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Customer Data Mapping from Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing to Siebel Energy

This topic describes the data mapping of key objects from order line items in Siebel Energy to Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing. Table 5 summarizes how values from the Siebel Energy order line items are used in Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing.

Further details of the data mapping are described in the subtopics that follow.

Account

The integration sends the relevant billing-related account information from Siebel Energy to Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing, as follows:

• The customer information to be synchronized to Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing is determined by information captured at the order line item level. In particular, it determined by the billing account of the order line item.
• The billing account defined on the order line item level in Siebel Energy is an account record with an Account Class value of Customer or Billing. The integration uses the Siebel Energy billing account to create the person, account, and account-person relationship in Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing if they do not already exist.
• The customer account hierarchy defined in Siebel Energy is not maintained in Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing. A Person record in Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing has only one account. However, each account can have multiple service agreements.
• The account number for the billing account in Siebel Energy is passed to Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing, so it can be placed on customer invoices.
• The account Status value in Siebel Energy is not sent to Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing. Status is not directly tracked in Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing at the person or account level. Status in Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing can be determined indirectly by the status of the service agreements associated with the account. For example, if all the service agreements for an account are closed, then the account can be considered to a status of inactive.
• The service account defined on the order line item level in Siebel Energy is an account record with an Account Class value of Customer or Service. Service account in Siebel Energy is not used to define the person and account within Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing. Instead, service account is used to indirectly identify the service point and related premises for a particular service on the order line item.

  NOTE:  In Siebel Energy, a premises is associated with a service account when the service account is created. Additionally, the service account, premises, and service point relationship (in other words, the service account and service point on the order line item) is used during order processing to define where the service is delivered.

Account Address

The integration sends the relevant billing-related address information from Siebel Energy to Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing, as follows:

• The integration does not send all the billing account addresses from Siebel Energy to Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing. Address information sent from Siebel Energy to Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing is determined by the address selected on the primary billing profile of the billing account and by the existence of any seasonal addresses for the account. In Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing, address information is captured on the person and designated on the account-person relationship.
• A Billing Address is required on the billing profile in Siebel Energy. Therefore, the person in Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing always has one billing address.
• If address information for the primary billing profile that has already been sent to Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing is updated in Siebel Energy, then the address of the corresponding person in Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing is updated in real time.

Contact

The integration sends the relevant billing-related contact information from Siebel Energy to Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing, as follows:

• The integration does not send all the billing account contacts from Siebel Energy to Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing. Contact information sent from Siebel Energy to Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing is determined by the contact information defined on the primary billing profile of the billing account. In Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing, the name of the billing contact is captured as the Override Mail Name on the person record.
• A Billing Contact value is not required on the billing profile. Therefore, an Override Mail Name value might not exist on the Person record in Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing.
• If contact information for the primary billing profile that has already been sent to Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing is updated in Siebel Energy, then the Override Mail Name for the corresponding person in Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing is updated in real time.

Billing Profile

The integration sends the relevant billing-related billing profile information from Siebel Energy to Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing, as follows:

• Billing profile information (including billing type, bill medium, bill frequency, billing address, billing contact, and payment details) from Siebel Energy is primarily captured on the person, account, and account person relationship objects in Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing.
• Siebel Energy supports multiple billing profiles for a billing account. These billing profiles can be explicitly selected at the order line item level (that is, by product).
• Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing does not support multiple sets of billing and payment information for a service agreement. Therefore, only the primary billing profile for a billing account in Siebel Energy is synchronized to Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing. Billing profiles other than the primary one are ignored by the integration.
• If primary billing profile information that has already been sent to Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing is updated in Siebel Energy, then the corresponding information in Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing is updated in real time. These changes might include the changes described in Account Address and Contact.
• Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing maintains a history of account automatic payment information. Therefore, payment information changes in Siebel Energy result in new automatic payment records in Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing. If payment information is changed in Siebel Energy, then the prior automatic payment record in Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing is updated with an end date, and a new automatic payment record is created.

NOTE:  A billing profile must be defined in Siebel Energy for every account that is used as a billing account on order line items.

Multiple Bill Recipients

In addition to sending bills to a primary bill recipient, defined as the Billing Account Address listed under the primary Billing Profile in Siebel Energy, a utility company can send duplicate bills to specific contacts as additional or secondary bill recipients. Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing supports this functionality. Each secondary bill recipient can have only one address in Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing.

In Siebel Energy, additional bill recipients are defined as contacts in the Account Statement Profile view. The integration of customer data between Siebel Energy and Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing supports the synchronization of the Contact Address, Contact Name, Bill Media, Email Address, Bill Type, and Language fields.

NOTE:  To allow valid integration with Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing, Statement Profile records in Siebel Energy must not share the same contacts. You can configure your Siebel application to prevent duplication of contacts across multiple Statement Profile records in Siebel Energy. For more information about the steps to configure Siebel Energy to prevent duplication of Contacts across multiple Statement Profile records, see Siebel Installation Guide for the operating system you are using.

Seasonal Address

Utility companies can send bills to alternate addresses during specific periods of the year, as requested by their customers. These seasonal periods, recurring annually, can be captured in Siebel Energy for both the primary and secondary bill recipients. The integration to Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing supports the synchronization of seasonal address information. This synchronization enabled the billing solution to send the bill to the specified seasonal address depending on the time of year.

In Siebel Energy, a seasonal address is defined as an address with the type Seasonal that has been entered for a billing account defined as a primary bill recipient, or for a contact defined as a secondary bill recipient. Address types can be defined in the Addresses view of the Accounts screen and in the Addresses view of the Contacts screen. Multiple seasonal addresses can be associated with an account or a contact.

The Start Date and End Date fields of the Address record are required fields for addresses with the type Seasonal. Because the seasonal period is a recurring annual period, only the Month and Day values of the date fields are used to define the period. These values are passed to Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing for integrated customers. Users of Siebel Energy can enter any year in those fields without affecting the period definition.

In Siebel Energy, users can select an address with the type Seasonal in the primary billing profile of an account to make it the default address for the primary bill recipient. Similarly, users can select an address with the type Seasonal in a Contact record in the statement profile to make it the default address for secondary bill recipients. In this case, there is no need for a user to change the address type, because Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing makes sure that the address is no longer considered as seasonal regardless of the setting in Siebel Energy.

Although multiple seasonal addresses can be associated with an account or a contact, Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing can send a bill to only one seasonal address at any time. To prevent the creation of period overlaps in Siebel Energy, and to prevent the selection of February 29 in a leap year as either a Start Date or End Date for a period, utility companies can deploy a script. For an example script to prevent seasonal period overlap, see Oracle Customer Data Synchronization Integration Pack for Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing and Siebel Energy - Implementation Guide in the Oracle Application Integration Architecture documentation.

The integration of Siebel Energy and Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing does not support the use of the same address for two different seasonal periods in the year.