SAP DBM

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© 2010 SAP AG 1

Better Service Processes in Tough

Times (Enhancements/News

within DBM 7.0 for Vehicle

Service)

Applies to:

SAP for Automotive. For more information, visit the Business Process Expert homepage.

Summary

In the difficult economic times we are living, customers usually delay buying new vehicles and tend holding on to their vehicles for a little longer. Longer vehicle holding periods typically lead to more service business for the dealers whose new vehicle sales gets an additional hit from high discounts customers are expecting. While the margins of new vehicle sales are under enormous pressure, dealers see the need to compensate this by streamlining their growing service business. Therefore improving workshop operations is at the center of the focus for many dealerships and DBM 7.0 brings a lot more to the table than previous versions.

Author: Ulla Sondermann

Company: SAP

Created on: 5 May 2010

Author Bio

Ulla Sondermann has worked in multiple roles for SAP during the past 16 years. She is currently with the Industry Business Unit Automotive looking after Sales and Service Topics on a global scale with special focus on after sales service topics in the area of dealer business management.

https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/bpx

Better Service Processes in Tough Times (Enhancements/News within DBM 7.0 for Vehicle Service)


© 2010 SAP AG 2

Table of Contents

Better service processes in tough times (Enhancements / News within DBM 7.0 for Vehicle Service) ............ 3

Customer Centricity Enhancements .............................................................................................................. 3

Quick create customer master within DBM order cockpit ............................................................................ 3 Update Customer address during service order maintenance ..................................................................................... 4

Enhancements within customer fact sheet ................................................................................................................... 4

Create service order based on a customer complaint .................................................................................................. 4

Service Process Enhancements .................................................................................................................... 4

Multi Branch Process (Suborder Process) .................................................................................................. 4

Split across multiple jobs ........................................................................................................................... 6 Example ....................................................................................................................................................................... 6

Fast split indicator...................................................................................................................................... 7

Later vehicle assignment ........................................................................................................................... 8

Warranty Case creation ............................................................................................................................. 8

Process status ........................................................................................................................................... 8

Parts enhancements within a service order ................................................................................................... 9

Backorder process..................................................................................................................................... 9 ATP check at storage location ..................................................................................................................................... 9

Alternative unit of measure .......................................................................................................................................... 9

Billing enhancements .................................................................................................................................. 10

Multiple down-payments ............................................................................................................................................ 10

Billing date on Split Header ........................................................................................................................................ 10

Invoice cancellation .................................................................................................................................................... 10

Controlling enhancements ........................................................................................................................... 11

Subsequent costs .................................................................................................................................... 11

General enhancements ............................................................................................................................... 12

Incompletion Log ..................................................................................................................................... 12

Allowed order types per sales area .......................................................................................................... 12

Inactive order types ................................................................................................................................. 12

Related Content .......................................................................................................................................... 13

Related Content .......................................................................................................................................... 13

Copyright .................................................................................................................................................... 14



© 2010 SAP AG 3

Better service processes in tough times (Enhancements / News within DBM 7.0 for Vehicle Service)

In the difficult economic times we are living, customers usually delay buying new vehicles and tend holding on to their vehicles for a little longer. Longer vehicle holding periods typically lead to more service business for the dealers whose new vehicle sales gets an additional hit from high discounts customers are expecting. While the margins of new vehicle sales are under enormous pressure, dealers see the need to compensate this by streamlining their growing service business. Therefore improving workshop operations is at the center of the focus for many dealerships and DBM 7.0 brings a lot more to the table than previous versions.

The enhancements within vehicle service process are focusing on Simplicity, Usability, Efficiency and Customer Centricity. E.g. A web based guided procedure for appointment scheduling supports the agent in a simple, proved and standardized step by step procedure to collect first the according customer and vehicle data, second to define the work scope before selecting the appropriate service date for the executing team and service advisor with final confirmation. The DBM 7.0 functionality “incompletion log” enables a service advisor to create an incomplete service order during a customer visit, where some order information are not maintained during order creation. The missing order information can be completed during service execution at time when needed, e.g. payment types need to be maintained before the invoice will be created. Redistribution of backorder parts allows service advisors to fulfill an important customer request and assign a lower priority to a minor important service order. Quick create and update customer master processes allows service advisors to focus on the customers´ needs without losing data accuracy.

Customer Centricity Enhancements

Quick create customer master within DBM order cockpit

Customer relationship management is one of the key success factors within a dealership. Accurate and always up to date master data is the main basis for customer relationship and customer retention. Every user and role within a dealership requires an easy to use, flexible and easy to enhance user interface for business partner maintenance and information display without effort and time consumption on master data creation and maintenance. Service advisors while talking to customers to identify the service requested don´t want to spend too much time on customer master creation. They are requesting a easy to use user interface to enter the customer address and all sales and financial relevant data should be created automatically based on the customer classification, e.g. fleet customer or consumer.

In SAP DBM 7.0 a new customer object called Business Partner is introduced, which is integrated into all business scenarios of SAP DBM, and allows dealers to get a 360 degree view about customers and their vehicles including order history for sales service & parts, invoices, complaints and so on.

Within the service order cockpit the system supports a quick create customer process where the service advisor maintains only the customer address information. The system automatically creates the sales and financial relevant data copied from a pre-defined reference customer master while the service advisor is creating the service order.



© 2010 SAP AG 4

Update Customer address during service order maintenance

Customer relationship management requires complete and always up to date customer data. During service order creation and processing service advisors are validating the customer address. In case of any address changes the service advisor can directly change the customer data and decide whether these changes should be directly passed to the customer master or these changes are only relevant for the current service order.

Enhancements within customer fact sheet

Within the customer fact sheet credit and debit invoices are shown separately.

Create service order based on a customer complaint

Based on a customer complaint service advisors are able to trigger a service order during complaint processing without separately navigating to the order cockpit, e.g. customer complaints about an incomplete performed service and a referenced service order for a repeated service should be triggered.

Service Process Enhancements

Multi Branch Process (Suborder Process)

Dealers do not always service vehicles at just one location. In some cases, several workshops can participate in a service process. The main branch in contact with the customer receives the order to service or repair a vehicle. The main branch creates the service order, updates the vehicle data like counter reading, maintenance intervals, defines the requested services (labor and parts) and finally creates the invoice to the customer or other invoice recipients (Warranty, insurance) .

There are two main reasons for this: o Some plants can specialize in tasks not performed by other plants, e.g. one plant may

specialize in painting work o In capacity constraint cases a plant delegates some or all work of an order to another plant

© SAP 2008 / Page 9

Company xyz logo

DBM 7.0 - Scenario Service

Suborder Process

Create Service Order (Main Order)

• Order, vehicle, and pricing details

• Credit limit check

• Maintain labour values and parts

• Create Jobs

Create Suborder

• Group items in tasks

• Create Suborder for different plants

Process Suborder

• Price Determination

• Maintain items

• Release Suborder

• Confirm labour values

• Book material consumption

Process Mainorder

• Maintain items

• Release Mainorder

• Confirm labour values

• Material management

Complete Suborder

• Update Mainorder

• Invoice Suborder

• Settle Costs to Mainorder

Create Invoice

• Prepare order for Invoice

- Maintain manual prices

- create Splits

- maintain data for warranty claim

• Create Invoice

Plant 002 Plant 001

New in

DBM 7.0

To transfer service work from a main plant to a sub-ordered plant the service advisor creates a task he wants to assign to the sub-order plant and suborder service order.



© 2010 SAP AG 5

o The sub-ordered task is locked, changes only allowed within the suborder o The item category of the sub-ordered items is changed.

Part item reservation´s for sub-ordered materials are canceled, goods issue will be posted within the suborder.

Labor value items confirmation´s cannot be executed in the main-order, confirmation will be triggered within the suborder

The suborder is processed similar to the main order created for the customer. o The suborder is created for the internal customer (main order plant) o The system performs a price determination based on the internal customer (main order

plant). This allows dealers to define an internal price settled from sub-ordered plant to main order plant.

o The service advisor within the sub-ordered plant can update the suborder according to their needs, labors and parts items copied from the main order can be adjusted or deleted, new items can be added.

o The suborder will be confirmed and goods issue will be posted o The costs are collected at the internal order created for the suborder o The suborder will be invoiced. The price to be invoiced from the sub-order plant to the main

order and will occur as costs within the main order o The document flow within the suborder shows the referenced main order

After invoicing the suborder within the main order: o When invoicing the suborder the system copies all suborder items to the main order.

Changed items will be adjusted and new items will be added. The copied sub-ordered items are assigned to new item categories. These item categories require a price determination but do not require any confirmation or goods issue, which had been already performed within the suborder.

o The main order follow up processes like invoicing to the customer can be executed. o Within the document flow of the main order service advisors are able to monitor to which

suborder an item is assigned to and to navigate to the details.



© 2010 SAP AG 6

Cost and profitability analysis will be executed at main plant and suborder location.

Please note: o Most OEMs do not accept more than one warranty claim per service order the warranty

claim follow up process can only be triggered from the main order. o The suborder process is not supported within a cross company scenario

Split across multiple jobs

The split functionality allows dealers to bill or settle jobs in a service order to various internal and external bill-to parties, either on a percentage or a fixed amount base. In DBM 6.00, you could only split one job at a time, and the sold-to party could receive more than one invoice. With DBM 7.0 more than one job can be assigned to one split header when splitting a service order to different invoice receiver, e.g. customer, insurance, warranty claim. Each sold-to party receives only one invoice, independent of the number of jobs.

For a service order split the jobs relevant for the split need to be selected and the split characteristics (other bill-to parties, split amount for the different item categories) need to be defined.

© SAP 2008 / Page 86

Company xyz logo

Split structure

Split Header level

Split Job level

Split Item level

.

Split Information is maintained on different levels:

Example

For a service order, you want to create a split in the following way: 40% of job 1 and 80% of job 2 (labor values and material) to another customer (for example insurance company).



© 2010 SAP AG 7

For each bill-to party, the system creates a new split header with an own order type. Based on the selected order type and the entered sold-to party the system determines the correct pricing procedure and prices, and calculates the invoice amount according to the entered split.

Fast split indicator

For some service business processes dealers want to predefine the cost settlement receivers, e.g. in case of a goodwill service performed all costs should be settled to the sales cost center, or in case of a repeated service performed all costs should be settled to the service cost center. To ensure the controlling integration split indicators can be pre-defined containing the standard cost settlement receivers and the split factors. During order processing a service advisor can assign the according split indicator to the relevant job. Based on the selected split indicator a split with the according order type and split values will be created automatically.



© 2010 SAP AG 8

Later vehicle assignment

Vehicle data accuracy and consistency is a very important requirement within every dealership. Therefore service advisors are assigning a vehicle to the service order after maintaining the vehicle data correctly. The service order will be created first without vehicle and the vehicle will be assigned during order processing. The system updates automatically the labor value main type of the order and checks whether all packages maintained within the service order fit to the vehicle information.

Warranty Case creation

The warranty case information can now be maintained at any time during service order process. Pre-requisite is the creation of the according warranty claim relevant split(s). When maintaining the warranty case information (defect code, symptom code,) the system offers all warranty relevant splits for selection. The warranty case information can be updated during service order processing until the warranty claim is created. After claim creation the warranty case data will be updated within the warranty claim itself.

Process status

The process status aggregates the status information at every order level (order headers, jobs, tasks, splits, and items). Dealers can customize which process status they would like to monitor (DBM standard or dealer specific defined order status). The process status is an aggregated status for each level. You use the process status to get an overview of the DBM order, for example to view the overall status of the order.

The order list enables service advisors to monitor the orders according to pre-defined filter criteria, e.g. my service orders, orders of today,…



© 2010 SAP AG 9

Parts enhancements within a service order

Backorder process

For parts items within a service order the system executes an ATP (available to promise) check. If a part is not or only partial available the part item gets a status not confirmed or partial confirmed and is therefore indicated as backorder part. Calling the backorder list now the service advisor is able to check whether other service orders for this particular part exists with an open confirmed (partial or complete) quantity. Based on the redistribution functionality the system allows to select service and part orders with lower priority and to redistribute the confirmed quantity from already confirmed orders to backorder service order.

After redistribution the service order can be released and follow up processes can be triggered.

ATP check at storage location

In addition to the available-to-promise (ATP) check at plant level for part items, the system can now perform an ATP check at storage location.

Alternative unit of measure

In Parts management dealers and dealer systems need to deal with different units for the same part number, e.g.

o Sales unit when selling parts to customer o Purchase order unit when buying parts from original equipment manufacturer (OEM) or

suppliers o Inventory unit when storing parts in their storage location

Within the material master parts are defined within the base unit, which is used for internal organization (inventory management, replenishment, valuation). The alternative units are also defined within a material master with the according calculation rule based on the basic unit.

When a part is sold to a customer the DBM order needs to use the sales unit. The price is determined based on the sales unit, while ATP check, reservation or purchase requisition are performed based on the base unit of measure (calculated value based on the entered sales quantity).



© 2010 SAP AG 10

Billing enhancements

Multiple down-payments

Down payments are an essential part of dealer business operations. A dealer can request a down payment from a customer for certain business transactions. A down payment is a partial payment that is paid up front (for example when signing the contract before or after creating the DBM order or quotation) and reduced when the remaining payment is due (for example before final invoice creation).

Down payments must not be balanced with other receivables or payables and must be displayed separately in the balance sheet. Service advisors can now create more than one down payment request for a DBM order.

o Multiple down payment requests can be created from a single DBM order and are all reflected during clearing

o Multiple down payments can be created for a single request, i.e. allowing for partial down payment clearance

o Cleared down payments can be de-allocated from the DBM order

Billing date on Split Header

The system allows the maintenance of different billing dates at split header level inherited from order header level.

Invoice cancellation

Within DBM 6.0 the invoice cancellation process could not be executed at any time, e.g. invoices of service orders containing a warranty claim could not been cancelled, for service orders with several invoices a service advisor could either cancel the last invoice or he had to cancel all invoices.

DBM 7.0 supports the invoice cancellation for a service order containing a warranty claim as long as the approval from the OEM is not posted to accounting.

For service orders with several invoices the system allows a service advisor to select the invoice he wants to cancel from a list box, irrespective of whether the DBM order is partially or completely billed.



© 2010 SAP AG 11

Controlling enhancements

Subsequent costs

The system now supports the process to capture and settle subsequent costs of a service order occurring after invoicing. These subsequent costs will be reposted from the service order header internal order to the bill-to party internal order for the following two processes:

o Change of time sheet data after invoice creation o Price difference between purchase requisition and incoming invoice (for external services

with purchase order)

When posting subsequent costs the system sets the order status REPOST_LINE_ITEM of the relevant split items and split header to Partially Processed.

When reposting subsequent costs, the system sets the order status REPOST_LINE_ITEM of the relevant split items and split header to Completely Processed.

New order status are defined to enable the service order for subsequent costs: o Close order for subsequent costs o Final close of Order

Subsequent costs can be posted and reposted within the time frame from the first invoice until you close the DBM order for subsequent costs.

Close order for subsequent costs complete the first level inter order, but can be re-opened for subsequent costs again.

Final close of order does not allow to reopen the order again for subsequent costs.



© 2010 SAP AG 12

General enhancements

Incompletion Log

The order cockpit meets most requirements with regard to order preparation.

It allows you to quickly create a business partner and a vehicle. The integrated fact

Sheet provides a quick overview about customers. Using predefined events and actions, the system guides the service advisor through the service order process flow.

The incompletion log optimizes the order creation and maintenance process during a customer visit. Service advisors can start working with an order even if some information is not available, and resume working with the order when they receive the missing information.

Based on incompletion rules dealers can define which information are needed at a certain order status, which message type should be displayed and whether follow up processes can be executed or not. The incompletion rules are assigned to DBM order-related actions, and are checked during order processing. if a check fails the order is considered incomplete. The list of incomplete data and the according message type will be provided. If the service advisor does not maintain incomplete data with error messages the system does not allow the execution of actions where the rules are assigned to.

Incompletion log examples: o Before releasing a service order the service advisor need to maintain the mileage o Before invoicing an order to the customer, the payment terms need to be maintained

The incompletion log reduce the order creation time during a customer visit, it improves the data consistency and ensures the data quality through the whole process.

Allowed order types per sales area

Service advisor can only create service orders with an approved order type of the selected sales area.

Inactive order types

Based on a order type scheme dealers are able to hide inactive order types from daily business.

Please note:

There are other blocks regarding DBM 7.0 available

Overview: http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/17879

Customer management: http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/18085

Parts Process: http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/1

http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/17879





© 2010 SAP AG 13

Related Content

SAP for Automotive on BPX

Blogs regarding DBM 7.0:

- Overview: http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/17879

- Customer management: http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/18085

- Parts Process: http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/1

SAP for Automotive. For more information, visit the Business Process Expert homepage.

http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/bpx/automotive




https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/bpx



© 2010 SAP AG 14

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SAP DBM

Documents

improving

difficult

enhancements

fast split

customer fact

growing service

high discounts

order status