demonstrate its out-of-the-box mobility.

Utility Financials: displays the customer account balance, open items, invoices, payments, dunning notices, installment plans, meter reads, premise, bill reversals, and interactions on service tickets.

Utilities 360: displays a hierarchy of the Contract Account, Premise, Contract, Installation and Device for the customer in a parent/child relationship.

Utilities Overview: displays a list of the contract accounts for the customer including invoices, service orders, and meter reads.

Move-In/Move-Out: walks the CSR through move-in steps to a premise, and through move-out steps from a vacating premise.

Installment Plans: creates a payment arrangement in which the customer balance is spread out over a number of days, weeks, or months as permitted, and changes the amount due immediately after.

Service Orders: creates a new service order for field technician work. Service orders are immediately visible to planners for release and to dispatch field techs to premises. Mobile updates are provided as well.

Bill Reversal/Re-Bill: enables the CSR to reverse one or more billing documents, or the entire customer invoice. Also allows manual entry of meter reads, and re-billing  of contract accounts.

Transfers: transfers an existing contract account to a new service address for an existing customer (business partner).

When a CSR uses these features, SAP C4C provides dynamic navigation links and user prompts based on the context of the particular task at hand. This reduces clutter on the screen and makes the interface even more intuitive. See it yourself at the utilities conference.

Integration benefits from SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer

Continuing our series about SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer (C4C), today we’re thinking about how critical it is for utilities to have a CRM system that’s well-integrated with their ERP. As we implement C4C and integrate it with the IS-U this summer, we’re discovering more and more that we like about SAP’s SasS offering.

Utilities committed to excellent customer service need a CRM solution that facilities on-boarding of new customers, transfers to another house or apartment in the service territory, and set-up of payment plans. A CRM solution that integrates with the back-end ERP — or in the case of utilities, the IS-U — will not only provide Customer Service Representatives with visibility into billing, but also into service tickets. Everything discussed with the customer can be captured in those service tickets, and that, in turn, gives the utility insight into each customer’s particular situation and needs no matter who at the utility is communicating with the customer.

That transparency into the customer is incredibly valuable. For example, when performing a customer move-in, the CSR requires a lot of details about the customer class, applicable rate tariff, and move-out of the prior customer. Coordinating this with a non-integrated CRM is difficult, but with C4C and the ERP integrated it’s much easier. Similarly, if a customer is about to be disconnected for non-payment, but the CSR using SAP C4C sees that payment was just made that day, the customer’s power won’t be interrupted. Such visibility is difficult to achieve with non-integrated CRM solutions that may only be updated once a day, or provide very little information from their updates.

C4C also delivers a means to interact with customers through multiple mediums. Referred to as omni-channel, C4C allows for traditional Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) as well as email, text (SMS), and social networks (e.g., Facebook and Twitter).  For example, incoming emails can be read and classified by C4C, automatically creating service tickets and assigning them to the appropriate agent for follow-up. Agents, in turn, can get 360-degree views of their customers, assess account status, and provide pre-determined actions from scripted communication templates.

Moreover, if a service call is necessary, technicians in the field can use C4C to update their progress on service tickets. After troubleshooting service interruptions while on-site at customers’ premises, field techs can even use their mobile devices to charge their time to service orders created by CSRs. SAP C4C is delivered with an out-of-the-box Fiori UI for mobile workers, many features of which work both on- and off-line when cell coverage or WiFi is not available.

SAP also delivers embedded analytics in C4C that customer service managers will appreciate. Because C4C is built on the HANA in-memory database, both OLTP and OLAP capabilities are on the same application platform. This means that analyzing service ticket metrics and utility response times is already part of the C4C solution, complete with graphical displays for visualization of the data for management to analyze. With C4C, a utility won’t have to export its data to an external warehouse for analysis, losing valuable time moving data around just to prepare it for analysis. It’s all right there, ready to be considered carefully and acted upon promptly. And that can only help customer service initiatives.

SAP transaction CIC0 nearing EOL, replaced by Utilities Contact Center (UCC)

Utilities currently running SAP’s on-premise CRM solution, IS-U/CR&B (a.k.a. CCS), often rely on transaction CIC0 in the Customer Interaction Center (CIC). They won’t be able to use it for long, however, as support for CIC0 will end when support for ECC 6.0 ends in 2025, and CIC0 is deprecated in SAP S/4HANA. As such, CIC0 is nearing end-of-life and must be replaced with something else.

The replacement for CIC0 is the Utilities Contact Center (UCC) offered in SAP Cloud for Customer (C4C), which integrates with the IS-U. While C4C has its own ticketing system resident in Cloud for Service, utilities using that alone would miss all of the benefits of integration with the IS-U. And that integration is absolutely critical for utility company CSRs to on-board new customers, transfer customers to new locations within the service territory, and help customers pay their bills by setting up installment plans.

Given that, we see two future alternatives for utilities: run SAP’s on-premise CRM solution with S/4HANA, or run the new Hybris Cloud for Customer SaaS solution. If a utility doesn’t already have the on-prem CRM deployed, we’d recommend using C4C. It provides rapid innovation cycles for easy access to new features; a bundled Fiori client for mobile users at low subscription prices; and offloads technical work so that IT can focus on other initiatives. In the coming weeks, we’ll discuss C4C’s benefits in greater detail.

One SAP Roadmap for Utilities: Wrap SAP Cloud Around On-Prem SAP Financials

Recently we were talking with one of our utility company clients about their SAP roadmap, and how utilities can leverage the latest SAP Cloud-based solutions while maintaining their robust and well-design SAP Financials core.

Our guidance for utilities considering such a direction is to initially wrap Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions around the SAP Financials they already have in place. Integrating third-party or SAP SaaS offerings with SAP Financials will be faster and less costly than a total overhaul, and SAP has great middleware in Hana Cloud Integration (HCI) that runs on the SAP Cloud Platform.

Under this kind of model, a SaaS billing solution, for example, would send APIs to the HCI to message SAP Financials for revenue transactions. The HCI would also be used to connect other SaaS offerings to SAP Financials, such as Fieldglass for contractors, Concur for employee expenses, and Success Factors for HR/payroll.

This strategy of integrating SaaS offerings with on-premise Financials has a number of benefits. First, it provides utilities with access to more modern, user-friendly applications that front-office staff and field operations will appreciate. Second, it safeguards regulatory accounting, overheads and allocations, and even the monthly close itself, which are too important to rip and replace without the utmost care. And third, it creates an opportunity in the future to move to a hybrid solution running SAP S/4HANA in the Cloud. Conversion will be more efficient when some front office and field tech functions have already been moved there, and the primary on-prem system remaining is Financials. Then, once S/4HANA is in place, utilities can build-out analytics on the SAP Business Objects Cloud (BOC) as their repository for all reporting from SAP and other non-SAP apps.

Learn more about HPC's implementation services for a terrific SAP SaaS offering, SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer (SAP C4C).