Aftersales service has many faces. These are determined by the nature of the service itself (installation service, maintenance service, repair service, enhancement service, or replacement service), the complexity of the service, and the serviced equipment or the mobility of the same.
In certain situations, it is the most efficient option to move the equipment to the technician instead of moving the technician to the equipment. For example, when the complexity of the equipment requires a specific environment for the service to be delivered. For such cases, a dedicated process for performing services in-house is required.
In-house service delivery has specific process requirements that need to be considered. Starting with a structured receipt of the equipment to be serviced, going through a transparent and integrated service execution and ending with a structured check-out, in which the service is billed, and the equipment is sent back to the customer. SAP S/4HANA Cloud supports a structured and system-guided In-House Repair process.
The user is guided through the different steps of the In-House Repair process, which are also visualized in the related SAP Fiori application (1). The latter allows monitoring by indicating how many orders are currently in one of the following phases:
- Precheck
- Quotation
- Plan
- Repair
- Bill
Precheck:
Before the precheck is run, a new in-house repair order needs to be created for the received equipment. During this check-in, relevant equipment data is captured. This includes not only the customer ordering the repair service and a responsible contact person in the customer organization but also, the serial number of the equipment to be repaired (2).
During the precheck, repair requirements are entered based on customer instructions and a technical screening. It is also evaluated if there is any form of contract or warranty agreement in the system that would cover the required services (3). Most importantly, the pre-check also determines if a repair is feasible at all. In case the repair is not rejected, the precheck entries build the foundation for the next step, the quotation.
Quotation:
In the quotation, the requirements to repair equipment are formalized to give the customer an estimation of the repair costs and provide a reliable foundation to decide, if the repair is economically viable or if replacing the piece of equipment is a better option. Therefore, it includes a detailed list of the required service items and spare parts in terms of quantity and resulting costs (4). The quotation furthermore indicates, if and to which extent the repair service is covered by existing contracts or warranty agreements. When finished, the quotation is sent to the customer, who will evaluate it before it is accepted, re-negotiated, or rejected. In case it is accepted, the actual repair process is kicked off and a repair order is created.
Plan:
The planning phase aims to ensure smooth and orchestrated repair operations. Thus, instead of randomly assigning a repair task to a service technician, the service manager oversees all requirements and assigns the technicians according to criteria like complexity and priority of the repair as well as specific skill sets of the service technicians (5). Furthermore, the planning step allows refining the repair data that was captured during the pre-check phase. Finally, it is also checked, if the required spare parts for the repair are available in stock or need to be ordered. As soon as the repair order is adjusted, the spare parts available, and the service technicians assigned, the order may be released for service execution.
Repair:
In course of the actual repair, the repair service is executed by the assigned service technician following the service items assigned to the repair order while using the indicated spare parts. During this phase, the planned efforts are matched with the actual efforts. Thus, the service technician needs to log the actual repair time and indicate the spare parts used (6). After logging the actual efforts, a repair confirmation is created, which builds the foundation for the final step of billing the repair service.
Billing:
Based on the repair confirmation, the service is prepared for billing. For this purpose, the single service items used and confirmed are checked again before the service is released for billing and the billing document triggers the related financial postings (7).
With the In-House Repair process, SAP S/4HANA Cloud offers a system-guided process aligned with the specific requirements of delivering a service in-house in an integrated and transparent way. Watch the video to see the process live in the system.
In-house repair is only one of many innovative processes in SAP S/4HANA Cloud. Follow our video series to get insight into further innovative and integrated processes regularly.
To find out more about SAP S/4HANA, feel free to have a look here:
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SAP S/4HANA Feature Scope Description
SAP S/4HANA Cloud Feature Scope Description
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