Account Information for External Business Partners

This Business Scenario Map is designed to show how a customer and a vendor use the Internet to exchange information on open items or account balances that have been posted in the vendor's system. The map illustrates the benefits of collaboration. Information is shared quickly and easily between business partners. This reduces the communication effort. The result is a streamlined business process that saves time and money. Companies that benefit most from using these business process are vendors and customers with a high exchange rate of bills and payments, not limited to any industry. But typical vendors that profit from this automization are companies from the industries Telco, Utilities, Public Sector and Media.

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Value Potentials	Business Benefits
Up to 5%*	Resources for providing customers with account information are saved
Up to 20%*	Reduced costs for sending information to the customer
Up to 5%*	Customer provided with up-to-date information

Vendor

Customer

Check the log on data of the customer

Offer different account information

Log on to vendor's Biller Direct Web application

Choose the account information

Analyze and download account information

Source:

* Discussions with customers

The value potentials shown in this table have been reported by selected SAP customers or independent third parties as referenced herein. However, there is no guarantee that such value potentials can be realized in any particular customer-specific business processes, and SAP does not make any representations and disclaims any liability as to the appropriateness of the referenced value potentials for any specific customer situation.
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Business Benefits	Value Potentials
Real-time information about accounts at the vendor	Up to 10%*
Ability to down-load account information (in excel) to suit own requirements	Up to 5%*
Ability to analyze the balance in the vendor's system	Up to 5%*
Reports can be obtained without needing to call and ask the vendor	Up to 10%*


Account Information for External Business Partners Typically customers have additional information requirements that they address to their vendors, such as balance information on their customer account. Then, the AR accountant at the vendor's needs to execute special reports in his backend system, prints the result for the customer and sends it to him by post or fax. This process can be greatly simplified if the vendor offers online reports to his customers that he can execute himself whenever he needs the relevant information. The vendor decides what kind of information should be contained in the online reports offered. The customer can download this information (for example into Excel) at any time, he can access the information immediately and be sure it is always current. At the same time, the vendor sets up the reports only once and makes them available to his customers. Once he has done this he does not need to process these information requests again, saving both time and money. SAP Biller Direct enables the vendor to offer online balance information including drilldown options to view accounting details. Furthermore, balance confirmations can be executed online, the steps of this business process are the same as in the conventional process that every customer and vendor needs. The vendor can enhance the SAP Biller Direct standard functionality to offer further standard reports from the backend to his customers.