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rmwilhelm
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The 1608 SAP Hybris Cloud for Service (& Social) release is full of great capabilities, new and enhanced functionality, as well as integration extensions across both Customer Service and Field Service scenarios. We are excited to provide a blog series for this release. On the SAP Hybris Cloud for Service side - the following blogs will be available in the What's New in 1608 SCN Blog Series:

  • Customer Service
  • Contracts & Maintenance Plans
  • Resource Scheduler
  • Offline Enablement
  • Ticket Enhancements
  • Installed Base/Registered Products
  • Time recording

This blog focuses on key new capabilities introduced in 1608 in Contracts and Maintenance Plan processing. Not all enhancements are covered so please be sure to check the knowledge management link at the end of this blog for complete details. Let's get started with Contracts.

Service Contract Enhancements in 1608

An overview of added contract capabilities is needed. Many new and enhanced capabilities were added to ensure a comprehensive offering. These features focus on enhanced parameters, UI flexibility and end-to-end processing for organizations with few to many contract types and simple to complex contract definitions. I will not detail all enhancements, however, it's important to understand the relationship between the introduced features as they work together to accommodate a wide range of contract scenarios for an organization requiring varied entitlements by product/service type, UI flexibility, end-to-end processing.

Quantity Contracts

Service contracts already exist in SAP Hybris Cloud for Service, however we have introduced contracts that can be defined with specific quantities for covered products/services vs. only time based products/services. The example might be a service contract for a global company for their boardrooms and virtual office infrastructure. The electronics components may have a 3 year warranty but the headsets in the virtual spaces may only carry a replacement warranty for up to 100 headset replacements over a 3 year period. Additionally, with a contract there may be an included amount of technical support or consumable goods. An example here might be for installed soap dispensers up to 200 refills are covered per year. Any amount that exceeds the contract coverage would then be billed to the customer.

Quantity based contracts allow you to define a contract with quantity and parameters based on the items/products under contract and the defined type of the item. Below you can see for the Remote Diagnostic line item, 80 hours are allotted for the contract term. This is defined in the new Target Definitions tab. You will need to enable the quantity contract functionality in scoping (see path below).

You also see in the Targets and Fulfillment that there's a release quantity. This is updated based on the work that is planned or 'released' on this item based on the current and past service tickets. Therefore each time a service technician performs a diagnostic service the release quantity is increased and the remaining quantity is decreased. In the image below you can see the ticket item is calling for 4 hours of the diagnostic service and in the contract the release quantity is 4 and remaining quantity is 76. For ease of reference, without navigating from the contract item details, a release history tab is also available for quantity based contract items detailing the relevant tickets involved in item usage. Additionally, parameters are defined in handling what happens when the defined target quantity is exceeded.

Service Contract Types

With this new flexibility in contract definition it was equally important to introduce the ability to define contract types. Just like with tickets where you can define various types, e.g. order issue, work ticket, general inquiry, etc., for each type you can define valid fields to streamline the agent entry process. Imagine if all relevant fields for all 3 ticket types had to be on a single page - that would cause confusion for the agent and lengthy service times. The same flexibility now applies to Contracts. Organizations with different types can easily define contract elements that meet the need of that TYPE of contract making easier to manage the contract creation process. Indicating a contract as a Template is also available and contracts have been enabled for page layout - enabling flexibility in the UX based with type as well as user/role. To configure contract item types follow this administration path: Business configuration>>Implementation projects>>Open Activity List>>Fine-tune>>Contracts>>Maintain Document Types. Very flexible, very comprehensive.

Contract Item Type Enhancements

The user experience is critical to Service Contracts because the various covered items can be individually specified and have different attributes that are used in both contract processing and follow-on ticketing and work activities. Below is a list of the Contract Item Type enhancements. To configure item types follow this path: Business configuration>>Implementation projects>>Open Activity List>>Fine-tune>>Contracts>>Maintain Item Types. Again, I'll cover the key items.

Determination Relevance

Each item defined or assigned to a contract may have a relevance type defined that enables different facets in the contract to be available for definition and reference. There are 4 Relevance types available:

  1. Limited to Entitled Services and Parts - determined if AT LEAST one of the entitled service and parts is selected as an item in the ticket
  2. Items and Entitled Services and Parts - determined if this item/product or one of its assigned entitled service/parts are selected as an item in the ticket
  3. Limited to item - determined ONLY if its item/product is used in the ticket item
  4. None - determined if the contract item does not require determination (can be texts or activity based on non-contract variables/entitlements)

Tovisualize the above, see below. Where you can see based on the defined contract item type, only the relevant facets/tabs are shown for item details.

Another new feature added was the ability to enter a text item. Above in the description field - text or a short note can be defined or added.

Excluded Services and Parts

The last enhancement I will note on Service Contracts is the ability to exclude services and parts from a contract. Often services and parts are included, however in some cases it is more efficient to itemize those that are to be excluded from the contract.  A new facet/tab has been added to indicate excluded parts. Additionally, you can search for a contract based on Entitled or Excluded services and parts.

Service Contracts Offline

Oh yes - more offline capabilities! Here's a list of what to look for:

Maintenance Plans

Let's switch over to Maintenance plans for one key enhancement, that simplifies the creation of service/work tickets generated from the maintenance plan.  From within the maintenance plan, in the ticket template, you can specify how many days after a ticket is created the service should be provided based on various maintenance plan dates. This allows greater flexibility and consistency in service delivery meeting desired timeframes and increasing your customer satisfaction levels.

That's it for these new topics! More details on What's New in SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer 1608 are available here: https://help.sap.com/cloud4customer.