Managing customer processes
After you perform the setup procedures to define customers and specify locations, CIs, and security settings, you can begin to provide services to your customers. Each customer job requires a customer agreement. Response plans enable you to ensure that similar work is performed in a repeatable and consistent way. After each job is completed, you can set up billing against the associated customer agreement. Associating an agreement with a work order allows the prices to be calculated and allows the completed work to be brought into a billing batch.
About this task
The following table lists and describes key procedures that you perform on an ongoing basis as a service provider. To view detailed information about these procedures, along with step-by-step instructions, consult the online help that is provided for the applications that are used. To view the help, click Help in the upper right corner of an application window.
| Service provider procedure | Description |
|---|---|
| Defining customer agreements | A customer agreement contains the contractual
details around the work to be performed: start and end dates, price
schedules, billing cycles, and so on. Each job that you perform for
a customer must have an associated customer agreement. You can have
several customer agreements for a particular customer; when you initiate
a job, you specify the agreement that applies to that work. You create and manage the agreements in the Customer Agreements application (). |
| Managing response plans | A response plan provides a convenient way to
make the management of a customer work order or customer ticket easier,
more efficient, and more repeatable across similar work orders and
tickets. Response plans are associated with work order and ticket
types, and can also contain job plans, ticket templates, owners or
owner groups, and other conditions that can be matched with work orders
or tickets. When you apply a response plan to a work order or ticket,
the system finds a plan that matches the attributes of that work order
or ticket. You create and manage the agreements in the Response Plans application (). |
| Managing billing | After a customer work order is completed, you
create a bill batch for the associated customer agreement, route the
bill batch record through the required customer approvals, and forward
the bill to your accounting system to prepare a customer invoice. You create and route bill batches in the Customer Billing application (). |