Designing SA Relationship Types

The easiest way to design SA relationship types is to start with the matrix of SA types designed in SA Types And The Financial Design. For each SA type in the matrix, determine if either of the following questions is true:

• Can companies other than your own provide some subcategory of the service (and do you have some type of interaction with these companies)? For example, this would be true if you are an energy supply company because a different company is responsible for distributing the power to the customer (and you probably exchange consumption and financial transactions with this company).
• Does your organization use different rates for subcategories of the service? For example, this would be true if you use separate rates for water and wastewater service (even though both are based on the customer's water consumption).

If either of the above is true, you will need a SA relationship type for each subcategory of service.

We'll use an example to help make the point. Using the SA types we designed earlier (see SA Types And The Financial Design), we'll assume the following:

• We are designing the system for an electric, gas, water, waste water, and cable utility.
• Residential electric customers have a choice of energy supplier.
• Commercial and industrial electric customers can choose an energy supplier and a meter service provider.
• Commercial and industrial gas customers have a choice of energy supplier.