Reinventing billing

Broker and sharing platforms as well as cloud-based services are in vogue. This is drastically changing the traditional sales world. Traditional product providers are increasingly becoming service providers with innovative and highly flexible business models. Rigid billing systems are not suitable for the digital transformation in the long term.

Digitization with BRIM

In the new digital business world, traditional billing models no longer work. Alexander Vogt, Business Development Manager at GTW Management Consulting, knows from numerous projects in which SAP BRIM (Billing and Revenue Innovation Management) was introduced by GTW that digital technologies open up completely new opportunities and business areas. BRIM is a tool of digitalization.

The transition from a product-oriented to a service-oriented orientation requires new billing models. SAP BRIM is an industry-independent and flexible software solution for pricing, billing and invoicing a wide range of services and products in a uniform system landscape. This solution enables companies to introduce new products or product bundles within a short period of time, create uniform invoices, run simulations, and manage payments and reminders.

In addition, SAP BRIM offers mass data processing, real-time connectivity and support for prepaid and postpaid scenarios. The high flexibility of the SAP solution is ensured by its configurability, modularity and integration with other SAP modules such as SD, FI-AR and IS-U.

Agile Services

Alexander Vogt emphasizes that digital services can be billed flexibly with SAP BRIM, whether in the form of subscriptions, leases, usage contracts, one-time fees, consumption, and much more. The SAP solution combines various billing sources, standardizes the raw data using a mediation system, and summarizes it on a single invoice during the billing and invoicing process.

Even in complex business scenarios, the invoicing process is significantly simplified. Alexander Vogt emphasizes: "We have yet to see a business idea that could not be mapped in SAP BRIM, no matter how unusual it was." BRIM offers a customized billing solution in which all billing types, be they one-time or recurring charges or usage-based transactions, are supported.

BRIM demonstrates its flexibility in various industry billing scenarios: The contract accounts payable component is a subledger designed for industries with a large customer base and a high volume of documents. Therefore, BRIM is particularly well suited for insurance, utilities, telecommunications and media companies as well as the public sector.

Variety of offers

Companies in the energy sector have long since gone beyond simply providing electricity, gas and water. Today, consumption data is usually recorded and billed to the minute using smart metering systems. Factors such as time and energy consumption play a role in billing, which can be used in BRIM for tariffing. If consumers also want to charge their electric car, e-bike or e-scooter, this consumption data can be recorded in real time.
be calculated, regardless of the payment method selected, such as credit card, PayPal, bank transfer or app. If the utility company is also a regional telecommunications or smart home provider, the billing data can be combined in a collective bill to give customers a detailed overview of their consumption.

Collaboration platforms

Due to its enormous flexibility and adaptable modules, SAP BRIM is ideal for use on Internet and collaboration platforms as well as for start-ups. Broker models are a well-known example of this. A broker provides a platform online for app development where developers and potential customers meet. If the broker integrates BRIM into its platform, a flexible billing system is available to all participants. For example, the platform operator can receive a commission for each transaction. -Alexander Vogt summarizes: "The customer just has to have the idea of how to turn his product into a service, for example a car-sharing service, and we can implement the billing in SAP BRIM."

The digital transformation in accounting offers numerous opportunities to develop innovative business models and benefit from the advantages of flexible billing systems such as SAP BRIM. It's time to embrace change and make accounting work for the future.