New Release
PUBLIC
February 2022
We are excited to announce that Subscription Order Management 2022 FPS01 is now generally available since 22nd Feb 2023. This latest release comes with a range of exciting new features and Fiori applications that are designed to take your user experience, integration capabilities, and system performance to the next level.
This blog provides you with the latest and greatest SAP CC 2022 FPS0 highlights of our pricing and charging platform, part of the SAP Billing and Revenue Innovation Management (BRIM) suite.
Fiori App - Manage Subscription Contract Documents
We are delighted to introduce our latest Fiori application, “Manage Subscription Contract Documents”, which will transform how subscription contracts are managed by our Internal Sales Representatives and back-office agents. Previously, users had to transverse through multiple applications to get a comprehensive view of all the related contracts. This was especially challenging due to the growing number of contracts and the multiple change processes available on the said contract.
Now, with our new Fiori application we have simplified the process for our users. We're providing a holistic view of the subscription contract under a subscription contract document, making it easier than ever before for the team to efficiently manage these contracts. Users can now find all contracts in the form of contract hierarchies, representing a structure of the relevant items of the contract document. It has never been easier to obtain the total contract document value as well as the value of each contract within the contract document.
Listed below are some of the key features of this app:
Single view for Internal Sales Rep & back-office agent with all related contracts collected within one contract document
Comprehensive and well-structured overview on all the contracts, with all the necessary information
Execute header change processes for the contract document directly from application
You can find more details about this new feature from the Manage Subscription Contract Documents on the SAP Help Portal. Read more about SAP Fiori app (F7032) in the reference library.
Introduction of Business Validity Dates
In response to customer feedback, we have developed a feature that can accommodate scenarios requiring flexible Business Validity dates. With this release, we are introducing additional date fields for business validity that will enable you to offer highly customizable plan offerings for your customers and help gaining higher market share. Below are some examples of scenarios that can now be supported:
Scenario 1: Offer Trial Period: Introduce a free trial period at the start of the new subscription contract, during which the customers can be offered services at no extra cost before the regular billing cycle begins.
Scenario 2: Advance Payment & Billing: Offer your customers the flexibility to subscribe to your services at an earlier date and even perform billing for the fixed one-time payment. This allows customers to secure their subscription in advance, even if the service is due to commence at a much later date.
Scenario 3: Subscription activation is dependent on device installation: Now, allow your customers to start paying for their subscriptions only when their associated device/hardware is installed and they are fully able to use the service.
To cater to such business scenarios, we have introduced new date fields, such as Start of Business and End of Business dates. These new business dates along with Technical Validity date and Billing Validity date, will provide increased flexibility and customization for your subscription contracts.
For more information about this new feature, refer to Date Management topic on the SAP Help Portal.
Change Billing Cycle
In certain cases, customers may need to opt to modify their billing cycle, switching from a monthly billing cycle to a bi-annual one, or from quarterly to annual. Now, we provide a standardized business process that supports such change requests, allowing your back-office team to initiate the billing cycle change request of subscription item as per the customer's request.
This new feature is aimed at improving customer experience and ensuring flexibility in our billing system. However, it's important to note that the switch of billing cycles is supported with billing plans in Convergent Invoicing.
This feature allows you to:
Change the Billing Cycle of the Subscription Contract and distribute the same to the FI-CA Provider Contract to re-determine billing periods, and billing and invoicing dates
The list of possible Billing Cycles is controlled based on the billing cycle determination rules
Recurring charges are re-calculated based on the updated Billing Cycle
For more information about this, refer to the Change Process - Change Billing Cycle topic on the SAP Help Portal.
Contract Withdrawal and Refund
Moving to our next feature, let’s suppose your customer has subscribed to a service that is billed quarterly but encounters an unexpected situation that necessitates the withdrawal of the service and a request a refund for his service termination.
In such cases, you can now cater to such a request within a specified period (from the start of the contract) and provide a refund to the customer based on the pre-defined business rules maintained in SOM. Additionally, you can define custom rules to determine percentage of refund in pricing depending on the usage period and make a partial refund to your customer. This functionality provides enhanced control over the refund process and ensures the satisfaction of your customers.
Listed below are some of the key features:
- View the estimated refund amount and the status ‘Withdrawn’ in the Subscription Contract and Change Order
- Charges generated by the CI Billing Plan are considered in the refund
- One-offs charges (like Activation Fee) and usage-based charges from SAP CC are not considered in the refund, they need to be reversed manually
For more information about the contract withdrawal functionality in Subscription Order Management, refer to Change Process - Withdraw on the SAP Help Portal.
Enhancements in Integration with Credit Management
Integration with Credit Management functionality has greatly helped our sales representatives in ensuring the creditworthiness of the customer. This integration was released with 2022 FPS00.
We have further added new features in this integration enhancing other capabilities for back-office operations. Scenarios where you need to assign the initial credit exposure of a customer or execute simulation of credit check in order and quote before release items are now seamlessly integrated.
Your back-office agents can now also leverage automatic credit recheck functionality in the event of failed credit checks, allowing them to proactively monitor customers' creditworthiness and suggest alternative payment options or adjust credit limits accordingly. By taking advantage of such features, you team can increase the likelihood of closing deals while minimizing the risk of defaulting on payment terms.
For more information about the enhancements in credit check functionality in Subscription Order Management, refer to Enhance Credit Check for Subscription Items on the SAP Help Portal.
Other Enhancements
In addition to the features mentioned above, Subscription Order Management 2022 FPS01 also introduces following enhancements:
Extend Expired Contract
Negotiating with a high-value customer for contract renewal can often be prolonged, sometimes extending beyond the contract’s expiry date. This can result in the contract becoming inactive, preventing any further action, and leading to the loss of valuable contract information.
Now, it is possible to add Grace Period in contracts to prevent such disruptions to customer service and loss of valuable contract information. This will allow your sales representatives to complete negotiations and renew the contract before the contract is technically expired. This feature will minimize your subscriber loss (churn rate) and ensures flexibility for your customers.
Mass processing of Change of Sold-To Party
The mass processing of header change processes will allow you to initiate the change process of Sold-To for multiple subscription contracts. With this feature you can schedule such mass run executions during business off-peak hours to execute in the background without manual interventions. You can now:
- Plan the mass execution of the "Change of Sold-to" header change process on a free selectable set of subscription contract documents
- Ensure high performance execution by supporting process parallelization
- Support monitoring of mass runs and further processing of erroneous entities
Enhancements in Integration with Convergent Charging
You can now redefine CC tables and CC parameters in subscription order / solution quotation even if you have a reference to a master agreement.
Some of the key features to highlight are:
- Supported for redefining the CC tables and CC parameters which are not redefined in the referenced master agreement
- Changes made in the master agreement reference, will retain existing redefinitions from the order/quote.
More Information
Subscription Order Management 2022 FPS01 has been released to customers on Feb 22nd, 2023. For more information about Subscription Order Management 2022 FPS01, check out the following links:
Product Page on SAP Help Portal
Questions and Answers for Subscription Order Management in SAP Community
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