The legal money printing machine
E-3: The abbreviation BRIM contains the word innovation. What can be innovative about the process "money here, goods there"?
Alexander Vogt: That depends entirely on your perspective, because in my opinion, the innovation factor only comes to the fore with the right use case. If you want to put it a little more pointedly, SAP BRIM is just an extremely scalable and versatile software solution for billing many different services.
With the right know-how, however, a wide range of innovative use cases can be implemented across the entire BRIM chain and across all industries. In particular, we are talking about new rental or subscription-based business models of various dimensions.
This ranges from simple bike sharing to the provision of production machines or their capacities, in particular opex models. SAP BRIM is therefore not just a billing tool, but rather the basis for maintaining competitiveness and business model innovation. Seen from this perspective, it becomes clear why the word innovation is in BRIM.
E-3: How do you see the transformation process, BRIM enabling new business models or new business models requiring new order-to-cash processes?
Jasmina Cejan: Both statements are correct; as is so often the case, it all depends on the initial situation. Let's take one of our customers as an example of what it can look like when exponential growth pushes existing SAP solutions to the limits. If at some point you have to schedule three or four days for a billing run, then you are indeed forced to think about new OTC processes and technologies.
Today, with BRIM, we can implement the same billing runs in a few hours and think about implementing new business areas and use cases in parallel. Furthermore, with BRIM an implementation of all prepaid, postpaid and partner participation scenarios is possible, even with an extremely high number of transactions.
Vogt: However, new business models do not necessarily require new order-to-cash processes, because basically O2C is still the process from receipt of a customer order to payment of the outstanding receivable by the customer.
The difference seen in the past is that the order is not just a physical good or service, but complex product packages that can include a wide variety of configurations.
Billing and Revenue Management - Add-ons for the CFO's End-to-End Tasks
E-3: Where are new billing scenarios emerging in the digital transformation and how are they being resolved?
Cejan: The digital transformation is currently producing new billing scenarios in almost all industries and sectors, even in places where one would not have imagined using subscription, consumption or results-based models a few years ago. A really interesting example of this comes from the agricultural industry, where Bayer Crop Science is already successfully using the SAP BRIM solution.
Bayer Crop Science sells seeds and crop protection products and is continuing an outcome-based pricing model that has been tested with several U.S. corn growers. Digitized agriculture allows Bayer Crop to create a predictive model and yield metric when certain product combinations are used in a specific application sequence.
For farmers, this approach completely eliminates input risk, making an outcome-based model extremely attractive. Conversely, Bayer Crop firmly binds farmers and has a clear perspective on sales of all products over the course of the year. Furthermore, Bayer Crop guarantees farmers fixed yield levels and fully compensates for losses in case of non-achievement. Conversely, Bayer Crop participates 50:50 in all revenues above the guaranteed amount.
E-3: Can you find answers for all conceivable order-to-cash processes in SAP's BRIM and how do you arrive at an operational solution?
Cejan: BRIM knows no limits in terms of billing for a wide variety of business scenarios or order-to-cash processes. The "pay-per-part model" developed by SAP's existing customer Trumpf enables customers to use a full-service laser machine without having to buy or lease the equipment.
Instead, customers pay a previously agreed price for each part produced by the respective machine, i.e. only ever exactly what they need. This enables customers to design their production processes more flexibly and respond more quickly to market changes.
E-3: Who drives, who designs, who benefits from Billing and Revenue
Innovation Management?
Vogt: BRIM provides the basis for monetization in white space. The Corona crisis has shown very clearly how important it is to be able to adapt extremely quickly to new market conditions. Those who are able to bring new business models to market within a very short time not only increase their competitiveness, but also their company value in the long term.
E-3: Is BRIM an opportunity or a burden for sales?
Vogt: For sales, SAP BRIM offers enormous potential, as basically all kinds of business models and billing variants can be realized. As a C-level sales executive, it is extremely important to understand market trends and customer wishes and to be able to react accordingly, or even better: to act proactively. BRIM offers a lot of interesting added value here, enabling you to expand your own business in the long term. Above all, the usage-based billing models in combination with business analytics allow completely new perspectives on customer behavior.
In investment-intensive capex-driven environments, BRIM can be used to implement new opex models that are primarily aimed at leasing or providing production capacities, for example, in an as-a-service approach. In this way, from a sales perspective, high input barriers in the form of investments can be transformed into manageable but long-term operating expenses, and this can even lead to a significant shortening of the sales cycle.
E-3: GTW is one of the leading SAP BRIM solution partners. With whom in a company do you discuss the topic?
Vogt: This is indeed dependent on how concrete the understanding of BRIM is within a company. Depending on the size of a company, SAP managers, system or enterprise architects, or CFOs are integrated into the discussions.
If BRIM is identified as a strategic topic, then the circle of discussion partners changes and primarily the management, CIO and CFO or C-level supporting staff functions with a focus on the topics of digitization and innovation take part in the discussions.
E-3: Where do you see BRIM's strengths in a Hana and S/4 infrastructure?
Cejan: The greatest strength of BRIM in SAP S/4 Hana is the new add-on for Customer Management. In a conventional SAP system landscape, CRM is connected to ERP via middleware. By transforming and moving traditional SAP CRM to S/4 CM, middleware is no longer required. The system landscape is thus considerably simplified, data exchange problems are eliminated, and the company's operating costs are reduced.
E-3: SAP BRIM is credited with being able to provide more efficient revenue generation. How does it work?
Cejan: BRIM enables billing for all types of recurring models, across industries and for any type of service: subscriptions, usage, consumption, fee, dynamic pricing, outcomes, costs, rewards, revenue sharing. Including shared service platforms for multisource, high-volume billing and receivables where complex, rules-based multi-party payouts need to be made to partners and market participants.
The solution supports all payment options that provide consumers with great payment flexibility and greater shopping cart conversion. Even the high transaction volume in direct-to-consumer models is not a problem for the solution.
E-3: And the summary?
Cejan: You could say BRIM opens up new opportunities for innovative, efficient business models and fast-growing companies, ensuring better revenue generation. Time-to-market is greatly reduced, pricing and quote management costs are reduced, billing, collection and operating costs are reduced, revenue leakage is reduced, cash flow is increased, IT expenses are reduced. Even customer calls and complaints reduce due to visibility and flexible management in the customer lifecycle.
E-3: Thank you for the interview.
