- Prepaid and postpaid streaming products, including movies and music
- Prepaid and postpaid mobile phone services, including:
- Voice
- SMS
- MMS
- High-speed data
- Parcel Services, such as:
- Surcharge (CO2, insurance, destination)
- Fees depending on delivery zones
- Dimensions of goods (weight, length, and so on)
- Channels (road, airfreight, and so on)
- Service level (tracking level, and so on)
The opportunity of this new digital economy also brings with it new challenges that companies have to manage.
Traditional pricing and monetization models, for example, can be too rigid. Traditionally, pricing has been performed on a per-unit basis, with surcharges and discounts, and perhaps some volume discounting. In the digital economy, monetization might be set up in a way that a customer has some usage quantity included in a recurring monthly fee, with tiered pricing. This can be up to some maximum amount, with additional discounts applied on the basis of the usage of another related product or service. This makes pricing much more complex.
Another challenge emerges in the management of operational customer contracts. Subscription, usage, and consumption business models are executed on the basis of a contract that specifies what services the customer is subscribed to, and includes other key information, such as included amounts and additional fees. These contracts are very likely to change over their lifetime, with add-ons, removals, service location changes, and so on. Being able to manage these changes, and track the different versions of a contract across the past, present, and future can be challenging, costly, and error-prone.
Usage and consumption-based business models often lead to managing, pricing, and metering large amounts of transactional detail. This can lead to technical challenges to manage the data and transaction volumes, as well as business challenges, such as revenue reporting, auditing, and accruals.
Existing AR and AP processes can also be challenged in the transition to digital business models. Businesses that have traditionally gone to market through third-party providers, distributors, and partners may find themselves transitioning to direct-to-customer models. This can result in much higher customer billing and AR relationships that existing AR systems and processes simply weren't designed to handle. Furthermore, in a digital world, the business-to-partner-to-customer relationships also become far more sophisticated.
One of the most notable evolutions of the digital economy is the platform business. Platforms have manifested in various forms, for example, as a value-add to tangible goods, as marketplaces, and as content-sharing sites, but they all have multi-party relationships in common. Any given transaction can result in receivables from one or more parties, and payables to one or more parties, all based on a single transaction. Being able to manage the contractual relationships between these parties, split these transactions appropriately, and manage the related AR and AP at volume is oftennot possible with traditional systems.
- It covers the entire process chain starting with product and subscription modeling and enables customers to manage usage data, as well as pricing and charging processes, and it natively integrates high volume billing into financial excellence powered by SAP S/4HANA.
- SAP Billing and Revenue Innovation Management is designed for enterprises of any industry that are transforming their offerings into services or aim to lower cost in revenue management and billing while increasing customer satisfaction.
- Automated and integrated payment handling
- Master agreement support for enterprise B2B Billing
- Customer self-care with a single view on contracts, entitlements, and allowances
