Revolutionizing Revenue with SAP BRIM: Navigating the Subscription Economy Landscape

⇨ SAP's Billing and Revenue Innovation Management (BRIM) excels in managing recurring revenue models, addressing challenges in the subscription-based and usage-based services era. SAP BRIM’s configurable and extensive applicability to various business scenarios establishes it as market leader in the subscription economy.

⇨ BRIM adapts seamlessly to a variety of industries, including sharing economy, software licenses, telecommunications, equipment-as-a-service, hardware-as-a-service, and revenue share models, showcasing its ability to handle dynamic billing scenarios.

⇨ The shift towards 'as a Service' (aaS) necessitates the modernization of processes such as quoting, ordering, billing, finance, and revenue. Comprising four core components and supplementary solutions, SAP BRIM offers a multifunctional and comprehensive solution to minimize the use the multiple concurrent systems, promoting operational efficiency and providing a 360-degree financial view.

Revolutionizing Revenue: SAP BRIM for Future Business Success

Written by: Derek Maak, Clement Sanjivi, and Maniprakash Balasubramanian

In the era of subscription-based and usage-based services, SAP Billing and Revenue Innovation Management (BRIM) excels in managing recurring revenue models by enabling various flexible consumption models. The BRIM solution supports many industry nuances while addressing key everything-as-a-service (XaaS) challenges. Businesses can easily create, modify, and manage subscriptions while supporting diverse billing cycles and payment methods. Furthermore, BRIM’s seamless integration with core SAP modules exemplifies the ultimate solution that businesses need to thrive in this evolving subscription economy.

The strong emergence of flexible consumption models continues as the global XaaS market size is projecting to grow from $699.79 billion in 2023 to $3,221.96 billion by 2030. XaaS helps companies generate continuous forecastable revenue and, in doing so, has disrupted conventional business models. SAP BRIM is the market leading solution that offers standard out of the box capabilities to support use cases for subscriptions and usage-based models. This innovative business model provides new opportunities for companies to automate their billing and revenue management at significantly higher volumes than previously possible.

Thanks to the processing power of BRIM, many businesses have successfully adopted this method. It enables these companies to retain their competitive edge in the marketplace by reducing month-end close cycle time, which enables the ingestion and processing of usage and billing data for millions of subscribers.

Use Cases

The following use cases serve as demonstrations of BRIM’s remarkable flexibility and adaptability across diverse industries:

Sharing Economy: BRIM excels in scenarios such as charging customers for the usage of vehicles like ridesharing, short-term rentals, and grocery delivery services. It effortlessly handles the dynamic pricing associated with the shared economy model.

Software Licenses: BRIM smoothly manages the complexities of software subscription licenses. It covers a spectrum of scenarios like one-time free trials, monthly or yearly subscriptions, and tiered pricing based on distinctive features.

Telecommunication: Within the telecommunication sector, BRIM efficiently addresses the intricate aspects of billing and invoicing for prepaid and postpaid products. This encompasses services such as calls, text messages, and data usage.

Equipment-as-a-Service: BRIM highlights its aptitude in digital services involving real-time asset tracking and predictive maintenance. It seamlessly handles the billing and revenue management aspects of such dynamic offerings.

Hardware-as-a-Service: In the Hardware-as-a-Service model, BRIM allows customers to pay for the services provided by hardware, eliminating the need for upfront purchases and aligning with modern service-oriented approaches.

Revenue Share Models: BRIM not only supports all aspects of Everything-as-a-Service billing, but also supplies the tools to tightly manage all corresponding partner payouts such as settlement payments, royalties, commissions, chargebacks, incentives, etc.

Four Core Components

The comprehensive BRIM solution, designed to tailor products, services, and contracts for the billing and invoicing process, comprises four core components. Together, these modules play a vital role in managing business model design, usage tracking, transaction pricing, and the oversight of both receivables and payables.

The initial component, Subscription Order Management (SOM), serves as the foundation. It orchestrates orders involving a diverse array of products, from traditional hardware products to subscriptions services. Notably flexible in managing master data and contract life cycles, SOM efficiently guides orders through their intake and subsequent stages.

Convergent Charging (CC) is the second core component, which takes consumption data and transforms it into billable items (BITs) during the charging and rating process. This crucial step lays the groundwork for accurate and comprehensive invoicing.

The spotlight shifts to Convergent Invoicing (CI), as the third component assumes responsibility for storing, processing, and triggering the creation of invoices from the generated BITs. Both customer and partner invoicing are effortlessly integrated into this process, which concludes in the posting of receivables within contract accounting.

The fourth core component, Financial Contract Accounting (FICA), delivers specialized sub-ledger accounting postings. Tailored to the needs of enterprises with substantial transaction volumes, FICA ensures precise and efficient accounting operations.

Supplementary Solutions

In addition to these foundational components, SAP BRIM offers supplementary solutions that further enhance the breadth and depth of its capabilities. Examples of these solutions include SAP Convergent Mediation (CM) by DigitalRoute, Revenue Accounting and Reporting (RAR), as well as SAP Entitlement Management Solutions (EMS).

SAP Convergent Mediation by DigitalRoute facilitates the collection, transformation and loading of consumption data and is designed to handle high volume of data. It helps with enrichment and aggregation of data from the usage metering systems and distributing it to other SAP BRIM modules through its native integration capabilities.

BRIM integrates with Revenue Accounting and Reporting, enabling clients to manage revenue recognition in a process that involves identifying contracts and performance obligations, allocating the contractual price, and posting the revenue. Through contract accounting, RAR is powered by three primary data types (order items, fulfillment items, and invoice items) to help users comply with evolving International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and meet existing requirements.

SAP Entitlement Management provides full visibility into what your customers are entitled for, as well as what has been consumed through automated triggers. This enhances lifecycle administration, ultimately reducing overall revenue leakage through standard integration with BRIM.

Based on business requirements, customers have the flexibility to incorporate functional components or supplementary solutions that align best with your objective for achieving success.

SAP BRIM stands out as a versatile and comprehensive solution for managing complex billing, revenue, and invoicing processes. Its flexibility, integration capabilities, customer-centric features, and alignment with industry trends make it a compelling contender for businesses seeking a forward-looking solution to their revenue management needs. By utilizing SAP BRIM, companies can achieve increased efficiency, improved customer satisfaction, and secure a significant competitive advantage in the market.