Industry-specific application examples of SAP BRIM

For example, BRIM (Billing and Revenue Innovation Management) offers comprehensive functionalities for subscription order management, flexible pricing, automated invoicing, convergent invoicing and personalized payment processing in order to implement digital business models and optimize these processes.

Some typical industry billing scenarios that have already been realized with GTW's technical experts are intended to show how flexibly BRIM can be used.

The "Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable" component comprises a subledger that was originally developed for industries with a very large customer base and a correspondingly high volume of documents with mass data processing.

This makes BRIM ideal for use in insurance, utility, telecommunications and media companies, as well as in the public sector.

Example utility industry

The services offered by energy suppliers have long since gone beyond the mere provision of electricity, gas and water.

Today, consumption data is usually transmitted and billed to the minute or second using smart metering systems.

It is possible to differentiate precisely between the types of electricity, such as cheaper solar or night-time electricity consumption, because the time and type of electricity are also transferred to BRIM.

If a consumer also uses the offer to "refuel" their e-car, e-bike or e-scooter, this consumption data can be priced and billed in real time and also automatically displayed on the monthly bill, regardless of whether payment is made by credit card, cash or via an app platform.

If the utility company is also a regional telecommunications or smart home solution provider, the billing data can be displayed on a collective bill.

This gives customers maximum transparency about their actual consumption, as everything is recorded in detail on just one bill.

The unmistakable advantage of BRIM, in addition to contract accounts receivable and payable, is the integration of SAP CRM in order to individually store conditions, prices or discounts, which are used by SAP Convergent Charging for exact price calculation.

In addition, SAP provides components to ensure, for example, the necessary market communication or the mapping of intelligent metering devices.

Rent, lease and share

As there is now hardly a product or service that cannot be rented in some form, these business models are ideal for customer-specific billing via BRIM.

This means that industrial rental parks or rental services can also invoice their services by the minute or via other sensor-based usage parameters.

For example, if an excavator and driver are rented out to a property developer, the excavator can be equipped with a sensor that records exactly when the excavator is in use.

Such recorded data can be sent to BRIM, billed in the system and maintenance times can also be determined in real time.

This means that rented or leased machines can be charged not only according to the actual machine hourly rate, but also according to spindle revolutions, depending on the rental agreement.

Expensive hand tools such as drills are also increasingly being rented rather than purchased. Equipped with a measuring device, both hourly rental rates and "revolutions in use" can be charged.

There are virtually no limits to the wealth of ideas for rental and leasing models at BRIM. When leasing printers or plotters, for example, billing is often based on consumption.

Then, for example, a monthly flat rate is agreed that already includes 10,000 printed pages, and what is printed after that is charged individually - not an act at all with BRIM.

And finally, the entire sharing economy, where, for example, a rental company provides a platform for car sharing or e-scooter sharing or a provider of a comprehensive mobility platform.

Individual invoicing

In general, SAP BRIM is virtually predestined for use on Internet and collaboration platforms or for start-ups due to its high flexibility and modular adaptability.

In the context of digital transformation, there are other examples such as the transformation of a declining hardware-based business model of a renowned technology company into a provider of services with the help of BRIM.

However, the operator of a procurement platform could also provide BRIM and enable its users to use it for billing. Users can be both B2B customers and end consumers, which can be mapped individually.

The idea for implementation

These application scenarios describe some of the practical ways in which BRIM can be implemented in order to illustrate how flexibly the solution can be used.

Flexibility refers not only to the modular use of BRIM, but also to its characteristics and usability in a wide range of industries. The conclusion of GTW Principal Consultant Jasmina Cejan:

"The customer just needs to have an idea of how to turn their product into a service, for example, a rental sharing or subscription service, and we can then implement the billing in BRIM together."

Industries

GTW industry examples of business models that can be realized or have already been realized with BRIM:

• Telecommunications service provider: Billing of prepaid and postpaid products as well as calls, SMS, MMS, Internet
• Sharing economy: time-based rental of cars, motorcycles, bicycles, scooters, etc.
• Toll: automatic toll billing based on actual kilometers driven
• Software licenses: Billing of licenses for software with different subscriptions - e.g. one-time 1-month trial, monthly/annual subscription
• Online storage is the same as cloud storage: subscriptions with different prices that are billed depending on the size of the storage and the contract term.
• Public transport: train, bus and streetcar journeys: individual tickets and monthly/annual subscriptions can be billed in BRIM
• E-mobility: charging stations
• Rental of systems and devices: Printers, machines and robots can be billed according to the actual operating hours used.
• Household appliances: Remote maintenance
• Buying a car: GPS, assistance systems, maintenance, breakdown assistance
• Platform business models: Service providers and customers meet on one platform

The advantages of SAP BRIM at a glance

Shorter time to market for products based on subscriptions and usage-based services or physical goods that are bundled with services:

• Flexible processing of revenue sharing models
• Realization of hybrid prepaid, postpaid and pay-as-you-go business models
• Rule-based and intelligent automation of invoicing and accounting processes
• Automated and highly efficient processing of high data volumes
• High transparency/traceability of the entire billing process chain - from usage events to invoicing
• Reduction of operating costs through consolidated billing systems
• Increase customer satisfaction by displaying costs, services and physical goods on a single invoice