SAP Multichannel Foundation for Utilities and Public Sector Service Pack 5 is now released
We are glad to announce the release of SAP Multichannel Foundation for Utilities and Public Sector (MCF) support package 5. As explained in detail here , we recently extended the reach of MCF to Public Sector as a second industry. Hence we focused on including public sector related features to MCF with SP 5. In addition to that, there are also some enhancements available for the utilities industry.
- New feature to enable a customer to view and download an electronic version of the letters sent by the utility such as welcome letters and dunning letters based on correspondence history in SAP FI-CA
- Added Italian as additional language to English, German, French, Spanish and Japanese.
- Upgraded SAPUI5 library support to SAPUI5 1.28.*
- Technical improvements
With the release of support package 5, the updated MCF utilities feature set looks like the following :
[Click on the Images to view]
Overall, we believe MCF now comprises a pretty well-rounded set of self-service features for the utilities industry and we see an increasing number of customers worldwide adopting the product. SAP will continue to gather feedback and requirements from our customers and partners and if there are requirements that resonate with a lot of our customers, we will try and deliver those in the standard MCF in one of the next support packages. Moreover, we intend to continue to deliver technical and other improvements.
In parallel, we are planning to complement our utilities solution portfolio by offering a new cloud-based (advanced) self-service solution for the utilities industry. We have started engaging with customers worldwide, please see https://influence.sap.com/ct/s.bix?c=98232A07-5358-452D-A3EF-88ED7A2EAF08 or contact us for details.
Thanks for posting this
Can you provide more information on the letters download? Is this only for specific types? Our correspondence is stored in Opentext with document links in ECC and CRM. Will it be possible to view this? We can currently do it in Enterprise Portal (UCES)
Regards
Jayshree
Hi Jayshree, maybe, a comment on my side regarding letters. The OData services that we provide read letters from transaction CORRHIST (Correspondence History) in ERP FI-CA side, usually, there you get welcome letters, dunning notices everything that is being generated from FI-CA. There is no out-of-box Opentext integration but it can be custom made.
Best Regards, Yevgen
Hi,
I imagine MFU supports checking address data entered by the user against the city file. Does it also auto-suggests address data when the user starts typing?
Also, how is the Business Partner duplicate check handled during a new account creation? In SAP CRM, a popup is displayed to let the user choose a matching BP if relevant or to force creation of a new partner. Is there a similar screen in Multichannel Foundation?
Thanks.
Best regards,
Julien JOANNIC
Hi Julien, there is no auto-suggestion feature. In terms of duplicate check, there will be always new BP created (it happens in background mode).
Yevgen
Thanks for this fast answer Yevgen.
That's too bad regarding the duplicate check, as our customers are being more and more concerned by the quality of their data; as such, we have implemented the standard duplicate check for them and they expect it to be applied regardless of the channel.
I guess this could be an improvement idea 🙂
Julien
Hi Julien, hope my answer does not come too late ...I think
it depends a bit on how you have implemented the duplicate check. In a scenario (e.g. in call center) where there is human interaction, you could e.g. show a list of potential duplicates to the agent - and the agent could decide whether to create a new BP record, maybe depending on answers to additional questions he might ask.
In a MCF (self-service) scenario, you might not want to show a list of potential duplicates to the end-consumer, also for data privacy reasons. Possibly trigger a workflow for an agent to follow up with the (potentially new) customer if the probability of a duplicate is high enough?
Best regards,
Michael
Hi Michael,
Thanks for your answer!
Indeed, it might not be desirable to let the end-user select which BP to use. In this case a workflow might do the trick, or maybe a case could be created in BPEM (a solution more and more customers are interested in to handle error cases).
Is this kind of post-processing already available in MCF? Or would we have to develop it from scratch?
Best regards,
Julien
Hi Julien,
There are sample workflows included in MCF to follow up on creation of an interaction record (on CRM side) or creation of a BP contact (on IS-U side), see respective sections under http://help.sap.com/saphelp_umc100/helpdata/en/4f/fb14525ae67a38e10000000a445394/frameset.htm. Post-processing via direct creation of BPEM clarification cases is not included in MCF yet - you would need to call a suitable RFC module to create a clarification case (or embed it into a new OData entity).
Best regards,
Michael
Dear SAP community , do you know how to activate MCF mock server to support test of SAP UMCUI501 add-on template.Any advise are welcome