Elevate your ride to the next level: Sales & Service Subway map

[Chandrashekhar_Tipre]

Further to the Blog series  on Metro-analogy post on LinkedIn “Getting to Your Destination Faster - SaaS ERP is the World’s Business Tube” and the post from the series from # Subway: “Subway map of the Public Cloud ERP sales and one solution order process”,  I bring to you metro experience with an interesting analogy for an intrigued SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition customer who also happens to be my co-passenger for the subway travel.

Through the storyline of a new metro travel experience, I am going to share with you the high-level Sales and Service solution coverage & functionalities which are sure to elevate user experience and improve efficiency of handling of the end-to-end business processes.

As my mind goes through a down-memory lane with my first experience with a metro travel, It was a thrill yet a struggle with learning for me to seek information for me, such as where should I go to buy a ticket; how can I pay to buy the ticket to my destination?  Which way is to the platform, in case of the travel involves changeover of routes?  It was definitely a learning experience reading through signboards & the paper-maps crowded with color-coded tube routes.

I don´t want to bother you with more challenges but stepping into the shoes of a passenger who expects hassle-free and guided experience till completion of the travel and looks for a chance to enjoy the nice view outside.

Our Cloud ERP Product success teams, stepping in the role of users handle such areas regularly to simplify navigation experience with perspective to offer seamless and straight-forward experience.  SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition user experience further has been simplified from groups to spaces and pages, SAP’s go-to approach for visualization and layout on the SAP Fiori launchpad. This brings in a cool and user-friendly interaction through the features such as,

• Color-coding to indicate the system type = = tube line identifier,

• personalization of the navigation bar = your personalized Travel App
• the display of custom news= news ticker and arrival/departure real time information,
• the ability to group your favourite apps via drag and drop etc.= Modern experience

We all know that when this kind of a first experience of travel by metro, and the way later it becomes a daily routine, the trained human-brain memorizes ways once walked, and make the repetition way easier, intelligent SaaS based SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public edition system provides similar memorized data input recommendation with the machine learning based guided experience using Intelligent scenarios  for creating documents such as sales orders. I am talking about Out of the box AI scenario, Auto-activation of the intelligent scenario for input recommendations makes the sales-orders process more efficient and intuitive. This feature significantly boosts efficiency and cost savings by fast-tracking the activation of the intelligent scenario for sales order recommendations. With the required activation, the system employs an auto-training mechanism with periodic training of ML model based on past business data thus recommends values to fill in the sales order faster.

 As the train halts at the metro station and the passenger steps inside through the automatic sliding doors, the world changes to a wonderful experience of safe and secure travel. When it comes to metro/tube rides secured with automatic navigation and signaling systems monitored watchfully by intelligent algorithms that offers a passenger a perfect experience.  Like this automation, one smart I feature I would like to share with you here that easily can turn experience much simpler, efficient and intelligent for an Inside sales representative.  We know sales order processing is a crucial aspect of the order-to-cash process for enterprises. In B2B situations, internal sales representatives often receive order requests in the form of unstructured data, such as PDF attachments in emails. The "Create Sales Orders - Automatic Extraction app" application enables internal sales representatives to generate sales orders from unstructured data, such as PDF as attachment from the emails or image files containing purchase orders.

As the train is now zooming through the tunnel smoothly, it should be a noisy rumble from outside whereas for passengers inside it is a smooth noise-free experience I wonder how efficiently these organizations service widespread network of metro lines & systematically manage to provide uninterrupted service to a vast customer base of daily travellers.

I shared with you the innovations from sales, now we are entering around the Line of business of Service. Let’s go through the example of a product, hardware physical goods such as printer, with business processes involving service, subscription additionally.

I would like to share with you one interesting multitasking one-stop shop that is Solution order which is a one order framework from the stable of SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, which can combine sales, services & subscription and service contract together. In our below example of a Product of a printer, a customer walks in in to buy a printer and could enroll for the aftersales- services.

The topic of service here with example of a printer, for installation a service representative can go and install the Product at the customer location and charge this as applicable with an installation order. Similarly, here service contract ensures long term maintenance of the equipment through an AMC (annual maintenance contract). The service order ensures delivery of the services such as installation of the equipment for the product as an order item against the service contract.

So here all of this put together work well using solution order that SAP has a one-order solution to recognize multiple sub-level orders. Processing of service orders and service confirmations, monitoring and optimization can be achieved with service analytics effectively.

In service, ad-hoc billing plans in service orders are recently added allowing you to set specific billing dates and amounts. For long-duration, fixed-price service orders, you can now create billing requests on flexible dates without waiting for order completion. This enables revenue generation much earlier.

In-House repair: Consumers of various products in day-to-day life encounter scenarios where the products get damaged or need a repair and it may involve part replacement.  The In-house repair process can involve steps such as Create in house repair > Confirmation of repair > Perform prechecks > Create repair quotation> Create repair order>Perform Diagnosis>Perform repair>Release for billing The In-House repair process can consume serialized part number through service and repair confirmation. As a part of recent addition to the in-house repair, that provides an ability to consume serialized parts through service and repair confirmation.    

Sharing example with another scenario for customer or small entities that have requirement of printing documents however buying a printer, installation, maintenance is an additional overhead. In such cases, customers prefer the subscription model, wherein the equipment belongs to the service provider company and based on usage or monthly rental payments are made. A good revenue model for the service provider and at the same time customers enjoy the benefit of the product with uninterrupted service and based on usage. Solution order with Subscription billing provide the ideal playground for such evolving business model - Subscription as a Service.  

Subscription based service covers business process with complete coverage. Let’s discuss the process Once a customer enrolls in a subscription, a subscription contract can be created with a validity period. Within that validity period based on the usage of the product or periodic consumption becomes basis for periodic invoicing. Periodic invoicing or billing data requests are generated which are invoiced to the customers based upon over-consumption or under-consumption of the subscription-based service item.

I hope now this subway- travel experience with analogy of tube-metro travel has brought broader understanding on the coverage of Sales and Service solutions within SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition. Thanks for joining me, I will look forward to travelling together at some other metro station for a ride to discuss about another LoB’s, solution coverage. see you soon……