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 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.