SAP Customer Relationship and Billing-CR&B

SAP is on of the largest tech companies in the world and their product maintains the quality to be the market leader.

Our CR&B implementation hasn't been without issues, but overall, we are way ahead of the curve for a company that just went live less than a year ago. The product itself is stable and SAP has been very helpful and supportive. Our two biggest issues have been with complex billing rules and business process change management, both of which are self inflicted.

Well proven and reliable solution in the industry. Good customer support before and after go-live. SAP management engaged in various stages of implementation to resolve roadblocks or provide subject matter guidance

We worked with SAP's professional service organization to support the newer-to-market aspects of our implementation (multi-channel foundation and reporting on HANA). Project outcome was satisfactory but generally disappointed in SAP's expertise and ownership. Big gap between promises made from Sales team and what was delivered. Additionally, SAP standard functionality is seriously deficient/lacking in what you would expect for basic utility service. Where major gaps exist, SAP partners with other software vendors and this bolt on approach increases project delivery cost and long term support cost.

In 2009 handling the billing of 2.2 Million consumers on montly basis was becoming a big challenge with respect to the accuracy and time taken. Considering these implemenetation of SAP - ISU was taken up as a billing and customer support system. The biggest challenge was mapping of complex business processes inherent to indian power utilities as a few of them were not covered as standard SAP processes. Change management and Training was another important aspect which was covered through"Train the trainer" concept. Overall experience post implementation has been good. Presently billing of about 3.5 million consumers is being handled through the system on monthly basis without any reduction in speed of operations. Though initally there were lot of challenges on the User Interface but with continuous traing people have got quite accustomed to it. Major concern is non availability of standard SAP functionalities looking at Indian power distribution scenerios like Theft management, Enforcement and recoveries.