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In this blog I will walk you through the release highlights of Service in SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2105.
We have delivered continuous innovations in the last quarters in the area of In-House repair. In the release 2105, we extended the scope to enable external workforce procurement for repair orders. It is great to introduce several innovations from In-House Repair, which is one of the essential processes in Service management.
This extended scope supports the business requirement, where repair works need to be performed by external contractors. Repair orders from 2105 will have new item category – External service item. When releasing a repair order with this service item, a purchase requisition is created to trigger the procurement process. A purchase order must then be created, based on that. After the service is delivered, the work of a contractor is recorded by using a Service entry sheet. It can be configured to require approval by service managers. By approving the service entry sheet, the system will generate a repair confirmation for further processing to close this repair order.
Figure1: Business process for In-House Repair with external workforce procurement
Capabilities
Trigger a procurement process from repair orders for third-party service technicians to perform repair orders
Purchase requisitions are generated automatically when releasing repair orders with external service items
Customer service managers can approve Service entry sheets for external workforce by using My Inbox app
Confirming Service entry sheet generates a repair confirmation
All procurement relevant documents incl. purchase order, service entry sheet are linked to the relevant repair order
Demo1: External workforce procurement in In-House Repair
Demo2: Using Service entry sheet and repair confirmation
This feature allows Service representatives to offer a combined repair quotation for multiple repair objects. It is possible to provide a consolidated cost estimate with multiple items. When a customer sends two devices to repair at the same time, service reps can first create an In-House repair for these. And precheck is performed on each of them and created a repair quotation for the first object. For the second object, then there will be a new option to add it to the existing quotation apart from creating a new quotation.
Decide options for creating a Repair Quotation
Create Repair Quotation
Create Fixed Price Repair Quotation
Add to Quotation No. ### (existing quotation)
Figure2: Adding multiple repair object to an existing Repair Quotation
Demo3: Creating a Repair Quotation with multiple equipments
Pre-filtering repair objects by current customer
‘Add repair objects’ dialog in the Manage In-House Repairs app pre-filters equipments, which are assigned to the selected customer. Figure3: Pre-filtered repair objects by current customer
Output management for Repair orders
Repair orders provide output documents under output control for sending to customers and service employees to support the use case of paper-based process. You can use printouts and emails for customer and service technicians, in case it is needed.
Service Contract Management (3MO)
Ad-hoc billing plan in Service Contracts
We enable ‘Ad-hoc billing plan’ to support business requirements where billing plans need to accommodate specific criteria, rather than by using the periodic billing plan. By using an ‘Ad-hoc billing plan’, Service managers can freely define the billing dates and billing value for billing request lines during contract runtime.
Capabilities
New item category for ad-hoc billing plan in service contracts
Manual definition of billing plan items and billing dates during contract runtime
Definition of individual billing amounts for each individual billing period
Billing of Remaining Net Value: Easy 1-click action to automatically generate a billing request line with all the remaining net value of the service contract item
Billing Finalization: Ad-hoc billing allows a total billing value higher, lower, or equal to your item net value. The billing finalization indicator is used to let the system know that no more billing value is expected. Based on the indicator actions are triggered to complete the item
Item Fixed Price: Ad-hoc billing items can be set to a fixed price by using a price condition type of manual item amount (PMV1)
Users can predefine a contract auto renewal indicator and a default extension period in the product master and date profile.
Figure4: Template for Auto-Renewal in Service Contracts
Enhanced BDR generation in Service Contracts
‘Schedule Billing Document Request Creation’ app is enhanced with two new features: simulation and parallel processing.
You can now use simulation to quickly test run the job without actually creating any billing document requests (BDRs). If your job processes a large data volume, you can use parallel processing to enable the job to process billing request lines in multiple parallel tasks.
Parallel processing for performance increase
Simulation of BDR generation
Figure5: Enhanced BDR generation in Service contracts
Date Management in Service Contracts
SSCUI to enable configuration for date management
Accessible via Configure Your Solution in the Manage Your Solution app
Figure6: Configure your solution - Date management for Service contracts
New scope item - Predictive Accounting for Service Contract Management (4V7)
This scope item provides a more comprehensive overview of all service contracts including future postings for recognized, deferred, and accrued revenues resulting from the billing plan and regardless of their billing status.
Fixed price Item Categories for Service Quotations
Service quotations in 2015 enable the usage of fixed price item categories. These items are transferred to the service order as a follow-up transaction when accepting the service quotation.
The following item categories are now available
Fixed price service item (SVQ3)
Fixed price external service item (SQW3)
Fixed price expense item (SQE3)
Fixed price service part item (SQS3)
Fixed price stock service part item (SQR3)
Analytics (43A, 43B)
Enhancements in Service Management overview
Expired service contracts in last 6 months – a card on service management overview. This allows users to identify the service contracts expired in the recent past and assess the financial impact
Item category as a visual filter added to service orders analysis (app navigated to from Incomplete Service Orders card). This allows service managers to identify service product related pending service order items and check missing assignment to executing employee for execution.
Requested end date as filter field in Overdue Service Orders analysis. This allows service managers to identify service order items which are overdue and get an idea of when in past they became overdue. This supports users to ensure customer satisfaction.
Figure7: Visual filter for item category of Incomplete Service Orders
Service Contract flexible analysis - Filter field Billing request lines due for billing
Service Contract manager can identify all the billing request lines for the contracts in charge, which are due for billing as of a particular billing date in the past and trigger the next step to expedite.