SAP ISU - Utilities - Brief Overview

The SAP Utilities (IS-U) component is a sales and information system that supports all business processes and utility services of a utility company.
IS-U is integrated with the Service Management (PM-SMA), Customer Service (CS) and Sales and Distribution (SD) application components, enabling billing of service orders, service contracts, and the sale of goods.

The Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable (FI-CA) component manages the large number of postings from billing and budget billing requests.

IS-U uses the SAP Business Workflow application component to automate business processes.

Different SAP ISU Components/ Modules:
1. Basic Functions: Manages addresses and regional structures, as well as generating schedules for meter readings, billings, and budget billings.
2. Master Data: This data includes the Business Master Data (BMS) as Business Partners, Contract Accounts and Contracts; Technical Master Data (TMS) as Connection Objects, Premises, Installations, Point of Delivery, Devices and Device locations.
3. Device Management: This component manages technical data, installations, meter readings, and the inspection of devices.
4. Billing : The supply and services provided by a utility company are billed using this component. It offers a range of billing procedures with a variety of selection and control options. For example, the component enables:
* Billing of residential and nonresidential customers
* Annual consumption billing and periodic monthly billing cycles
* Billing for different divisions
* Numerous bill forms
* Billing simulation
* Validation of billing documents and bills
5. Invoicing: to invoice billing documents of selected contracts, or create bills for budget billing amounts. It creates FI-CA documents for: IS-U consumption billing, External billing, SD billing.
6A. Customer Interaction Center (CIC): Customer Interaction Center (CIC) application offers customer service organizations robust call center functionality and a highly customizable design. The CIC application enables agents to:
* Process inbound, and simple outbound, telephone calls from customers and other business partners using Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) technology as middleware
* Seamlessly process any business transaction.
6B. Front Office : Different common business transactions can be processed. These include:
* Changes to customer data
* Move-in/out
* Interim billing
* Bill complaint
* Budget billing adjustment, etc.
7. Internet-Self-Services : It enables utility company's customers to notify the company of new or changed information via the Internet. The following functions are currently available:
* Grant direct debit authorization
* Pay bill
* Display bill
* Provide accounts information
* Register move-in
* Change bill address
* Enter meter readings
* Register supplier change
* Registration and changes to password
* Display consumption history
* Initiate call-back
* Request new password if old password was forgotten.
8. Energy Data Management (EDM): Energy Data Management is a solution that fulfills requirements by offering interval reading, settlement of energy quantities, scheduling, and billing of interval energy consumption. EDM covers the following areas:
- Central database for energy data (Energy Data Repository).
- Settlement and schedule management using the settlement workbench.
- Billing of profiles using real-time-pricing billing (RTP billing).
9. Work Management : This component is used for accepting, planning, calculating and carrying out work orders and, if applicable, for billing work orders to a customer.
10. Inter-company Data Exchange (IDE): Inter-company Data Exchange is a solution that meets the demands of deregulated energy markets. The Inter-company Data Exchange Component is primarily comprised of the following parts:
1. Administration of Deregulation Data: Deregulation data includes points of delivery (PoD), Grids, point of delivery services and service providers.
2. Process Management: Process management allows you to trigger processes for inbound communication - simple processes such as changes to business partner master data, as well as a complex workflow for processing enrollment. Outbound communication does not usually require complex process management.
3. Data Exchange Processes: The deregulation of the energy market has lead to the development of new business processes that require data to be exchanged between companies (supplier and distributor for example).
In a business process, an exchange of data consists of several steps. We will refer to these steps as data exchange processes.
The starting point for defining a data exchange process is the corresponding data exchange basic process. The data exchange basic process describes the implementation of a data exchange process. The following are examples of implemented data exchange basic processes:
* Send customer switch notification
* Receive customer switch notification
* Send confirmation/rejection of customer switch
* Receive confirmation/rejection of customer switch
* Import profiles
* Export profiles

SAP UCES will be added soon to give basic knowledge to the readers.