Billing and Revenue Innovation Management in SAP (BRIM)

The move towards the digital economy and away from physical goods to services also leads directly to SAP S/4HANA for Billing and Revenue Innovation Management (BRIM).

SAP Billing and Revenue Innovation Management (BRIM) - what is it?

• SAP BRIM is an end-to-end billing solution for recurring revenue at high transaction volumes and it addresses all the challenges of a digital economy mentioned before.
• 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 BRIM 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.

Taking a deeper look at BRIM, you can see the different components and the E2E process covered by Billing and Revenue Innovation Management.

Subscriptions are managed with Subscription Order Management. Here, customer and partner master data can be stored. Relevant subscription products and bundles are defined. The subscription order can be captured and further changes throughout the entire subscription lifecycle can be handled. Order distribution and fulfillment processes will be initiated – either a physical product needs to be shipped based on a subscription contract or for example usage data can be tracked. In addition, partner revenue share agreements can be managed in Subscription Order Management.

If a contract contains usage-based components, this usage needs to be collected and prepared for pricing and charging. Therefore, a partner product Convergent Mediation provided by Digital Route can be used. Raw data is collected and transformed for further processing. The data will be validated and error handling for potentially wrong items takes place. The data will be aggregated or enriched and prepared for further process steps. The integration can be set up based on a batch process or in real-time.

The next component in the process chain is Convergent Charging. Here, prices will be determined for one-time, recurring or usage based charges. If 3rd party providers are involved, revenue shares will be calculated. Also prepaid components or allowances – which handle included volume - can be handled in Convergent Charging.

In Convergent Invoicing, based on billable or consumption items, the invoicing process will be triggered. Information from various sources or can be aggregated into one invoicing document. Convergent Invoicing provides functionality for a comprehensive invoice management, including preliminary invoicing, discounting, integration with revenue share for external partners and also the integration with revenue recognition to provide functionality to fulfill requirements for IFRS15 accounting principles.

Once the invoice has been issued, further receivables management processes will be realized in Customer Financial Management. This includes processes for payment handling, credit and collections management as well as customer care. Incoming and outgoing payments can be handled fully automatically with a minimum of manual interaction needed. Standard payment methods are supported and fully integrated, complimented with functionality for deferrals or installment plans. The integration with digital payments allows a standard integration with external payment service providers to realize for example credit card payments based on standard interfaces. Credit and Collections Management provides functionality for dunning and collections. Flexible rules allow to set up efficient collection strategies and to monitor the collection success. With Credit Management, the credit worthiness of customers can be determined based on flexible rules and the customer treatment can be influenced based on a customer credit score. Last but not least, customer care provides a 360 degree view on the customer account for customer service and also offers the possibility to create an manage dispute cases.