SAP IS-U / CCS (AN OVERVIEW)

IS-U/CCS is a business process-oriented customer information system that handles

all categories of supply and services provided by utility and service companies. You can use
IS-U/CCS to manage and bill residential, nonresidential, and service customers and to
manage prospective customers. IS-U/CCS is exceptionally fexible. It supports a varied
range of divisions and business partners and provides a large number of functions.
Furthermore, IS-U/ CCS processes all business transactions and activities with a central
business partner jointly, and it ofers account management, which integrates all of a
business partners payment transactions.
In addition, you can take advantage of powerful customizing functions and the fexibility of
the R/3 System to customize IS-U/CCS to meet your individual organizational requirements.
Utility companies can use IS-U/CCS to bill all the traditional divisions:-
Electricity
Gas
District heating
Water and waste water
IS-U/CCS also handles billing for waste disposal (as of Release 1.2) and cable television
connections.
Because IS-U/CCS is integrated with the Service Management (PM-SMA) and Sales and
Distribution (SD) application components of the R/3 System, you can also bill service orders
and service contracts for services of all types, plus the sale of goods, such as meters, heat
pumps, and consumption devices.
IS-U/CCS jointly invoices (if desired and appropriate in terms of time) all the services that a
utility company provides to customers. It combines them into a single bill and processes
them for accounts receivable via Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable.
Moreover, using an interface you can include the billing results from external billing systems
in invoicing. This allows you to collectively create bills and process accounts receivable with
the billing results of IS-U/CCS (Release 2). Of particular signifcance in IS-U/CCS is the
collective billing of services from more than one company. This includes convergent billing
and intercompany billing. With convergent billing, a utility company can manage the
services of a third party and include them in its own bill.
Examples:-
Waste disposal in behalf of the city sanitation department.
Cable charges for telecommunications companies.
Drainage charges on behalf of the municipality.
With intercompany billing, several independent companies (each with their own separate
balance sheets) can combine their services into a single bill. The services are based on
contracts with diferent company codes. Integrating services from more than one company
provides advantages to both
consumers and utility companies. Integration is also the foundation for future forms of billing
in a deregulated utility industry where the services of any one division consist of service
components from more than one company.
Functions and Special Features:-
Most important functions and features of IS-U/CCS.
Important functions and features of IS-U/CCS
Basic Functions and Tools
With the basic functions of IS-U/CCS, you can manage the addresses and regional
structures and generate scheduled dates for meter readings, budget billings, and regular
billings.
The print workbench gives you the capability for fexible layout of bills and other customer
letters using SAPscript, the word processing system of the standard R/3 System. You can
either edit the data in SAPscript and pass it to the printer, or you can make the data
available for mass printing at the raw data interface (RDI).
As part of the migration process, you can transfer data from your current system
to IS-U/CCS.
Other functions allow you to:
Confgure screens with tab strips
Enter nonstandardized additional information as notes
Store time-dependent data as information in a history
Maintain number ranges to assign unique sort features
Set up fexible access protection
Log changes

Master Data
The master data in IS-U/CCS includes:
Business partners
Contracts and contract accounts
Connection objects (such as buildings or land) and the premises, utility installations,
and device locations they contain
Basic Master Data in ISU
Some of the Sub-Modules in SAP ISU: -
Device Management
For managing utility company devices, meters, and equipment, IS-U/CCS ofers the
following functions:
The capability to divide devices into device categories
Meter and device procurement, warehousing, and stock movements using integration with
the Materials Management (MM) component
Maintain installation structures with their existing relationships between meters, devices,
registers, and rate data
Maintain rate reference values and other information about the purchase of power
Installation, removal, and replacement of meters and devices
Device inspection and certifcation based on a sampling procedure or individual
certifcation
In addition, device management allows you to create meter-reading orders and enter
consumption and demand. In this area, IS-U/CCS ofers the following functions:
Create meter reading orders and documents in printed or machine-readable form
Enter meter reading results manually or automatically
Conveniently connect external entry systems
Validate meter reading results
Correct or post-process meter reading results
Monitor meter readings
Valuate at fat rates consumption and demand on the basis of various replacement values
(such as the number of cable television connections or the energy intake of streetlights)
Contract Billing
Billing is the core of IS-U/CCS. It covers the billing of supply categories and services. In
addition, you can incorporate the services that you processed and billed with the Service
Management and Sales and Distribution components and the meter reading results from
external billing systems in IS-U/CCS invoicing (Release 1.2 and Release 2).
A contract is billed as follows:
1. The necessary data is collected.
2. The data is prorated. The system accounts for price and tax changes during the billing
period.
3. The system converts the readings into billable quantities (such as register factors or
thermal gas billing).
4. The quantities are valued using rates in which the utility company has stored its billing
rules.
5. The meter reading results are validated and form the basis for invoicing.
Forms of billing in IS-U/CCS:
- Periodic billing
Floating backbilling
Period-end billing
Interim billing
Final billing
Budget billing and average monthly billing or equalized billing (North America)
The most important functions of contract billing:-
IS-U/CCS supports as billing cycles both annual consumption billing and monthly billing
cycles for less than a year.
The system bills nonresidential and residential customers in the same data structures with
the same functions. The two types of customer are diferentiated only by the data.
You can reverse all forms of bills. You can initiate credit memos and backbillings.
In addition to automated billing, you can use manual billing (Release 2).
IS-U/CCS supports many division-specifc types of billing.
Some examples are:
o Thermal gas billing procedures
o Billing of public lighting using electricity or gas
o Waste disposal (Release 1.2)
o Company and plant consumption of the utility
o Billing for employees (Release 2)
Invoicing :-
- Generates accounting documents for receivables and credit memos from billing
documents
Ofsets accounting documents against down payments made, particularly paid budget
billings
Formats data for bill printout
Creates new budget billing plans
Supports the calculation of taxes
With bill printout you can fexibly design and display your bills according to your needs. You
can print bills using the IS-U/CCS print workbench or make them available to external print
systems for mass printing. In addition, you can insert individual notifcation texts or fyers
with printed documents.
Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable :-
Because of their large numbers of customers and generally monthly billing or budget billing
request, utility companies create large volumes of requests for payment. So that you do not
have to maintain this mass data under General Ledger Accounting, IS-U/CCS ofers an
integrated subledger called contract accounts receivable and payable.
Contract accounts receivable is especially designed to meet the needs of mass processing.
At specifc intervals, the system transfers the accumulated individual postings to the general
ledger of the Financial Accounting (FI) component or to the general ledger of a third-party
system. You can also transfer sales or service invoices from the Sales and Distribution
component to contract accounts
receivable and payable (Release 1.2).
The objective of contract accounts receivable and payable is to automate all transactions as
far possible. You only need to manually intervene when a transaction requires a decision.
The most important characteristics of contract accounts receivable and payable:-
- You can individually customize account and open-item displays.
In response to certain business transactions, the system automatically creates printed
documents (such as checks, account statements, and returns correspondence) and
correspondence with user-defned text.
Using a neutral interface, the system can transfer and automatically perform postings that
result from automated incoming payments (from front-end systems, fnancial institutions, or
agencies), from collection procedures, credit refunds, or returns processing.
The system can process and include in invoicing down payments for energy consumption
(budget billings) and for services to be performed in the future.
You can impose payments in advance or security deposits on customers with a negative
payment history or a bad credit rating.
Flexible dunning is based on dunning levels that you can defne for each receivables item.
Every utility company can defne the individual steps of the dunning proceedings itself. The
system maintains all information relevant to dunning in a history that is the basis for a credit
rating.
You can calculate interest on debit and credit items at the line-item level. You can
determine rates of interest individually depending on the business partner or transaction
concerned (so far as legal requirements, for example, exist).
You can defer receivables items or transfer them to installment plans.
You can send documents relating to diferent accounts or business partners jointly to a
collective bill recipient, for example, a housing construction company).
You can identify receivables as good, doubtful, and irrecoverable and then process them
accordingly.
You can manage and process unallocatable incoming payments.
Receivables items are included in fnancial accounting.
SAP Business Workfow :-
The SAP Business Workfow component of the standard R/3 System allows you to
coordinate business-process fows across applications. Underlying the workfows is a model
of the various business processes that you defne. A workfow consists of individual steps
performed by a single person, possibly time-delayed, or by a number of diferent people.
The system can execute certain
steps automatically, such as initiating a confrmation letter after a rate change or logging
changes (such as change in the contract, bank data, or budget billings) that result from a
customer contact. The SAP Business Workfow component provides technologies and tools
for automatic control and processing of workfows. It allows you to adapt IS-U/CCS and the
standard R/3 System to meet the needs of your utility company.
It makes sense to map a business process as a workfow if it:
Keeps occurring in the same or in a similar form
Consists of a number of possibly cross-application processing steps that have to be
executed as a structured whole
Consists of a number of processing steps involving more than one person or departments
or that are time delayed
IS-U/CCS contains predefned reference workfows for some of the more important business
processes. These include processes for disconnecting and reconnecting a utility installation
and installing a service connection. These workfows are discussed in the chapter titled
Business Processes. The organizational plan of the utility company determines which staf
members are involved in a workfow. You can defne this organizational plan using the
Organizational Management component of the standard R/3 System. The system assigns
tasks automatically to the appropriate staf members. The system processes the assignment
of work via the integrated inbox, which supports staf members as they work. The workfow
also ensures that required actions, such as the notifcation, are not overlooked. A log allows
you to trace exactly the steps executed for each process. In addition, you can trace the
status of any workfow. If deadlines are missed, the system can automatically notify a
supervisor. A fexible information system allows you to analyze the runtimes of individual
steps and processes. With this data you can identify weak points in the application fow
and optimize the relevant processes.
Customer Service :-
Every year, larger utility companies deal with several hundred thousand direct customer
contacts. In light of this large number, efcient processing of contacts is an important
performance characteristic of IS-U/CCS. In particular, entering business transactions places
considerable demands on the user interface, service fow, and response time of the system.
The front ofce is the most important part of customer service. This is where customers can
obtain information on all the important data and start all the processes that are important to
their work centers. Depending on the content of the business processes, it uses R/3
workfow management to support the fow of those processes.
You can confgure the front ofce to your requirements in Customizing. These confgurations
allow you to set up a work environment specifcally suited to a particular staf member and
to defne which data and transactions that the staf member is allowed to access.
In its customer information IS-U/CCS ofers various ready-made views with which staf can
provide customers with information on, for example, their data and accounts. Workfow
management contains predefned transactions with which staf can handle such jobs as:
Creating a new premise
Processing a move-in
Changing a contract
Entering a fault report.
The initial step in any customer contact in the front ofce is the identifcation of the
customer, which is supported by a powerful search function, the Data Finder. You defne in
Customizing which data the system uses as search criteria. You can automate this step by
integrating a computer telephone integration (CTI) system and display an initial information
screen that contains information on the customer. Once the customer has been identifed,
your staf can call up information screens and then branch from there to additional, detailed
views. If changes are required, you can make them on the spot.
For example, you can change bank details or process a move-in.
If you cannot complete the transaction because required data is unavailable or if detailed
processing is required, you can:
Initiate a workfow : Depending on the defnition of the workfow, you continue the
transaction in
the back ofce when the necessary events have occurred
Create a follow-up for the appropriate person : In this case, you can enter customer
information in a note and attach it to the follow-up.
IS-U/CCS automatically logs the customer contact. You can enter notes (like marketing-
relevant remarks) on a customer contact. You can quickly obtain an overview of prior
contacts and sort them according to various criteria, such as prior dunning events or feld
service operations. The log record for the customer contact references the relevan
t object or documents. This means that you can display
the dunning letter sent for a dunning event, for example, directly from the log.
Work Management:-
The efcient performance of services is increasingly important for utility companies in times
of growing competition and increased customer orientation. Utility companies consequently
plan and cost such services as work orders.
Examples include:
Setting up service connections
Maintaining technical equipment, performing periodic device replacement
Processing repairs and reports of damage
Creating collection and disconnection orders
Performing energy consulting
In IS-U/CCS, Work Management processes those work orders. Work Management uses
functions from the standard Plant Maintenance and Service Management component and
integrates them with industry-specifc functions from IS-U/CCS to form cross-component
business processes. In many cases you can bill customers for work orders. Where this is
the case, the system executes the Inquiry >>> Quotation ->>> Order transaction before
the work order and the Billing >>> Invoicing transaction after the work order. The system
handles these transactions based on the integration of the Plant Maintenance and Service
Management and the Sales and Distribution components.
You can combine the billing results for services from Sales and Distribution with the results
for energy billing from IS-U/CCS in IS-U/CCS invoicing and show them on one bill (Release
2).
Information System :-
The Information System enables you to analyze the data resources underlying ISU/ CCS.
Like other components of R/3, IS-U/CCS ofers a variety of forms of
analysis:
Statistics
The statistics are based on a statistical dataset, which the system updates continuously
or monthly from dialog and batch functions. IS-U/CCS distinguishes between three diferent
statistics applications:
o Stock statistics:- Stock statistics refect the current stock of all the essential objects in the
dataset at a specifc point in time.
o Transaction statistics:- Transaction statistics cover the most important processes executed
during
a specifc period of time. These might include move-in or move-out or disconnection.
o Sales statistics:- Sales statistics provide comprehensive information on quantities sold in
the various divisions and the resulting revenues.
The Logistics Information System (LO-LIS) component of the standard system enables you
to evaluate the statistical dataset. The Logistics Information System ofers many diferent
options for evaluating, analyzing and presenting data.
IS-U/CCS Navigator
With the IS-U/CCS Navigator you can get a quick overview of how the data
interrelates within IS-U/CCS. Starting from any given data object, such as a
customer, you can use graphics to navigate through the entire data environment
of the object.
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