Showing posts with label SAP for utilities conference. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SAP for utilities conference. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 15, 2017

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.

Monday, September 19, 2011

SAP for Utilities kicks off

Chris Ball's welcome message had a couple of good points about innovation, one of which we interpreted as being that the customer experience of an innovation is just as important as the innovation itself. Great to highlight this. But presenting smart grid and electric vehicles as "disruptive" tech seems a bit aspirational to us at this point. Mobility solutions for sure, though. And it was cool to see screen shots of old SAP R/2 and R/3 interfaces.

Bob Corteau went on to discuss growth, and, reiterating the mobility theme, the concept of "managing anywhere." Compiling information from individuals, new enterprise apps, and external sources will facilitate quick decisions, increased productivity, and better results. His imperative to "sweat your assets" — pursue short-cycle projects, collect data, show a return — is our typical approach to client projects.

So, the emphasis on leveraging new technology sounds great in theory, and we're hoping to hear some concrete, real world examples in the coming sessions. Utilities typically move methodically, so, beyond field teams responding to (or striving to preempt) trouble, we wonder how the ability to make rapid decisions will fit into that context.

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

2011 SAP for Utilities Conference

HPC America will be attending the 2011 SAP for Utilities conference in San Antonio, Texas on September 18-20. If you'd like to meet with us to discuss implementation and enhancement of your SAP IS-U/FERC module or any other issue concerning SAP for utilities, please give us a call to set up an appointment.

We'll also have some updated information to share about our latest solution for utilities on SAP, HPC Utility Financials Accelerator, which goes beyond the capabilities of the FERC module that we originally created, which SAP acquired from us in 1996. HPC UFA is in production at four utilities across the U.S., and was certified by SAP in 2010 as powered by the NetWeaver technology platform.

Learn more about our development of the SAP IS-U/FERC module and HPC Utility Financials Accelerator.