- SAP Managed Tags:
Last October I had summarized in a blog the main innovations dedicated to the utilities industry that are new with SAP S/4HANA release 2023.
For the same SAP S/4HANA version, the first feature pack (short: SAP S/4HANA 2023 FPS1) has now been released. Remember that according to the SAP S/4HANA release strategy further feature packs are planned to be delivered every six months during the first two years of a release.
On top of what I have already mentioned in my previous blog SAP S/4HANA 2023: What’s in it for the Utilities Industry?, let me highlight four additional innovations that are new or have been enhanced with SAP S/4HANA 2023 FPS1:
- In line with SAP’s analytics strategy, SAP is working on a more native integration between SAP S/4HANA Utilities and SAP Datasphere, as the next generation of SAP Data Warehouse Cloud, see my colleagues’ blog Unleash the Power of Business Data for Utilities: The Benefits of SAP Datasphere and SAP Analytics C.... In this context, SAP S/4HANA 2023 FPS1 offers the extraction of a first set of a key utilities master data – premise, contract and installation – to SAP Datasphere. For details see roadmap item Leveraging of SAP Datasphere for the utilities industry - premise, contract, installation
Please note that is the just the first step, and we are planning extraction of further data residing in SAP S/4HANA Utilities, see for example roadmap items Leveraging of SAP Datasphere for the utilities industry - device, PoD, transactional data and Using SAP Datasphere in the utilities industry – utilities sales contracts. Stay tuned for further updates on the SAP analytics roadmap for the utilities industry. - You can now manage the lifecycle of a utilities commodity contract via the SAP S/4HANA sales order. More precisely the SAP S/4HANA sales order is even better integrated with the utilities sales contract (that is part of SAP S/4HANA Utilities for customer engagement), covering in addition to contract management also processes like contract termination and product change:
Remember that the Sales Interface Integration allows you to take advantage of generic, industry-agnostic S/4HANA sales order APIs for utilities commodity orders as well. In deregulated markets, the sales order can trigger the start of supply process without creating any technical or commercial master data first. These data would only be created after successful completion of the market communication process, thus massively reducing the risk of prematurely creating erroneous or unwanted master data.
Moreover prices and discounts which are maintained as condition records in SAP S/4HANA Sales can now be converted into the corresponding IS-U billing artefacts:
And finally a new business add-in with an example implementation is available to make the creation of a contract account in the sales process easier:
For more details about these enhancements available with SAP S/4HANA 2023 FPS1 see roadmap item Sales orders for utilities commodity contracts life cycle management.
Many SAP Utilities customers have enhanced master data with their own attributes that are not included in SAP standard. Thanks to the Customer Fields and Logic concept of SAP NetWeaver, key-user extensibility has been simplified for the first key utilities master data, see Enable custom fields and logic for installation and premise master data . We intend to offer this concept for further utilities-specific master data as well, stay tuned for updated to be published in SAP Roadmap Explorer.
Two new attributes available both on IS-U contract level and on utilities sales contract level allow utility companies to capture exact time of move-in and move-out:
Leveraging these attributes utility companies using RTP billing or Time-of-Use billing are able to calculate consumption more accurately in the context of move-in/out processes. For technical details read SAP note 3394464 and roadmap item Process the exact move-in time and move-out time of utilities contracts.
Please visit SAP Roadmap Explorer (roadmaps.sap.com, which is being updated regularly with new items as well as more details) to see details about all delivered and planned S/4HANA Utilities roadmap items. Filter by Product = S/4HANA Utilities, Business Priority = Smart Metering and Markets, Business Priority = Bill to Cash and/or Business Priority = Customer Experience to drill down to those items relevant for S/4HANA Utilities:
Of course, the topic SAP S/4HANA Utilities will also be covered through a dedicated presentation (by Holger Schweinfurth) at the 2024 edition of the SAP for Energy & Utilities Conference taking place in beautiful South of Spain in April:
