next generation collections management with sap netweaver

Dr. Wolfgang Schaper Solution Manager SAP NetWeaver Decision Service Management, SAP AG

Next Generation Collections Management with SAP NetWeaver Decision Service Management

January 2014


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TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ...................................................................................................................................................... 3 Use Case ........................................................................................................................................................... 4 Setting up the Decision Service ..................................................................................................................... 5 Customize Collection Strategy ..................................................................................................................... 11 Run Dunning Proposal .................................................................................................................................. 13 Apply Changes to Collection Strategy ........................................................................................................ 16 Resume ........................................................................................................................................................... 18


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Introduction

SAP Collections Management permits customer-specific dunning processes with segment-specific collection

strategies. Depending on the business partners, their payment history, risk assessment, and other factors be

different steps may need to be executed in order to minimize the amount of claims that cannot be collected.

For adapting collection strategies to changing market situations, legal requirements, and policies it is

essential to empower business domain experts to apply changes easily and with no IT expertise. Not being

able to adapt your collection strategies may lead to financial losses, or may even be in violation of the law.

SAP Collections Management uses SAP NetWeaver Decision Service Management to define rules for

determining the next collection step for a business partner in a specific situation.

SAP NetWeaver Decision Service Management empowers domain experts to control decision logic without

assistance from IT, simplifying and accelerating the way logic is implemented and changed across enterprise

applications.

Decision Service Manager provides access to metadata, code, and values (master data, Customizing) to

managed systems such as CRM or Collections Management for “local” modelling. From the modelled

service, Decision Service Manager compiles an

executable service on the managed system for local

execution. The managed system does not require

upgrades (or support packages); Decision Service

Manager can be upgraded independently. Decision

services are safe from upgrades; they are not affected

when managed systems are upgraded.

Rapid change cycles are in the hands of the domain

experts. SAP NetWeaver Decision Service Management

offers analysing, optimizing, and implementing capabilities:

service execution testing, tracing, analytics. No IT

involvement is required. There is no downtime. And test deployments to any number of systems are

possible. SAP NetWeaver Decision Service Management allows for automated business decisions with full

transparency for better decision quality.

Further information

SAP Collections Management

http://tinyurl.com/sapcollectionsmanagement

SAP NetWeaver Decision Service Management

http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-29158

http://aiokeh.wdf.sap.corp:1080/SAPIKS2/contentShow.sap?_SCLASS=IWB_STRUCT&_SLOIO=45FEC1F440DC41B2E10000000A11466F&TMP_IWB_TASK=DISPLAY&RELEASE=706&LANGUAGE=EN&_SEQNUM=2&_LOIO=45FEB3FF9BA860D6E10000000A11466F&_CLASS=IWB_EXTHLP

http://aiokeh.wdf.sap.corp:1080/SAPIKS2/contentShow.sap?_SCLASS=IWB_STRUCT&_SLOIO=45FEC1F440DC41B2E10000000A11466F&TMP_IWB_TASK=DISPLAY&RELEASE=706&LANGUAGE=EN&_SEQNUM=2&_LOIO=45FEB3FF9BA860D6E10000000A11466F&_CLASS=IWB_EXTHLP

http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-29158


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Use Case

Below, we will show you how a collection strategy can be set up and changed, and how this affects the

determination of the next collection step.

In our example, there are six different collection steps such as a reminder call or a disconnection notification.

These collection steps are defined in ABAP database table TFK047U, which is used in Collections

Management. Depending on the last dunning step, the time that has passed since then, the business

partner’s risk class, the delay, and the existence of open work items the next dunning step needs to be

determined. For instance, if the last dunning step was sending out a reminder letter more than 8 days ago,

the delay is 12 days or more, and if this is not a high risk business partner, we want to trigger a reminder call

as the next step. Here you can find an overview of all cases:

Last Dunning Step Risk Class Days in

Delay

Days Since

Last Step

Open Work

Items

Collection Step

none = -2 announcement call

none or announcement call not very high ≥ 4 reminder letter

reminder letter not very high ≥ 12 ≥ 8 reminder call

reminder call not very high no disconnection notification

reminder call not very high ≥ 2 yes enforcement work item

any very high ≥ 4 release for external collection

any other case none

As we will see later, we can use this exact representation to model the business rules with SAP NetWeaver

Decision Service Management.

A big benefit of SAP NetWeaver Decision Service Management is to permit central rules maintenance for all

systems in your system landscape, so we will use this capability to segregate design time and runtime.

We will apply some changes to the decision making logic, which leads to a different follow on step in the

same situation. We will see how quick and easy it is to adapt these rules.

This is not a general introduction to SAP Collections Management or SAP NetWeaver Decision Service

Management. For this please see the links offered in the box on page 3.


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Setting up the Decision Service

Before running the determination of a collections step by SAP NetWeaver Decision Service Management, we

need to set up a decision service. Once this initial step is completed, we can apply changes very easily. The

easiest way to do the initial setup is to use the BRFplus Workbench (transaction code BRFPLUS) to copy the

default BRFplus application with all included objects as a template, and transfer it from the collections

system to the Decision Service Manager system. This transfer can be done by XML export/import or by using

Service Import in Decision Service Manager (transaction code DSM). By doing so, we make sure that a

decision service with the same ID is available in both systems. This is needed later for assigning the

collection strategy (see the Customize Collection Strategy section, page 11).

There is a function ID and data objects that are part of the delivery of SAP Collections Management. We

copy all of this to the Decision Service Manager system as described so that we then can alter and deploy

the decision service from there. This does not require any changes in the backend application as the same

service/function ID is used. When deployed, the deployed service is used instead of the local one.

To be able to access the backend data of the collection management system, we will assign the application

to this system. We will do so using Decision Service Manager (transaction code DSM).

This assignment establishes a connection to the managed system, permitting access to all backend data

objects, database tables, and other DDIC objects of the managed system instead of the backend of the

Decision Service Manager system.


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By copying the function, we are also making sure that it has the correct signature, which looks like this:

All of the input parameters will be filled by SAP Collections Management. The next dunning step is to be

returned in data element E_STEP (Collection Step).


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A ruleset that contains the actual business rules is assigned to this function. Here you can see a simple

example that we prepared earlier.


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In the first step, we will determine the risk class of the respective business partner. This is done by a

database lookup expression that reads from ABAP database table DFKKCMS. Basically we are interested in

finding out whether we are dealing with a high risk business partner (risk class ‘D’) or a non-high risk

business partner (any other risk class).

As we are modelling these business rules in the central Decision Service Manager system, this master data

does not refer to the local backend, but to the collections system. It is not even necessary for this database

table to exist in the Decision Service Manager system when a connection from managed system to Decision

Service Manager has been established and the imported application is assigned to the managed system.

Then all DDIC metadata is taken from the managed system through the connection. For this reason we have

already assigned the application to the managed system.


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In the second, step we determine the next dunning step, which is done using a decision table. Be aware that

this is only an example. If needed, you can use other expression types or more than one expression to

determine the next step.

This decision table has the same structure and the same content as the table describing the scenario on

page 4. It can easily be understood by any business domain expert, who does not necessarily need to be an

IT expert.

Some of the columns refer to other expressions, such as ‘Days in Delay’ which refers to a formula that

calculates how many days have passed since the earliest due date of a claim.

When the decision service is created and activated, we can deploy it to the collections system. By doing so,

we can maintain all collection strategies in a central place, while rules execution is run locally in the

collections management system. Deployment is done with Decision Service Manager (transaction code

DSM). We select the collections system as a managed system and deploy the decision service. This can be

done by any business domain expert, who does not need to have IT expertise. The deployment is performed

immediately without having to wait for a transport cycle or window of opportunity.


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If needed, we also can deploy decision services as of a specific date and time, or apply the deployment

workflow to implement a customer-specific release process. SAP Decision Service Management provides

several ready-to-use building blocks such as approval steps, test deployments, automatic tests, and more.


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Customize Collection Strategy

To use these rules in Collections Management, we need to assign them through Customizing (transaction

code SPRO) in the collections system. We can make this assignment by following the path Financial

Accounting (New) / Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable / Business Transactions / Dunning / Dunning

by Collection Strategy / Define Collection Strategy. You can apply changes to the business rules later without

touching or transporting Customizing again.


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We will select the names of the application and the function to be used for a collection strategy. These are

the names of the objects we created earlier in BRFplus Workbench.


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Run Dunning Proposal

Now it is time to run the dunning proposal. We can do so from SAP menu by choosing Utilities Industry /

Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable / Periodic processing / For Contract Accounts /Dunning notice /

Dunning Proposal Run. Of course we can also call transaction code FPVA directly in the collection system.


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In the dunning proposal, we enter the date, the identification, and the business partner and run the program

(choose ‘Schedule Program Run’ and go for immediate execution).

As a result, we get collection step C002 (Reminder Letter). The dunning history can be accessed through the

menu Environment / Dunning History.


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To understand how this result was derived, we can switch to the ‘Dunning Parameters’ tab and then choose

‘Trace’.


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This brings us to the trace log of SAP Decision Service Management that contains the input parameters and

the result of the rules execution, as well as all of the intermediate steps leading to this result.

This trace can be used for error fixing, analytics, archiving purposes, data mining, and much more.

Apply Changes to Collection Strategy

Assume you need to change your collection strategy. Decision making processes are subject to frequent

changes, which may be an issue when relying on hard-coded decisions, or when they involve transportation

management, which requires IT support and leads to significant delays as you need to wait for the next

transport cycle before any changes are applied to the productive system.


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In this example, we want to replace the reminder letter with an immediate reminder call. To do so, we will

change the second line of the decision table accordingly.

After activating and deploying the changed decision service, we see the old version deprecated and replaced

by the current version as of the time of deployment.


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When rerunning the dunning proposal, we see the changed result:

Of course you also can apply more complex changes and extensions to the decision logic by changing the

conditions, adding new lines to this decision table, or introducing additional business rules and expressions.

The basic principle of rules making decisions stays the same.

Resume

You have seen how quick and easy it is to change or extend collection strategies using SAP NetWeaver

Decision Service Management. You don’t need IT support to do so, business domain experts can make

these changes themselves. And you have seen how to centrally manage collection strategies across your

system landscape and how to deploy them for productive use with just a few clicks.

Transferring the template function from the collections system to the Decision Service Manager system is a

preparation step that ensure SAP Collections Management can be used with SAP Decision Service

Management without any changes or modifications, although SAP Collections Management is much older

than SAP NetWeaver Decision Service Management. A big advantage of SAP NetWeaver Decision Service

Management is its ability to be used with many applications and solutions that never were designed to be

used with SAP NetWeaver Decision Service Management. DSM adds unmatched flexibility and agility to

those applications.

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