IS Utilities

http://www.sap-isu.net/ SAP ISU Community

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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 flexible. 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 offers account management, which integrates all of a business partners payment
transactions.
In addition, you can take advantage of powerful customizing functions and the flexibility 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
- Vehicle Utility


ISU Basic Data Model

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 significance 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 different 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.
Jan
24
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 flexible. 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 offers account management, which integrates all of a business partners payment
transactions.
In addition, you can take advantage of powerful customizing functions and the flexibility 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 significance 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 different 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 ToolsWith 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 flexible 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:
- Configure 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 flexible 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 offers 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 certification based on a sampling procedure or individual
certification
In addition, device management allows you to create meter-reading orders and enter
consumption and demand. In this area, IS-U/CCS offers 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 flat 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 differentiated 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-specific 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
- Offsets 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 flexibly 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 notification texts or flyers
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 offers an
integrated subledger called contract accounts receivable and payable.
Contract accounts receivable is especially designed to meet the needs of mass processing.
At specific 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-defined text.
- Using a neutral interface, the system can transfer and automatically perform postings that
result from automated incoming payments (from front-end systems, financial 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 define for each receivables item.
Every utility company can define 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 different 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 financial accounting.
SAP Business Workflow:-
The SAP Business Workflow component of the standard R/3 System allows you to
coordinate business-process flows across applications. Underlying the workflows is a model
of the various business processes that you define. A workflow consists of individual steps
performed by a single person, possibly time-delayed, or by a number of different people.
The system can execute certain
steps automatically, such as initiating a confirmation 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 Workflow component provides technologies and tools
for automatic control and processing of workflows. 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 workflow 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 predefined reference workflows for some of the more important
business processes. These include processes for disconnecting and reconnecting a utility
installation and installing a service connection. These workflows are discussed in the
chapter titled Business Processes. The organizational plan of the utility company
determines which staff members are involved in a workflow. You can define this
organizational plan using the Organizational Management component of the standard R/3
System. The system assigns tasks automatically to the appropriate staff members. The
system processes the assignment of work via the integrated inbox, which supports staff
members as they work. The workflow also ensures that required actions, such as the
notification, 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 workflow. If deadlines are missed,
the system can automatically notify a supervisor. A flexible information system allows you to
analyze the runtimes of individual steps and processes. With this data you can identify weak
points in the application flow
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, efficient 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 flow, and response time of the system.
The front office 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
workflow management to support the flow of those processes.
You can configure the front office to your requirements in Customizing. These
configurations allow you to set up a work environment specifically suited to a particular staff
member and to define which data and transactions that the staff member is allowed to
access.
In its customer information IS-U/CCS offers various ready-made views with which staff can
provide customers with information on, for example, their data and accounts. Workflow
management contains predefined transactions with which staff 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 office is the identification of the
customer, which is supported by a powerful search function, the Data Finder. You define 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 identified,
your staff 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 workflow : Depending on the definition of the workflow, you continue the
transaction in
the back office 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 field
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 efficient 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-specific 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 offers 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 different
statistics applications:
o Stock statistics:- Stock statistics reflect the current stock of all the essential objects in the
dataset at a specific point in time.
o Transaction statistics:- Transaction statistics cover the most important processes
executed during
a specific 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 offers many different
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.
http://sapforutilities.blogspot.ca/2009/05/what-is-sap-is-u-ccs.html
What is SAP IS-U CCS?

IS-Utilities CCS (Customer Care & Service) hence forth referred to as SAP CCS is SAP's packaged solution
for Electric, Gas, Water & Waste Management Utilities. SAP CCS consists of 5 major modules - FI-CA
(Contract Accounting), Device Management, Billing & Invoicing, Customer Service (Front Office) and
Work Management.

QUICK FACTS

All basic front office processes such as Creation of New Accounts, Closing Accounts, Changing
Billing Plans, Move-in and Move-outs are handled in the Customer Service.

Once the Customer Service is done, field level activities such as Installation, Removal,
Replacement, Certification and Meter Reading is handled in the Device Management module.

Once the Meter Reads are available, Billing & Invoicing module handles the Billing of
Customers.

Contract Accounts Receivable & Payable module is in charge of receiving payments from
customers and making payments out to vendors.

All power outages and system interruption are reported to the Front Office, which then creates
Notifications & Work Orders for Utility employees/contractors to go fix the problem.
http://sapforutilities.blogspot.ca/2009_06_01_archive.html
SAP Upgrade to ECC 6.0 - What should I know as a SAP
CCS Customer?
SAP R/3+IS-U CCS Upgrade to ECC 6.0 can be both time consuming, educating and challenging
depending on how complex your business process is and how ready your Upgrade team is to transition
your R/3 system to ECC 6.0. Hiring a big name consulting firm to handle the upgrade is no sure way for
a successfull upgrade as each of them (no matter what they say!) have their share of successes and
failures.

First things first, let me try to explain the reasons why every SAP R/3 customer need to start preparing
to upgrade their R/3 system to the new Netweaver based Enterprise Central Component (ECC 6.0).

Close to half of SAP IS-U CCS customer base in U.S. as of 2008 was on the R/3 version of SAP, so first of
all let's try to understand what Netweaver based ECC is all about, then let me try to give a few reasons
as to why it's indeed useful to upgrade to ECC and how to approach and execute an upgrade?

Understanding Enterprise Central Component (ECC):

1. SAP introduced ECC with version 5.0 in 2003. The latest version is ECC 6.0. ECC is based on a
Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) of the Netweaver platform, enabling you to build new products
and solutions, using Java and ABAP-Webdnypro programming techniques. Also available are new
dimension tools such as Visual Composer and ability to create extranet and intranet portals.

2. There are also new and optimized business processes in Finance, Core IS-U CCS modules and Human
Resource areas. If you need specific information on the functionalities that have been added or
changed in ECC for your area, use the "ERP Solution Browser" available at the SAP Service Marketplace
athttp://solutionbrowser.erp.sap.fmpmedia.com/. (You may need an OSS id to access this
information).

3. SAP ECC 6.0, lands you on SAPs new software-delivery roadmap. This is the go-to release for all
customers currently on SAP IS-U CCS R/3. From now on, all new functional enhancements to ERP
through 2010 (when the next major synchronized release for SAP applications will take place) will be
made available as optional enhancement packages for SAP ECC 6.0.

Reasons as to why an Upgrade to ECC is needed:
Let's first understand how SAP handles and resolves bugs and support issues regarding its software. SAP
offers three types of maintenance for its software - Mainstream maintenance, Extended maintenance,
and Customer-specific maintenance.

SAP provides support packages during mainstream maintenance and extended maintenance for a
particular version. The delivery frequency of support packages is dependent on the maintenance phase.
SAP charges customers in most cases for Customer-specific maintenance and this is done using the SAP
Consulting services window.

Mainstream maintenance for SAP R/3 4.6C ended in December 2006.
SAP offers extended maintenance from January to December 2007.
After December 2007, R/3 customers can benefit from extended maintenance for another two
years until December 2009.
Beginning in January 2010, SAP will provide customer-specific maintenance for SAP R/3 4.6C.
Mainstream maintenance for SAP R/3 Enterprise ends in March 2009.
After this date, SAP will offer extended maintenance until March 2012, subject to additional
fees.
Beyond 2012, SAP will provide customer-specific maintenance for all SAP R/3 customers.
Note: I have heard that there may be an incentive from SAP to its customers sitting on the fence over
the upgrades. SAP offers incentives to customers to make the move, including discounts of up to 70%
on the old R/3 licenses. They can make their move from today up until the end of 2009.

How to Approach and Execute an Upgrade:
Your upgrade happens in two phases technical upgrade and functional upgrade. Most customers not
convinced with the business benefits of the new SAP functionalities opt for a technical upgrade to
bypass the extended maintenance fees on R/3 versions. However, SAP has invested a great deal of
money on tools (Business Objects acquisition), technologies (Java stack acquisition) and processes
(several other industry specific acquisitions) to help its customers use SAP more than just as a business
application focused software. SAP Customers of all sizes who have adopted this as a whole have
realized significant value. Bottomline, yes eventually all customers have to upgrade to Netweaver
based ECC platform.

To execute a successfull upgrade follow these steps:
1. Hire a Project Manager who has previously performed a SAP IS-U CCS Upgrade from R/3 to ECC
6.0 (preferably with some background in FI-CA) for a Utilities in your business line. Electric,
Gas, Water and Waste utility business processes are quite different from each other.
2. Mobilize a project team with 4-6 expert level SAP resources (1 for each module) under the
project manager. Depending on your budget hiring external resources for this job is advised,
allowing your employees to focus on day-to-day support during upgrade.
3. First job for the Upgrade team members is to thoroughly document existing business processes,
how it is tied into SAP, integration points with third party systems and any system risks during
cut over to new ECC 6.0 system.
4. Build a Development ECC 6.0 system - configure it, bring in each and every Z or Y development
object, mods, defects etc.
5. Build a Quality ECC 6.0 system - move the configuration transports and all other related
transports. Perform Integration testing with all 3rd party systems.
6. Do a PARALLEL TESTING, where you compare your existing R/3 system output with the new ECC
6.0 output. Example: Billing different Customers, Invoicing different Service Class customers,
Meter Read Uploads for different types of Meters, Notification Create, etc.
7. Do a CUTOVER TESTING, where you wipe out the Quality system and bring in everything fresh
(including defects from Parallel Testing Phase) and do another round of Parallel testing.
8. Assuming the result of Step 7, is a success in major business areas (except for a few small
defects), you are ready to go-live.