Utilities Industry
Currently evolving from a monopoly in a regulated market to a competition-based energy & service industry.
In future customers will able to choose from a number of defferent suppliers. Currently, the services associated with a given supply category are generally provided by a local utility company.
Deregulation will break open the following value added chain
Generation & Production à Transmission à Distribution à Customer Service
Several utility companies and service providers participate in the value added chain of any supply category.
price & service will be the key factors.
This change will demand
Offer Customer Better Service
Replace current contracts with new contracts
Settle accounts for products and services and exchange data with other utilities.
Support new billing scenario like unbundled billing and convergent billing.
Forecast consumption pattern as accurately as possible.
Provide information technology support for services at the customer site.
Deploy new technologies.
Analyzing market and strengthen marketing activities
An Customer Information Systems of Utilities companies in future must
Satisfy the demands of deregulation
Focus on customer
Be very flexible
Increase the company’s productivity
Handle mass data
Deregulation
IS-U/CCS- The industry specific component of SAP R/3 for Utilities Industry
To satisfy these demands, SAP has developed Industry-specific Component Utilities/Customer Care and Service (IS-U/CCS) customer information system.
IS-U/CCS component is useful to companies operating in the following business
Electricity
Gas
Water and waste water
District heating
Waste disposal
Cable television connections
Device management
Device Management of IS-U/CCS offers the following functions
The capability to divide devices into device categories
Meter and device procurement, warehousing and stock movements using integration with the Material Management (MM) module of SAP R/3
Maintain installation structures with their existing relationship between meters, devices, registers and rate data.
Maintain rate reference values and other information about the purchase of power.
Installation, removal and replacement of meters and devices.
Device inspection and certification based on a sampling procedure or individual certification.
Functions available in Device Management for meter reading & consumption recording are
Create meter reading orders and documents in printed or machine readable form
Enter meter reading results manually or automatically
Conveniently connect external entry systems
Validate meter reading results
Correct or post-process meter reading results
Monitor meter readings
Valuate at flat rates consumption and demand on the basis of various replacement values.
