About RMA in SAP Cloud for Customer

[former_member220058]

Dear experts,

As my Cloud for customer system is not integrated with ERP yet, I would like to know how RMA in SAP Cloud for customer works if it's integrated with SAP ERP? When will a customer return order be created in ERP? When we set the status as In Process - Waiting to receive Retun?

Please kindly advise!

Thanks a lot!

Regards,

Wendy

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Wendy,

There are two approaches to a RMA process.

1. Create an end to end RMA process in the cloud using C4C master tickets, sub tickets, page layouts, and activity plans. The entire process of creating the "RMA", tracking receipt of a defective product, managing repair of a defective product, tracking outbound delivery of the repaired or replacement product, can be done without ERP.

2. Create a RMA capture process in C4C that will create a Return SD order. The entire RMA process runs in SD and not in C4C. In this scenario, all you would need to do is use the standard outbound A2A API available for the work ticket and create an ERP SD return order instead of the ERP FI/CO internal order with HCI as HCI project work.

Thanks,

Rei

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hey Rei,I'm glad you picked up on this post as I have a few questions about the standard C4C/ECC integration for a return (or Complaint) process.

1/ Is this RMA or return scenario triggered from the C4C ECC Search screen (from which one can select an ECC sales order item and create a ticket)?

2/ Does the standard integration create an "inbound" logistic ECC sales order for the return (just like in the CRM-based complaint scenario)?

3/ As Standard, is there a status update flow from ECC to C4C ticket? This would allow notification updates sent to customer from the C4C ticket

4/ Does the C4C Complaint process also support the Product Exchange scenario whereby a second ECC sales order can be created to handle the delivery of a replacement product (incl C4C status update)?

5/ Final question: For each of the integration flows above (eg sales order creation, status updates), is the integration based on a standard iFlow or direct call via web service?

Thanks

[former_member220058 · Accepted solution]

Hi Rei,

Thank you so much for your thorough answer, I have one more question, do you know where I can find the document explaining RMA process in more details?

Thanks again.

Regards,

Wendy

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

These are great questions.

The simple answer is that if you run the entire process in C4C, there could be no integration with ECC. C4C will handle the entire return/replacement process, until the very end where you may need to either bill or track costs of what was done using the standard work ticket integration with FI/CO/SD.

If you decide not to handle the return/replacement process in C4C, then it will be a SD return order capture scenario, which implies it is a "fire and forget" scenario. Contact center captures the fact the customer wants to return/replace something and allows the easy process to create that return order in ECC. The department who handles the return/replacement process would take over and use their ECC process to manage communication with the customer and fulfillment of the replacement/return without C4C.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

I will create a separate how-to later on the topic of configuring a RMA process in C4C. Here is a summary:

The entire process is based on using the 1508 capabilities for Case Management which allows you to create a hierarchy of tickets.

The RMA process starts with a master (parent) ticket. This master ticket can be created through the number of inbound interaction scenarios such as Phone, Email, Social, SMS, Portal, API, IoT, etc... This master ticket will track the original customer request and will be the ticket where all customer interactions are logged in context of the RMA.

Then as part of the RMA process child tickets can be created from the master ticket to define specific steps in the RMA process. There are various scenarios for RMA and sure you have experienced them all for all the products we own in our lives that we are either not satisfied with or fail and you need a replacement/repair

Replacement

Repair with no loaner

Repair with loaner

Refund/Credit

All of these scenarios involve the basic steps of

Receiving a product

Shipping a product

Repair of a product

Tracking inventory

Billing/Crediting the customer

Not all customers have implemented the ECC RMA processes so you will see a lot of variation of the these requirements either partially done in ECC, all done in ECC, or done in another system.

Thus from a C4C point of view we have kept it very open and focused on the executing the process and allow our consultants to integrate specific steps of the process in ECC as needed.

Here is an example of a complex RMA scenario dealing with loaners without any integration with ECC.

Step 1-> Receipt of Defective Product

Child Ticket ID:1 Type RMA Inbound with serial ID (customer owned registered product) -> generate shipping label and send to customer -> Route Child Ticket ID:1 to shipping dept for receiving -> Shipping dept receives registered product with the right serial ID -> Closes Child Ticket ID:1

Step 2-> Delivery/Receipt of Loaner

Child Ticket ID:2 Type Loaner with serial ID (company owned registered product) -> generate shipping label for outbound and inbound -> Route Child Ticket ID:2 to shipping dept for shipping -> Shipping dept ships loaner -> Keeps Child Ticket ID:2 open until customer returns serial ID (company owned registered product)

Step 3-> Repair of Defective Product

Child Ticket ID:3 Type RMA Repair with serial ID (customer owned registered product) -> Route Child Ticket ID:3 to repair dept -> Repair dept completes work -> Closes Child Ticket ID:3

Step 4-> Delivery of Repaired Product

Child Ticket ID:4 Type RMA Outbound with serial  ID (customer owned registered product) -> generate shipping label -> Route Child Ticket ID:4 to shipping dept for shipping -> Shipping dept ships -> Closes Child Ticket ID:4

The good thing about this model you can have different optimized ticket Uis for each type of “ticket” and have unique notifications, SLAs, and routing to different teams. You could merge child ticket 3 and 4 so there is just a Work Ticket that handles the outbound or split 2 so there is an outbound loaner and inbound loaner.

With one ticket it gets complex as it will need to route to multiple teams back and forth which means the process is all serial and not parallel. The above model allows you to run the RMA/Loan/Repair process in parallel.

The master ticket that triggered the RMA process has visibility of the entire process easily in the Sub Tickets tab and the document flow. There is also business logic that you can enable where the master ticket cannot be closed until the child tickets are closed to ensure that your deliver the service to the customer completely.

This is all possible with a few configurations:

Maybe a 2 more custom fields to hold the loaner serial ID and a replacement serial ID (if the repair requires a full replacement)

An action to generate the shipping label

Page layouts by ticket type

Status schema by ticket type

SLA by ticket ticket

Routing rules by ticket type

Lastly, an easy integration point into ECC would be the repair step 3. In this step, this is where the standard integration scenarios around cost, billing, and replacement/repair parts inventory can be used to track these ECC centric requirements if needed.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks for taking the time to write this. I think you have got your blog almost sorted!

I like the flexibility of your model.

But for me (or my client) the key is to have an integrated process with ECC logistics, specifically for the return inbound logistics. So my question is how does the C4C based complaint process - which can handles returns- works.

Can you explain how the integration works technically? Is it based on iFlows? If yes can you give the list of integration flows which should be activated for the complaint scenario?

When the return order has been "delivered" in ECC, is there a status update on the C4C ticket?

Thanks

[former_member220058 · Accepted solution]

Hi Kasai,

Thank you so much for such a thorough explanation. I'm really looking forward to the How-to of configurating RMA in C4C. Any idea when it will be available?

Thanks a lot!

Best regards,

Wendy

[former_member220058 · Accepted solution]

Hi Rei,

Thanks for your time. I still have further questions regarding RMA . You mentioned the integration point of step 3 . I would like to know:

1. How do we set which sub-ticket under a master to integrate with ERP, which not to.

2.  Is the return order information updated back to C4C?

3. Can the C4C ticket status be automatically updated to for example " parts received"?

4. You also mentioned shipping lable generation, is it standard C4C function?

Sorry for so many questions, and thanks in advance for your attention.

Best regards,

Wendy 

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

1. The ticket type and the ticket item type will define if the ticket and its items are relevant for ERP integration or not independent if the ticket is a master or child ticket.

2. Creating a follow-up SD return order from a C4C Work Ticket will be a customization to the standard SD billing request iFlow provided. In addition, the standard iFlow only handles the write back/update of the C4C doc flow. If you want to write back more ERP data back to C4C such as ERP document statuses,etc... then this will be an ERP customization. You will need to write an exit in ERP to write back to preceding C4C Work Ticket on specific conditions.

3. See above

4. This is custom SDK extension as it is expected a customer will have its own shipping/logistics provider. The integration is the following pattern

A. Create a point to point web service API integration with the 3rd party logistics provider API to get a shipping label. Sometimes the label is an actual image or a temporary public web link to the 3rd party provider a customer can link on to download the shipping label (as you can see every provider is different thus no way to provide anything out of box for such an integration)

B. Write back the shipping label into an extension field

C. Generate a PDF output of the BO with the extension field or an email notification of the BO with the extension field

D. Share the PDF output/email to the customer

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Rei,

Thanks for the detailed information you have provided above, Just wondering if we have step by step blog as well on RMA process integration with ECC. Our Client is looking to integrate with ECC to cover following scenarios

1) SD Return Order from C4C Ticket

2) SD Replacement Order from C4C Ticket

3) Repair process using Work Ticket

Really appreciate if you can provide a blog on above topics.

Thanks,

Kumar

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Rei,

Thanks for the detailed information that you have listed above for RMA. I have some question in Work Ticket integration with SAP ECC.

I know as standard the Work Ticket integration works with Internal Order in SAP ECC. Can this be integrated with Service Order instead if the Service Order process is already working in SAP ECC?

Also at what stage within SAP C4C the integration with the back end is triggered?

Regards,

Sandeep