Technical Landscape For Utilities

Question

Hi All, I was wondering if anyone had any learning points or gotcha's for designing the SAP for Utilities Technical Landscape. OUr project consists of  CTI/IVR ,TOU, Retailer, Billing, Web integration . We currently run SAP FI, AM, HCM, and are looking to add CRM/I SU next Winter. I assume most information is passed between systems using PI ? If anyone has any info on the CRM middle ware piece or project suprises, I would be happy to know! Thanks.

Answer 1

Hi
All sales and marketing activities from the customer service area of IS-U have been transferred to CRM. Analyses previously performed in IS-U now run in BW.
CRM performs all activities relating to customer interaction. Various channels, such as call centers, Internet and laptops can be used to communicate with customers. Data objects are synchronized via the Middleware and exchanged with the backend and analysis systems.
CRM: Customer Interaction System
CRM is the front-end system used for interaction with the customer. It contains the full range of functions from the areas of marketing, sales, and customer retention. CRM supports communication with customers via a number of channels:
·        Internet
Integration of Web-based applications (Internet sales and marketing) in the CRM system.                                          
·        Contact center
Integration of telephony systems in CRM via CTI interface. All call center scenarios are fully telephony-compatible.
·        Mobile clients
The most important data and functions contained in CRM are accessible via laptop in offline applications. Data is synchronized with the online system via the Middleware.
IS-U: System for Device Management, Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable, Billing, and Invoicing
IS-U is the backend system. Information on new customers is not transferred to IS-U until a contract has been concluded with the customer. It contains all the data and transactions for the following areas: device management, contract accounts receivable and payable, billing, and invoicing.
These areas cover the installation of devices, calculation and request of budget billing amounts, entry of meter reading results, billing, invoicing, generation payment requests, and monitoring of payment receipts.
BW: System for Analyses, Planning, Monitoring, and Success Checks
BW: When integrated, serves as instrument for analyses, planning, monitoring, and success checks. BW enables you to gather information from any system (CRM, FI, IS-U as well as external systems) in InfoCubes and evaluate them based on your requirements. Furthermore, these analyses are not restricted to one InfoCube; you can use any number. For each SAP solution, SAP supplies specific BW contents. These provide the necessary conditions for importing data into BW; they also contain predefined reports and analyses that you are free to enhance.  These contents are filled by extractors that transfer the data from the various systems to BW.
Data Synchronization between CRM und IS-U 
Both IS-U and CRM can operate independently and in combination with external systems. This necessitates the existence of central objects in both systems. In an integrated scenario, there are a few objects that are synchronized via the Middleware since they must be available in both systems. The integrated scenario SAP CRM and SAP IS-U supports the automatic synchronization of the following objects:
·        Business partners and their contract accounts
·        Contracts
·        Connection objects and points of delivery
·        IS-U contacts in CRM activities
To ensure data consistency and transparency, changes to objects in one system are immediately synchronized in the other system.
For more information see the cookbooks IS-U/CRM Integration of Technical Objects,
https://websmp208.sap-ag.de/~sapdownload/011000358700000039982009E/Vertragsintegr_Dez08_e.pdf
The replication of business partner and business agreement is carried out by the CRM standard. For this please refer to CRM Middleware config best practices C71_BB_ConfigGuide_EN_DE.doc.
For the replication of the other data from SAP CRM in SAP IS-U, the IS-U master data generator  plays an important role:
u2022        Technical objects such as points of delivery must be replicated from SAP CRM into SAP IS-U. Master data templates with the template category CRMTECHOBJ are used for this purpose.
u2022        During the replication of the CRM contract items, contracts must be created in SAP IS-U, among other things. These data changes are made in SAP IS-U with master data templates of the category CRMNEWCONTRACT.
Regards
Parasar