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04 AugBusinessSAPTechnology

Usage-Based Billing: What Businesses need to know

The marketplace is evolving rapidly, and businesses are leaving no stone unturned to remain ahead of their competition. Usage-based billing is playing a key role in transforming many businesses that have already started leveraging its benefits. Offering precise, customized, and responsive services to your customers can be a game changer specially when it comes to the pricing and billing options you are offering to your customers.

A lot of companies are rapidly moving towards adapting and utilizing the usage/ consumption-based billing model to meet the demand of their customers. It introduces a pricing model that can attract a wide range of customers, irrespective of their product line or where a business stands in terms of its growth.

Why Usage-based Billing?

Why is usage-based billing becoming imperative, and why are SaaS companies increasingly adopting a usage-based revenue model? Honest answer to this question is – the benefits it offers to its customers. It opens a wider customer base for business and is a sort of win-win for both customers and the companies.

In simple words, it allows your customers to enjoy the much-needed flexibility when it comes to their budgets; and at the same time, you are also holding themselves responsible for how much they end up using your product.

Benefits of Usage-based Billing 

Usage-based pricing does not have the straightforward and accurate price offerings for its customers like flat-rate billing, etc., but it does come with a lot of business benefits. Here is the list –

1. Allows the customer to start at a low cost, minimizing friction.

2. Directly links the price paid with the value received.

3. Allows more users to access the product within an account, making the software more ubiquitous and seeding new use cases.

4. Provides businesses with the agility to anticipate in the future, requirements of its customers.

5. While the usage is being metered, businesses can easily track and analyze usage data for the product or service.

6. Provide the customers with options/choices that are aligned with their perceived value of any product or service.

7. On-demand product availability that attracts more potential customers

8. Get the flexibility to offer different combinations of services to increase revenue streams.

9. Overall, it is a flexible, easy to use and comes with several customer benefits.

Why Usage based billing is even better than One-time sales or Subscription Model?

There are three types of monetization models that businesses generally follow –

  • one-time
  • subscription
  • consumption/usage

Out of the three models mentioned above, the consumption or usage-based model comes with the widest range of monetization options. The one-time sale option provides exactly what the name says (a one-time purchase/transaction), on the other hand, subscription model offers a fixed recurring rate irrespective of what is or is not used. But the consumption model or usage-based billing model is the most feasible of all the options and can work for a variety of different options, thus significantly increasing the number of offerings available for the customers and help businesses in reaching maximum revenue numbers.

When the fixed rate subscriptions are combined with flexible usage-based pricing, it results in the form consumption or usage-based model. This model allows the business to take advantage of a recurring fee and provides them a special ability with the help of which they can charge for overages and increase revenue while any product or service is being used or consumed.

Minimize Business challenges with a usage-based model

To take full benefits of usage-based model, it is important to work on the most common roadblocks that businesses might face in strategizing, GTM, and finance. Here are a few questions in each category which any business should understand to fully leverage the advantage of usage-based model –

Strategy & Pricing:

– Is usage-based pricing the right revenue model for us?

– Did we pick the right usage-based value metric?

– What if customers do not like paying based on usage?

– How do we handle overages?

GTM Strategy

– What should be the role of self-service, sales, and customer success?

– How do we navigate sales comp?

– How do we grow adoption and usage?

Finance & Operations

– Is usage revenue valued differently than subscription?

– How do we handle billing?

– How do we handle financial planning with volatile revenue?

– How do we handle cash management and rev rec?

Choose usage-based metric that meets the following criteria:

1. Value-based – Aligns with how customers derive value from your product and how they see success. Helps you communicate your unique product value.

2. Flexible – Allows the customer to choose and pay for their exact scope of usage. Helps overcome buying constraints and budget thresholds.

3. Scalable – Generates more, spend from a customer over time as they use more of the product. Revenue scales naturally with customer growth

4. Predictable – Provides billing and budget predictability for customers large and small.

5. Feasible – Possible for you to monitor, administer, and police with your customers. Tracks with your COGS so that you do not have consistently unprofitable customers.

What are the 5 Financial Metrics that businesses should mainly focus on –

  • Revenue
  • Remaining performance obligations (RPO)
  • Billings
  • Dollar-based net expansion
  • Active customer accounts

Major challenges of shifting to usage-based billing model –

Shifting your business to usage-based billing comes with its own set of risks and difficulties – from how you execute it in your business subscription plans, to whether your customer is taking the change kindly or not. Here are a few major challenges that you as a business need to overcome to move successfully to a usage-based pricing model –

Picking the right pricing model for your business:

A simple way to understand whether the usage-based pricing is an correct model for your business is to contemplate your company costs; if this remains static irrespective of the number of customers using the service, then usage-based billing model may not be right fit for your business.

Therefore, the usage-based billing is most suitable for businesses working on SaaS, cloud and data. This is because of the higher costs generated by increased usage, and the comfort of metering such digital services.

Convincing your customers

While moving to a usage-based billing model, you might face some challenges from your customers, especially when you have started to charge them for a service that you once offered for free.

Now it is up to you, that’s how you convince your customers in understanding that this change is worthwhile, and they will be offered with a lot of its benefits once they start using it. If you as a business fail to effectively articulate this, then your customers might not be okay with the shift. Your business might also experience an increase in customer churn. At this stage only you will be able to identify how effective your customer communications strategies are and also who are your loyal and trustworthy customer.

Predicting your revenues

You must be prepared for unpredictable revenues at the time you bill your customers if you are looking forward to implementing usage-based billing.

A lot of subscription-based businesses forecast their revenues on the basis of Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) but forecasting your revenue with usage-based pricing model is a little more difficult. One thing that further complicates this is the variable cost of delivering the service; if your expenditure is bound to customer usage, then your associated costs will fluctuate with that usage too.

Billing your customers

Businesses need to have a best recurring billing system for collecting user consumption data and then further charging them timely and most importantly in a transparent way. Subscription businesses must be able to map and collate usage data from many different systems and sources, irrespective of its format, to track usage and apply right pricing. This is where executing and integrating a robust charging and billing system is important. It helps in streamlining the payment processes and produce itemised invoices.

Conclusion 

Usage based pricing/business model is a very effective way to improve business performance. However, billing for usage-based pricing model comes with a lot of difficulties too. This is where Acuiti Labs with its vast experience in ‘consume to cash’ can help the companies in transforming their business model.

Contact us to know how our technical expertise in SAP BRIM can be the right choice for your business?

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28 JulBusinessSAPTechnology

Yet another success, yet another solution on SAP Store by Acuiti Labs – AcuitiPay

After successfully launching AcuitiMobi – A mobility-as-a-service app for public transport published on SAP Store, Acuiti Labs’ another SAP BRIM/Billing based application is now available on SAP Store. AcuitiPay – An application based on BRIM technology for connected vehicles is successfully published on SAP Store and available for businesses to download. This app provides world’s first end-to-end payment, billing, subscription, and data management platform for the connected vehicle. This is a new technology app capable of working with partners from the automotive, telecom, and insurance industries (among others) designed to assist the drivers and brings together a wide range of potentially useful functions into one easy-to-use platform.  AcuitiPay brings together all the services that drivers need into one easy-to-use platform such as:

  • Fuel and charging  
  • Roadside / accidents  
  • Parking and Tolls  
  • Insurance 
  • Vehicle Accessories  
  • Maintenance and repairs  
  • Wi-Fi and streaming media  
  • Food and Beverages  
  • Vehicle Financing & Leasing  
Key Features of the AcuitiPay –  
  • Enterprise-grade, worldwide, cross-industry solution  
  • Able to support B2C and B2B transaction volumes & complexities  
  • Future-Proof monetization capabilities of subscription and usage-based business models with agility  
  • Real-time consumer Data Management with GDPR  
  • Configuration based enablement not coding  
  • Industry-leading rating and charging engine  
  • Billing and Invoicing, Outcome-based, Event-based or recurring subscriptions  
  • Track every change to any of the customer’s subscriptions at any period of time during the usage  
  • Overcharging or underpayment is eliminated with precise billing processes  
  • Customers can buy or contract any service from anywhere, at any time with the best possible terms  

Customer benefits of using AcuitiPay –  

  • Enable quick, convenient, one-click payment for services, making driver’s life easier  
  • Single Sign-on “Market-place” experience  
  • Multi-national, multi-currency, taxation, and languages capability  

AcuitiPay uses SAP BRIM backend –  

SAP BRIM (Billing and Revenue Innovation Management) helps users/customers in replacing and revolutionizing the entire traditional billing process. The automated billing solution enables the business to manage the billing process flexibly and efficiently. The entire offer-to-cash business process can be mapped along with the usage-based or recurring price models – keeping a track of entire quotations to the billing and evaluation of the services used, right from consumption, billing, invoicing, and receivables management.  

AcuitiPay revs up the ease and convenience of its connected vehicle platform by using SAP Technology in the following way:  

  • Customer requirements can be implemented better and faster, reducing the overall processing time and cost.   
  • High volume and usage-based data can be processed with high performance efficiently.  
  • Pricing, billing, and invoicing of a wide variety of services.  
  • Reduce deployment time to introduce new services for connected cars.  
  • Integrate efficiently innovative services from third-party providers.  
  • Flexible handling of revenue-sharing models  
  • High transparency/traceability of the entire billing process  
  • Monitor numerous recurring subscriptions/recurring revenue metrics with ease  
  • Manage multiple subscription orders in real-time   
  • Enable various billing schedules (monthly, quarterly, annually)  
  • Drivers can make use of the variety of services under one single platform.   
  • Pay-per-use and auto-renewal services with minimal investment.  
  • Enable quick, convenient, one-click payment for services  
  • Collate billable items accurately and avoid missed consumed items.  
  • Onboard partners’ existing services, offerings, and loyalty programs seamlessly.  

Now count on your driving experience with AcuitiPay. While drivers get choose AcuitiPay, they get numerous services that they might need during their journey.  

Get ready for the Hassle-free ride with AcuitiPay. Contact us today! Check out more details about AcuitiPay on SAP Store – https://bit.ly/2Y4aiHH

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22 JunBusinessSAPTechnology

The wait is over! AcuitiMobi is now available on SAP Store

The much-awaited MaaS application which will enable account-based travel instead of old school ticket-based travel – AcuitiMobi is now available on SAP Store!

Acuiti Labs is proud to announce the launch of its very new application AcuitiMobi. The primary aim of this new age, mobility-as-a-service application is to enable account-based travel and to resolve critical challenges that commuters face while using public transport. Customers can register and easily plan and execute their journeys with this sophisticated application. It integrates various means of transport that an induvial use while travelling like train, car, bus, taxi, bike sharing, tram etc.

This is an on-demand solution for public transport users which works in real-time and offers complete flexibility to its customers. Being an account-based, customer-centric platform, it brings in a lot of options to make the entire journey hassle-free and allow commuters to plan and use the multi-modal transport seamlessly. It offers on-demand capability for individuals to buy entitlements, subscriptions and passes. Basically, providing complete support to a user while they choose different combination of transport to reach to their destination.

AcuitiMobi – Transforming public transport.

Change the way commuters use public transport with AcuitiMobi! There are several ways in which AcuitiMobi is transforming public transport for commuters.

Provide your commuters with an innovative way to use Public Transport while they use AcuitiMobi. The app comes with very simple navigation choices which can guide its users to choose the required multi-modal transport options as per their convenience and make their journeys efficient and enjoyable. It has everything that a user needs for an effortless & stress-free traveling experience. Right from the user’s travel plan to easy payment options, all this is included in AcuitiMobi app.

The primary purpose of this mobility as a service application by Acuiti Labs is to offer its customers account-based travel, with complete flexibility and payment options. This app will change the way people consume mobility by integrating all forms of transport, like taxi, trains, bike, etc. with the unique feature “pay-as-you-go” option!

Unique Combination of Mobility as a Service and SAP BRIM

While you choose AcuitiMobi, you get the freedom of choosing subscription-based or consumptions based billing options, hassle-free travelling experience and a comfortable journey while using public transportation. The combination of MaaS and SAP BRIM at Acuiti Labs opens several options for its customers. Acuiti Labs is an SAP Certified Silver Partner and offers accelerated implementation services for SAP BRIM, Subscription Billing, Entitlement management, and more. Our experience and competency in ‘mobility as a service’ market can help businesses that are looking for transformation and adoption of a new way of mobility by providing clear view and a complete road map to move ahead in the same direction.

Mobility as a Service and SAP BRIM

Customer benefits of using AcuitiMobi –

  • Account based travel rather than ticket based travel
  • Easy pre-book, subscription or consumption based ‘pay-as-you-go’ model
  • Provide smarter and efficient platform to use city transport.
  • Inbuilt features like smart route planning, personalized user-experience, flexible payment choices, and QR code integration.
  • It is based on S/4HANA BRIM technology, thus offering innovative way to use public transportation.
Checkout all the details about the app on SAP STORE
sap store
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07 AprBusinessSAP

All that you need to know about SAP CPQ and its importance for businesses today

CPQ stands for Configure, Price, Quote. It is software designed to ease the complexities of the sales team by enabling it to generate quotes quickly and accurately for complex products. Each part of the abbreviation represents a key component of the modern sales process:

· Configure: Almost all businesses today are familiar with the old business mantra that says “The customer is the king” — Well, the same mantra is applicable for businesses to succeed even today. Customer’s demand has become specific, and they now expect products and services that can be tailored based on their specific requirements. The precise requirement of personalized products and services from the customers would keep the sales team on their toes to configure and offer custom packages. The sales reps will be responsible to manage and figure out which products and services should be bundled, whether these bundles need to be approved, and what will be the process of getting these bundles delivered to the end customers. This is when the – “Configure” from CPQ comes into picture and helps your reps in simplifying any complexities and confusion that might occur during the process.

· Price: Being a business of modern era, you cannot afford to go with the outdated option of “one-size-fits-all” pricing model. This type of pricing model certainly cannot be followed for today’s customers and, is also not too realistic when it comes to SaaS sales. No matter your business deals with high-volume pricing, bundled pricing or any other kind of pricing which would also include special discounts or offers, you will be dealing with overwhelming number of facts and figures and you will have to keep a track of the same. Here, even a smallest miscalculation can cost you a valuable customer, which you as a business would never want. This option helps you in offering right pricing model to the customers based on the required configuration already done.

· Quote: A quote that is being generated by the sales team must be clear and precise. Not only the quote should look professional, but it is also required to be clearer, precise and must accurately show the price quoted to the customer by a representative during the sales cycle. Also, most of the time a quote needs to be accompanied by various other documents like SOW, Legal, MSA to name a few. CPQ offers a fully configurable solution where all types of documents and templates can be generated and managed and can be used by the sales reps as and when they need.

How does CPQ software work?

Using a CPQ software allows your sales teams to address various challenges that are faced during different stages of the sales cycle. This is done through a combination of process automation, guided selling, and quote management.

When you decide to choose CPQ tool along with subscription management software, you can easily automate complete quote-to-cash process. The automation of the process is done by configuring rules for bulk discounts, approvals, customizations, and more. Whenever any sales process is initiated by a sales rep, CPQ plays an important role and ensures that the entire process is carried out within the specific set of rules that your business has decided and has established for pricing, discounting, approvals, and so on. This determines that your sales team is even more agile and can perfectly streamline the entire sales cycle as per your customer’s requirement.

While you decide to choose SAP CPQ services from Acuiti Labs, you can easily bridge the gap between your front-end sales and back-office finance teams. CPQ can be called a sales tool, which is lot more capable and is not very different from a customer relationship management (CRM) system. It comprises of various things like discounts, contract terms, and billing terms, which are considered closely related to an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution. That is why, it previously mentioned that CPQ is known for filling the gap that exists between CRM and ERP systems, thus allowing a higher degree of interdepartmental collaboration and making it possible to expand your stakeholder set.

Benefits of choosing SAP CPQ software for your business

There are several advantages of using SAP CPQ software. Listed below are the few of them – Check this infographic to know more

· Never lose a sale due to bad information – Let us take an example to explain this scenario in detail. Suppose a prospect tells one of your sales reps that they are willing to buy two different software licenses, but they would those to purchase as a bundle at a discount. The sales rep initially tells the customer that their requirement can be fulfilled and submits the bundle for approval, only for getting the approval to be denied. The sales rep then goes back to the customer and inform them that contrary to their previous commitment, they will not be able to bundle the products and loses the sale as a result. But when you use SAP CPQ, you can easily prevent this scenario from happening by building in automated business rules and logic — A system with CPQ solution, would have automatically indicated that product bundle was not allowed or could not be done, and the sales rep could have worked with the prospect to find a different solution to this unique business challenge.

· Having a better understanding of customers through guided selling – Your organization’s success largely depends on the way how well your sales reps are able to connect with your customers. Better understanding of your customer’s requirements will always allow you to evolve and offer better service each time. Though a lot depends on what information you are collecting and what questions you are asking. More accurate is the information you collect from your customers, better will be the offerings based on your customers specific needs. SAP CPQ solutions uses guided selling to learn about the customers by targeting specific questions and evaluate itself based on their exact requirements. Once it collects the information, your CPQ solution can automatically produce recommendations customized based on your customer’s specific needs. Another advantage of using guided selling for a business is that it helps your sales team in identifying upselling and cross-selling opportunities. For example, A CPQ Software, based on guided selling can specify a particular software package opted by a large number of customers, which the sales team can further recommend to other customers and increase the sales and revenue for the business.

· Minimizing the complexities and generate quotes with ease – Most SaaS companies have a complex price book, with multiple pricing tiers and dependencies for each tier. Guided selling uses the same business logic and rules mentioned earlier to help both sales teams and customers make sense of these intricate pricing structures by automatically updating the quote as products and services are added. Since everything is done through automation, you can eliminate the risk of human error and ensure more accurate, consistent pricing.

· Streamline the sales cycle – A good SAP CPQ software for your business can help you in eliminating most of the manual data entry and errors linked to these, thereby shortening the sales cycle. CPQ solutions are constantly getting better and are becoming even more sophisticated in with time. It is very likely that the average sales cycle for CPQ is getting shorter and more reorganized with time.

· Increase sales team performance – The performance of any sales team is quantified only through the data and the performance metrics, and the businesses where the sales teams are using CPQ solutions have already shown promising results. “According to the Aberdeen Group, CPQ adopters consistently report higher attainment of sales quotas, higher lead conversion rates, higher average numbers of proposals delivered, and higher average deal size than non-CPQ users, as shown in the table below. CPQ makes it easier for sales reps to identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities, thereby increasing their average deal size.” CPQ solutions also helps in streamlining the ordering process for complex products/services that our organization offer — even enabling customers to generate quotes and place orders on their own, making customers more likely to complete their orders.

· Gain better control over quote document generation – Many organizations that are using CPQ solutions can generate quote documents including custom components and company branding, which is also the requirement of today’s business. When your sales reps produce a quote document that is not only precise and easy to understand but visually pleasing and professional, your business is going to create a lasting first impression and will also guarantee a better overall customer experience.

How to understand that your business needs an SAP CPQ solution?

Deciding whether you should buy CPQ software is not exactly what you need to know; having said that, there are a few key pointers that can make you know that CPQ might be a smart investment for your business. Here are few reasons that can help you in identifying the requirement of CPQ for your business-

1. If your business offers any product or service that has got complicated pricing model, using CPQ not only simplifies the entire pricing and billing model for your customers but also helps you in offering accurately tailored products/services at the best possible price.

2. If you have a product and service, you think is outdated and/or you are looking for a way to update your pricing information.

3. If a lot of time is being consumed by your sales team is putting together a quote for your customers. Or, if they are stuck in difficult pricing or configuring Scenarios that are creating confusion for your customers.

4. If your sales team is struggles to identify upselling and cross-selling opportunities and you are losing valuable customers because of this, then CPQ can be a savior for your business.

5. If your sales team do not have complete transparency and you are lacking visibility through your sales process

6. If your sales team is dealing with a lot of manual errors during the process, CPQ can fully automate the process and help you in eliminating such errors that can cost you your valuable customers.

7. If you are lacking in offering right quotations to your customers and your offered quotes are also unable to meet the demands of your customers, then it is high time you should choose an SAP CPQ software for your business.

8. You are looking to switch to usage-based billing capabilities, CPQ is going the most appropriate business solution for you.

Why Choose Acuiti Labs for CPQ Services –

Choosing right CPQ partner for your business is very important. While you choose Acuiti Labs as your Configure Price Quote Partner, you are helping your sales teams in delivering best in market customized service, and user experiences. All this is possible because of competitive pricing, clear and conscience proposals, and a variety of product congurations we help you with. Our end-to-end CPQ solution speed up the sales cycle for you and allows your reps to effortlessly sell through any channel at any time, improving the overall performance and efficiency of your business.

Basically, if your organization is looking for options to improve the sales process that can help you in configuring products and services in the most appropriate manner, manage all kind of pricing complexities, and help you in automating the complete quote process, then our customized SAP CPQ solution is all that your business need.

Acuiti Labs can help businesses with top-notch CPQ solutions for clients from various industries like Hi-tech, Finance, Media and entertainment, technology, manufacturing, and retail/service industries to achieve their business sales goal. If you would like more information on why SAP’s CPQ technology from Acuiti Labs is right for you, get in touch with our certified SAP Consultant and we’d love to tailor a solution for you just the way you want!

 

 

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08 MarBusinessSAP

Digital transformation programs across ‘Consume / Lead to Cash’ using advanced SAP Solutions for 2021

SAP innovations/solutions have made a significant change in the way businesses operate, helping run them more efficiently and smoothly. The ever-growing customer demand, flexibility, and agility are the key unpredictable market challenges for any business today. If you are still confused about why to choose SAP technology, or whether your business require SAP Solutions or not; Here are a few reasons to clear all such doubts in your mind

SAP Solutions – When and where should you consider these

Scalable solutions : If your business is ready to expand and requires additional resources, SAP Solutions is the best way to facilitate the growth of your business.

Improved productivity : With real-time analysis, transparency of SAP Solutions helps employees to work more efficiently, solve customer queries faster thus saving time and increasing productivity.

Flexibility : With increasing customer demand, SAP Solutions can be tailored to meet the unique requirements of the business.

Streamlined and automated business processes – SAP Solutions are capable of automating the entire end-to-end order to cash management to ease the complexities of billing and invoicing procedures. This will help in increasing the productivity and efficiency of businesses.

Here are some of the SAP Solutions you can look forward to start with in 2021

SAP Billing (BRIM)

SAP BRIM, previously known as SAP Hybris Billing, is an end-to-end cross-industry solution that includes Subscription Order Management, SAP Convergent Charging, SAP Convergent Invoicing, and Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable as individual module/components.

Subscription Order Management : Aimed with the purpose to maintain subscription contracts and maintain catalogs to ensure easy order and contract management. Manage your customers by addressing contract charges, renewals, order distribution, contact management, product catalog, and offer management.

SAP Convergent Charging : SAP Convergent Charging is a tool that is used to evaluate the consumption as per the flexible rate structure. Apart from usage, it also offers support for recurring and one-time charges.

SAP Convergent Invoicing : This process is linked to convergent charging, where the storage and aggregation of billable items, billable item details, invoice creation, and invoicing the customer is handled.

Contract Accounts Receivables and Payables : This is the last component of SAP BRIM that provides highly automated receivables and payments handling and provides the agent with a broad view of customer financial data.

Benefits offered by SAP BRIM:

  • Cutback on revenue leakage
  • Decrease in billing cost
  • Cutback on offer management cost

SAP Subscription Billing Cloud

Subscription Billing Management gives rise to modern and simplified order-to-cash cycles. The cloud-based solution will help the sales reps monitor order and automate the order fulfilment process across multiple systems to work more profitably in a complex partner ecosystem. SAP Subscription Billing Cloud helps businesses in delivering the right mix of subscriptions, enable product, and service bundling to create personalized offers. It also delivers usage-based charges.

The main features of SAP Subscription Billing are subscription order management, mediation, charging, and billing. Along with this the benefits offered by the solution are:

1. Simplified purchase-to-billing cycle

Quick processing: A better way to create the right mix of subscription product and services.

Automated: Can be integrated with multiple systems for order fulfilment.

Monitoring: Monitoring can be done from the initial level up to the activation of the subscription.

2. Customer experience

Convergence: It focuses on selling outcomes and user experience.

Management: It makes the use of customer usage data to quickly iterate offers.

Transparency: The billing process is transparent & simple enough to solve disruptions

SAP Entitlement Management

SAP Entitlement Management comes into the picture when organizations have to implement and execute new business models. With SAP Entitlement management you can manage any number of entitlements your customer has the right to use. SAP Entitlement management is developed from SAP Cloud Platform and can be deployed on various system architecture.

It consists of 3 main models:

1. Entitlement Modelling

2. Entitlement Lifecycle Management

3. Entitlement Repository

Why choose SAP Entitlement Management?

Increase sales and revenue: Gain new customers with flexible subscription-based business models that empower sales. Streamline with an intelligent entitlement management system that reduces the revenue lost to unauthorized usage of subscriptions.

Deliver improved customer experience: With a wide range of self-service options, customers will have transparency over their entitlements leading to improved customer satisfaction.

Reduce cost: Improved customer support opportunities with automated and standardized entitlement and reporting.

SAP Configure, Price and Quote (CPQ)

Implementing SAP Configure, Price and Quote solution enables sales reps to respond more quickly to customer inquiries and consequently help them get in touch with customers and to close deals faster.

What do you see as the benefits of SAP CPQ?

Efficiency: With the help of SAP CPQ, you can speed up the process of the sales cycle which increases the efficiency of sales. It can support quoting for internal sales, partners, agents, and distributors when integrated with common CRM platforms.

Increased customer satisfaction: SAP CPQ easily supports complex quoting for a variety of industries, helping implement highly complex and rules-based pricing and discounting scenarios and schemes. With the document generator in SAP CPQ, quotations are easy to comprehend, and if there are change requests, these can be implemented quickly.

Reduce cost: The preparation of proposals is a time-consuming process. Sales reps can manage quotations of subscription-based products and maintain current client assets within the SAP CPQ application, automating the selling of the right product. This will intern help to save time and reduce costs.

SAP Contract lifecycle management (CLM)

CLM systems assist businesses in contract management by establishing a centralized and authoritative repository of contracts, and renewals of contracts.

Few reasons why you may need a Contract Lifecycle Management solution:

Track compliance: A major issue in many contracts is compliance and ensuring it from suppliers can be time-consuming and difficult. Any organization with poor contract management will likely suffer from cost inefficiencies.

With SAP CLM, organisations can comply with the agreed terms and have opportunities to save on the cost from special terms.

Increase contract cycle efficiencies: The traditional contract cycle takes a while to complete. A CLM platform can identify opportunities where you can save money, improve delivery, and reduce cycle time so that the contact managers can take advantage of it.

Deliver great value to customers and suppliers: Contracts are one of the most important documents and the way these are managed reflects directly on your organization. Exceeding customer expectations through proper contract performance enhances businesses’ values, reliability, and credibility. CLM solution does this for you by streamlining the process through automation and digitization.

Centralized repository: A CLM platform has the ability to combine all contracts and peripheral documentation relevant to it in a central repository. Your team can be more productive and focused as the CLM solution eliminates the need to shift through paperwork manually

Application Management Services (AMS)

Availing Application management services can streamline your IT world by putting it in the hands of people who streamline your systems efficiently. If you want to turn your SAP solution into a strategic tool, you need to have the right AMS partner who has SAP expertise and an in-depth understanding of your IT infrastructure and processes. This will help your business achieve its transformation goals.

Let’s get specific about the benefits of AMS:

Freeing up the need for a large team: AMS Services will support your engineering tools and frees up people to address other issues.

Facing rigorous changes: Application management takes care of all the new applications, new features/upgrades, downgrading software that might require upgradation at any point in time. These are well organized and braced to take care of the changes automatically or as and when requested.

Measure performance: Application management being coherent and reliable, supports measuring the performance and also helps in keeping a track of other activities based on your requirement. Having performance measured in numbers, you can make sure your applications are performing as up to the mark.

Save time and money: The right AMS partner will ensure that you get the most out of your business while using SAP Solutions. This not only allows your team to focus on other strategic activities but also saves a lot of time and money.

The SAP team at Acuiti Labs mainly focuses on providing: deployment flexibility, demand-driven consumption, and value-added services making sure you can keep going on the technology curve.

SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP)

Let’s get specific about the benefits of SAP Business Technology Platform:

SAP BTP is an easy to use platform that provides companies with the ease and flexibility to quickly adapt the changing business scenarios. The SAP Business Technology Platform helps its customers in becoming an intelligent enterprise through integration, extension, and data-to-value from all SAP and third-party application and data assets, while ensuring that the customers’ long-term success through agility, value-creation and continual innovation. It is both a strategy and a portfolio of cloud integrated solutions.

SAP Sales Cloud

SAP Sales Cloud is the full-blown SAP CRM solution for your sales. With SAP Sales Cloud businesses can better manage customer relationships, recognize sales opportunities in due time, and sustainably increases sales volumes. You can have an eye on everything in sales as the SAP Sales Cloud provides you with highly cross-linked and up-to-date data. It empowers sales reps with intelligent recommendations to sell their best anytime, anywhere, and on any device. While also reducing the overall length of the sales cycle, it also creates an opportunity for the sales reps to build a better relationship with the customer.

Benefits of using SAP Sales Cloud:

  • Makes data available on both desktops and mobile devices.
  • Increase in sales volume as it helps in the exact identification of customer needs.
  • Efficiently manage leads and sales opportunities.
  • Real-time analytics of customer data
  • Automation and streamlining of quotation, discount, and price.
  • Target planning and sales forecasting.

Revenue Recognition

The motive behind building the RevSym solution was to address the challenges posed by ASC 606 and IFRS 15. Organizations make use of RevSym solution to work efficiently and effectively, automating the process of consolidating data from multiple systems and delivering real-time GAAP reporting. It helps automate the five steps of ASC 606 and real-time disclosure reporting.

The Five Steps of ASC 606 and Real-Time Disclosure Reporting

1. Identify contracts

Identify revenue contracts through system configuration based on your existing system and processes. Make sure that you allow your user to manually group transactions into contacts.

2. Identify performance obligations

Make use of various attributes to automatically identify contract performance obligations. Hold rules for each performance obligation.

3. Determine the transaction price

With the help of aggregating historical data, estimate the dollar value of all your variable across contracts.

4. Allocate the transaction price to the performance obligation

Standalone selling price estimator will tell you about the automated revenue by looking at the historical data, cost, customer type, and so on.

5. Recognize revenue

Get real-time visibility into revenue waterfalls and liability account balances with configurable reports and automate revenue recognition with performance obligation rules.

Benefits that revenue recognition provides

1. Automate ASC 606 and IFRS 15 accounting

Revenue recognition consists of a simple setup, accounting policies, and rules. It includes configurable, real-time disclosure reports.

2. Accelerate period close and increase compliance

With the help of revenue recognition, we can shorten the financial close cycle while enabling accurate, timely, and automated rule-based revenue recognition and cost accounting.

3. Configure accounting policies with ease

Revenue recognition produces real-time disclosure reports in accordance with the new standards that empower business users.

SAP S/4 HANA

We can say that SAP S/4 HANA is SAP’s most successful ERP System. It’s a path leading to a next-generation, digitalized business platform, allowing you to experience better performance as it relates to complex and time-driven business activities.

Here are some significant benefits you can look forward to:

Performance: SAP S/4 HANA allows you to experience better performance as it allows you to plan, execute, and generate reports & analytics based on live data, as well as prompt period closing and improved forecasting. Besides, it enables organizations to provide better service for customer-centric applications.

Agility: SAP S/4 HANA is completely SAP Fiori driven. It enables users to easily access overview pages, worklists, and list reports, making the user-friendly rendition of real-time business insights and intelligence on any mobile device a business advantage.

Simplicity: SAP S/4 HANA simplification reflects in management and administration of the IT landscape. The hardware and network resources have never been so centralized before.

Innovation: SAP S/4 HANA applications leverage the speed, context, and data accessibility like never before to make sure enterprises stay ahead of the curve and make decisions that are future-ready.

Cost-effectiveness: As far as cost efficiency is considered S/4HANA is a cost-efficient option when you consider the fact that you can combine all the analytical and transactional capabilities of different systems into a single source.

How Acuiti Labs can help you with these solutions?

We are a leading Consulting firm on SAP BRIM and Consume to Cash business process offering solutions to deal with all kinds of billing challenges. With big four consulting experience in delivering process optimization and business transformation programs across industries like Telco, Media, Travel, Logistics, Ports, Hi-tech, Utilities, etc. Acuiti Labs delivers exceptional experiences that exceed client’s expectations.

Each year comes with new advancements in technology and to stay ahead in the competition you need to choose the right solution for your business. We at Acuiti Labs advise businesses on how they can leverage SAP solutions to deliver their business requirements and work with clients to deploy, upgrade, and maintain their chosen solutions.

SAP Solutions have already turned out to be a game-changer for businesses in the past few years and is definitely going to play an important role in defining the success rate of business growth in 2021. Are you planning to use one of the SAP Solutions listed? Get a quote  – www.acuitilabs.com

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08 JanBusinessSAP

Why Debt Management is so pertinent for Businesses today?

Do you know with continuing economic slowdown and increasing unemployment, household incomes have been squeezed making it difficult for companies to manage debt.

At the same time, Liberlization & intensifying competition in various markets have posed risk for companies. This is why Debt Management is considered to be really important for businesses today. It is interesting to understand how companies with larger customer base like Utilities, Telecom etc. can be innovative in managing their debt. And how SAP is the right choice?

Let’s go into the details of these question! Companies in Utilities, Telecom, etc. businesses work on the process of capturing consumption and raising bills for their customers. Once these bills are generated, they are sent to the customers giving them a certain period of time to pay the dues. Problem arises when customer do not or cannot pay the due amount in time. This is where companies have to following up with the customers. Challenge with the business process is that due will not become a ‘debt’ until the due date has been traced.

Let’s understand this with an example. Assume that there is a bill with due date of November 25. If the bill remains unpaid, companies will begin the follow up process only after November 25. This follow up with customer over unpaid dues through various channels is part of Debt Management and termed as Collection Strategy.

With millions of customers and invoices to be traced daily, the process requires a robust and efficient tool. This is where SAP provides a powerful tool capable of identifying unpaid customer and invoices, segmenting based on various attributes and perform reminder activities .

So, for Debt management, we use SAP Collection Strategy with BRFPLUS.

Understanding SAP Collection Strategy with BRFPLUS

Based on Business requirement, Collection Strategies are defined in SAP system for different segment of customers. These strategies when executed retrieved all attributes defined in BRFPLUS for each customer to decide the Next Best Action.

When due becomes Debt!

When in a customer account, due becomes debt, the automated process identifies the overdue invoices and how long they have been overdue. All such customers are placed in a defaulter list and this is where debt follow-up beings. Based on parameters like days in arrear, amount of debt, credit profile, last follow-up actions; the list is segmented and the next best action is identified for each customer.

SAP Collection Strategy with BRFPLUS provides a platform which can scale the solution to include dynamically calculated parameters based on mathematical formulas and even can call Function Modules.

Sending Reminder Messages

Next Best Action for Debt Management can range from sending reminder message through text, email to posting charges to performing remote disconnection if customer is not paying of their debt. The most common way that companies follow is to send reminder messages to such customers. If the customer still does not make the payment then, the company decide to send letter or email  warning them about the debt, and also the late charges (if applied). This sequence of steps are known as the collection step.

Simplified process with web-based user friendly UI

SAP Collection Strategy with BRFPLUS also offers a web based user friendly UI which enables Business to take control of the strategy changes. Any change to an existing strategy or creation of a new strategy is now no more an IT change. It also allows running multiple strategies to perform Champion-Challenger & do success valuation to identify which strategy is performing better.

Various option available to ensure changes made by Business in the strategy are risk free like simulation run after strategy change or running the changed strategy on a subset (%) of customer base helps Business check if changes made are aligned to their expectation else can be reverted back to existing version.

Seamless integration with 3rd party Debt Collection Agencies

SAP Collection strategy provides seamless integration with 3rd party Debt Collection Agencies. Let’s talk about a scenario where even after using all means to correspond and remind customer of the overdue, the payment is not received. In such cases SAP allows out of box integration with 3rd party agencies specialized in debt recovery. It allows 2 way interaction where information of all such customer and their debt is passed on to the DCAs and collection or any other feedback shared by the agencies are then accepted in the system. This is an ongoing process where any change recorded on customer’s master data or debt position is informed to the DCA and DCAs either inform companies of the payment they have received or they also mark closure to case in certain scenario.

Advantages of SAP Collection Strategy

  • Robust
  • Flexible
  • User-friendly
  • Agile
  • Scalable
  • Seamless integration
  • Reduced TCO
  • No requirement of getting a new licence

SAP Collection Strategy is not only more superior than its predecessor but also offers all features which other best in breed Debt solution available in the market. With no new licences requirement and no need to maintain complex integration between Billing system & Debt Management system; reduces TCO drastically, making the solution a win-win in all respect.

Why Acuiti Labs for Debt Management?

On Debt Management transformation, Acuiti Labs has collaborated with clients across industry segments like Utilities, Telcom, Postal, Port and supported them in containing their Debt position not only by technology implementation but also by offering Industry best practices. With experts having domain experience and strong technology capability in the required field, we, Acuiti Labs, are best placed to understand your Business objective and co-create the desired solution.

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23 NovBusinessSAPTechnology

Looking for a Debt Management Solution? How SAP is the right choice?

Are you looking for a debt management solution? ‘Bad Debt’ is a term used by organisations when the user or customers do not or cannot pay their bills. It is difficult to ignore the fact that with the current economic slowdown and rising unemployment, household incomes around the world have seen a downfall, increasing the possibility of delinquency and an upsurge in bad debt charges. The ambiguities arising from global shocks such as Brexit, trade wars, and a possible recession also pose risks for utilities & similar organisations. At the same time, liberalization and intensifying competition in many markets are resulting in higher levels of switching among customers, sometimes accompanied by bad debt when final bills are not paid.

In liberalized retail markets, utilities bear full responsibility for debt collection, but their manoeuvring room in recovering the bad debt is limited by regulatory and political constraints. The focus on maintaining the best customer experience, together with service obligations and provisions such as long grace periods, protection for vulnerable groups, and winter moratoriums, makes it difficult to suspend the service even as a last resort. Public opinion and political pressure act as a further deterrent, and utility companies need to reconfirm to the public time and again that their processes are fully compliant and adhere to the highest professional standards when it comes to debt collections.

Loss of income is becoming a burden on businesses and inhibiting growth, and the situation shows no signs of improving. Sectors like Utilities, Telecom can ill afford to ignore such waste and eliminating it can generate resources to invest in future growth. In a tight economic and regulatory context, utilities need to work harder to prevent and manage bad debt if they want to stay competitive and improve their resilience. Experience shows that companies are better at weathering downturns if they have already cleaned up their credit processes and minimized overdue debt because they are able to move fast to cut costs, protect profitability, and reserve growth capacity. Thus utilities will have to take matters into their own hands. By reshaping their credit and collections processes, they can improve their ability to predict risk, reduce bad-debt charges by, and provide a better experience for customers.

Barriers & Opportunities

Data Analytics & Customer Engagement

Data Analytics isn’t all new for organisations with large customer base like Utilities, Telecom – it’s actually been around for quite some time. there are numerous utilities using – basic behavioural scoring. Analytics is a continuous improvement process to identify ever changing customer behaviour and other collections related trend. Best-practice collections strategies should use emerging trends to segment customers, targeted collection campaigns & quick adjustments to the treatment path.

Continuously improving process requires the ability to monitor the effectiveness of the strategies, performance of customer segment & other relevant KPIs. In addition, advanced data analysis using metrics and trend displays, and collection control dashboards that illustrate KPIs such as status of overdue receivables and corresponding collections actions, will provide the necessary business intelligence to adapt and extend collections activities.

Various trends where Analytics can support Debt Management –

  • Reactive Collection vs Proactive Measures
  • Customer Segmentation: Can’t pay, won’t pay….forgot to pay
  • Customer Behaviour: Payment pattern, preferred mode of payment, initiative customer reacts to
  • Predictive Analysis
  • Identifying right strategy, right action for customer
  • Insight for the next strategy iteration

SAP Analytics Cloud is one simple cloud solution connecting your people, information, and ideas to enable fast and confident decision making. Machine learning technology and embedded artificial intelligence help you to discover deep insights, simplify access to critical information, and empower informed decision making for all.

Developed for real-time BI, planning and predictive analytics that natively integrates to SAP, the solution can predict when proactive action is required, something typically difficult for companies to do. The accelerated value is in enhancing organization’s ability to collect cash and improving its insight into profitability indicators. It also leverages SAC content to seamlessly integrate with SAP data and SAP S/4HANAÂŪ. Advanced predictive analytics becomes the quiet driver behind dynamic operational, tactical and strategic dashboards that have been designed with SAP Fiori for a uniform and modern user experience.

Removing system Barrier

There is a basic understanding in industries like Utility, Telecom on the concepts of collections best practices, but almost all organisation lack the technology to be able to adopt best practices. Traditionally, collections have been the technology domain of the Organisation’s customer information system (CIS). Many companies struggle with weak and restrictive collections functionality in an aging CIS. Others may have a relatively new CIS in place that boasts adequate collections support but is missing key features to support today’s best-practice collections processes.

Collection managers, dependent upon the CIS platform & team to manage collections processes to implement improved collection processes. Debt is not going away. There will always be customers who default on payment. But technology has caught up with the problem, and companies now have the option to implement specialist collection software products that enable best-practice approaches.

Some of the best practices followed across the globe are –

  • Rapid change cycles executed by domain experts: Analyse, Optimize, Implement
  • Strategy changes no more an IT change request
  • Scalable & Flexible when it comes to including new changes/attributes that are based on analytical trends
  • Design transparency, improved performance & integration with 3rd party DCAs
  • Offers tailored treatment based on customer segmentation
  • Allows Champion – Challenger strategy and success valuation

SAP BRIM – Financial Customer Care with Debt Management using BRF+

Business Rule Framework plus (BRFplus) provides a comprehensive application programming interface (API) and user interface (UI) for defining and processing business rules. It allows you to model rules in an intuitive way and to reuse these rules in different applications.

Flexibility in changing Business rules in Collection process enables Revenue Management team to –

  • Make their collections rules progressively more targeted, as they become more and more sophisticated with their analytics and customer segmentation
  • Add more sophisticated customer characteristics (e.g. components of credit risk scores, payment behaviour) as the data becomes more readily available
  • Adapt their rules to changing macro-economic conditions (e.g. recessions, political climates, etc) or changing customer behaviours (e.g. greater mobile use, email use)
  • Respond rapidly to unforeseen events

Leveraging BRF+ features to improve Debt Management

Scenario 1: Business running on SAP with Debt Management using legacy Dunning procedure

Debt Management using SAP’s Legacy Dunning Procedure was limited to few attributes like

  • Days in Arrear
  • Amount of Debt
  • Creditworthiness score

Combinations of these parameters were used to define levels and activities where defined as per Business need.

Debt Management with BRF+ is robust, scalable, and way ahead in its offering compared to its predecessor. It is a framework of Business rules which can use a wide range of attributes to determine the correct path for a customer.

  • Master Data
  • Transactional data
  • Derived values using formula e.g. oldest item, energy/non-energy debt
  • Function Module (data from external system/other modules/calculation of attributes not possible through formula)

Advantage of moving to Debt Management using BRF+

  • No additional licenses required
  • Whole loads of attributes to define strategy
  • Simplifies the process of identifying the right collection path, sequence for a customer based on changing payment behaviors, credit history, Debt parameter, etc.
  • Web based UI enabling Business User to control the strategy changes
  • Supports multiple strategies and at run time identifies the strategy or path to be executed on a customer
  • Supports Champion Challenger concept and reports on Success valuation of the strategies

Scenario 2: Business running on SAP but Collection strategy on 3rd Party Solutions

Because of limited functionalities offered by the Dunning procedure, many companies moved their Debt Management solution to other 3rd parties offerings. SAP too understood the need of the Businesses and introduced BRF+ for managing Debt. This has been a game changer for various organisations especially in the utilities, telecom sector who had no option but to move to 3rd party offerings.

SAP may lag on jazzy screens compared to the 3rd party solutions but on functionality offerings,  it’s no less. GUI look and feel also now has been taken care through FIORI.

The real value what Business gets using SAP Debt Management using BRF+  are

  • Simulation in system before actual batch run controlling unforeseen scenarios
  • No additional license cost
  • Huge saving on TCO as the solution is in the same SAP system.
    • Transactional
    • Data Storage
    • Annual Maintenance
  • No hassle of managing multiple real time interfaces to keep data up to date in the Debt management system
  • Improved Customer Service and savings on AVHT as Business User will have to refer to only one system for all the customer relevant information

What comes along with BRF+

BRF+ is like a container for the complete business rules and provides out of box integration with various other processes along with Debt Management. Power of BRF+ can be leveraged in

Billing and Revenue Innovation Management

  • Product
  • Discount/Charge Activation
  • Charge Plan Activation
  • Charge Plan Parameter Value Determination

Sales and Distribution

  • Output Determination

Revenue Account Reporting

  • Integration with Source System (SD, Hybris Billing, CRM, etc.)
  • Account Determination (POB Attributes, Contract Asset, Contract Liability, Recognized revenue, Deferred Cost)

Industry Solution – Utilities

Advanced Metering Infrastructure Event Management

Why Choose Acuiti Labs for your Debt Management Transformation?

Acuiti Labs is an SAP Silver partner and a digital firm that delivers business and technology consulting services, transforming businesses with pioneering and latest solutions. We have proven expertise in delivering successful SAP BRIM based transformation, thus offering complete support for your Business objective on Debt management.

When it comes to Debt Management transformation, we have collaborated with several clients across industries like Utilities, Telcom, Postal, Port and supported them in containing their Debt position not only by technology implementation but also by offering Industry best practices.

Our professional SAP experts have Big 4 consulting experience and strong technology capability in the area of SAP BRIM, Analytics, AI, Big Data, Mobile & other Cloud technology. We are best placed to understand your Business objective and co-create the required solution.

 

 

 

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30 SepBusiness

Looking for a media conversion platform? 5 reasons you should try out converter4media today

Any media file converted from one form to another is known as media conversion. Pictures, audios, videos, music, images are the common form of media and many a times users prefer changing these formats based on their requirement. Users look for options that not only deliver the files in desired format quickly but at the same time they keep safety of their file as a priority.

Why is safety of your file matter while converting online?

It is very important to understand the fact that safety of your file remains the priority whenever you look for online options to convert your file in any required format. This still depends on the sensitivity of the file. The more sensitive you think your file is, the more alert you should remain. While looking for options to convert your file, you would find both good and bad services available on the internet and it solely depends on you to identify the right one for you. A proper research is the key to get to the right platform for any file conversion requirements.

What are the different formats that can be supported by Converter4media?

This converter allows you to change image, audio and video parameters easily, making the conversion a simple process. Here is the list of different formats that are supported by Converter4media –

5 reasons why you should try file conversion platform Converter4media –

Available for free – While you use converter4media for any file conversion requirement, you get premium quality service at zero cost. C4M provides you with best output with complete security of the files being uploaded by the user’s end. So if you are looking for a reliable source to convert the file that are also not heavy on your pocket, choosing Converter4media is the absolute choice for you.

Highly Secure – Even if you get premium quality service at just no cost, you are not compromising with your safety and security anywhere. While you use Converter4media, and proceeding with media file conversion, each of your uploaded document is in the safe hand along with the converted document. Be it a single time visitor/user or you are regular visitor, the safety of each of the user will always remain the priority.

User-friendly Interface – The look and feel of the website is designed in a way that even a non-technical person can easily use it for any type of file conversion they might be looking for. The user-friendly interface of the website can easily guide the visitor through the process and help them in achieving the desired output in no time.

Conversion in 3 quick steps – Yes, it is as simple as it sounds! All you need is to just follow the three simple steps that includes uploading a file, choosing the desired format in which you want to convert the file and the last step is to just download the file in the required format and you are done. Even if the conversion steps are simple and quick, the quality of your desired document remains intact.

Works on latest technology norms – The platform is built on the latest technology and thus is capable of delivering the result in the most appropriate form. Be sure about the quality of the file format you are downloading when you use Converter4media.

Converter4media is an easy to use online media file conversion platform with utmost safety and it is all you need while looking for an online file converter. From being safe to providing the smart interface, this product by Acuiti Labs is certainly going to make your converting job easiest than ever. Look no further, while you have any conversion requirement like image conversion from .jpeg to .png or a video conversion from .mp4 to .flv, it can do it all for you. This online converter is capable of providing higher quality file conversion options for almost all the file formats available today thus offering you a one stop solution for all kinds of file conversion requirements you might have.

Converter4media is surely worth giving a try and all that you want in an online file converting platform! Wait no more and visit to explore the amazing converter today – https://converter4media.com/

 

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27 JulBusinessSAPStartupsTechnology

Mobility as a Service (MaaS) – How is it changing the future of Transportation?

Time is not so far when customer-centric options like self-driving cars, carpooling, people opting for greener options and choosing public transport, etc. will take over, and owning a car will be rare. This is what the future of transportation certainly looks like. The concept of Mobility as a Service (MaaS) makes it even more clear and certain.

In the past few years, a huge shift from using personally owned cars to choosing public transportation or using mobility as a service has been noticed. The current way of traveling from let us say point A to point B has changed and is transforming and shaping up the whole ecosystem of individual mobility.  Not only will be the entire transportation industry will be affected by it, but other sectors including health care, energy, media, insurance etc. will have the impact. These industries should reevaluate and opt for more advanced solutions to create value in this emerging environment.

What is Mobility as a Service (MaaS)?

Mobility as a Service also commonly referred to as MaaS is a customer-centric platform for individuals to use as a mode of transportation. This is an on-demand, real-time platform which basically includes a different combination of transport methods like a car and bike sharing, taxis, and car rentals/leases, and it offers its customers everything that is essential for an effortless traveling experience. Right from the user’s travel plan to payments, all this is included in MaaS.

To choose this service, all you have to do is to take a subscription of the application and you will have the access to available vehicles like car, bike, any public transport pass for the chosen time period depending on your convenience.  If we talk about further details, it has smart mobility options including various modes of transportation for the ecological and social benefit are also playing a huge role in reducing harmful emissions, cleaning the air pollution, and proving better road safety. 

Benefits of Mobility as a Service?

New age service Maas offers various advantages including – 

  • Effortless and smart route planning — Maas offers real-time route planning for the users. it helps them in planning their journeys which might require using multiple transport methods based on the route they choose, with the help of smart suggestions drawn from their particular preferences.
  • Personalisation for best user-experience – MaaS is known for being offered as a completely personalized service. This creates a unique bonding between the users and the transport service provider. With the help of big data, it provides two-way communication and frequent customer feedback because of which MaaS systems have become the greatest customer-focused transportation platform of today
  • Easy payment choices — There are various different methods through which the MaaS users can pay for transportation which includes phones, smartwatches, and bank cards, flexibly before or after their journey, or also on a subscription basis.

What were the typical city transport billing platform challenges?

  • Multiple Booking Platforms – Leading to difficulty in creating bundles, limited integrated view of the customer, poor adaptability to multiple business models and not easy to grow partner ecosystem
  • Revenue Leakage – Manual processes, no single view of the customer, no streamlined order to cash process, limited Automation of business processes, higher Days of Outstanding.
  • Customer Experience – Needs to be enhanced, consistence and contextual
  • Limited Scalability – Bundles as well as combining various billing stream will lead to a massive increase in transaction volumes as well as business rules complexity
  • Visibility – Limited visibility (for business) of customer booking various commute options

How MaaS -Mobility as a Service and SAP BRIM together can be a game-changer?

The digital economy has completely changed the way how customers use to buy and engaged in the same service earlier. The subscription-based model has opened several options for the customers thus making the complete process hassle-free.

The Digital Economy has enabled new services â€Ķ and changed the way customers buy

   

Iteration is based on customer behavior that includes price per month, per use, volume tiers, minimum commits, freemium, per outcome, etc.

SAP BRIM – Advanced Billing Platform for City Transport

  • Account Registration
    • Register customer account
    • Add credit card details
  • Journey Planning (Purchase)
    • Check routes and possible legs of the journey
    • Buy rides/journeys in advance
  • Journey: Tap-In & Tap-Out
    • Every journey start and end are recorded by NFC, Proximity Sensor Bluetooth devices using the phone
    • Separate events are clubbed together to record the journeys for charging
    • Digital Presentment
    • Responsive and Integrated Reporting / Customer-Centric Statements and Forms
    • The customer receives a statement on mail for monthly usage
  • PayG Payment –Fair Price Promise
    • Flexible Billing/Invoicing and Payment process
    • End of the day all PayG charges are collated and payment run deducted the total from Credit card Service Charging
    • Flexible Business Logic for Services Charging
    • If the ride is already purchased that entitlement is used otherwise the charge is calculated for Pay

How Acuiti Labs can help?

Acuiti Labs is transforming the travel industry via the use of SAP BRIM and excellent customer experience-driven mobile apps.

We have innovated the travel of an individual who is using their own vehicle or using public transport to make it account-based pay rather than individual transactions.

These apps and BRIM platforms are designed to operate in any country or city with minor changes. This will significantly accelerate the adoption of account and relationship-based travel.

Acuiti Labs is an SAP Silver Partner offering an accelerated implementation service for SAP BRIM, Subscription Billing, Entitlement management, and more. Our experience and competency in ‘mobility as a service’ market could provide a complete road map for the businesses that are looking for transformation and adoption of a new way of mobility. Our billing and other SAP Services can help you in changing the way you consume mobility by integrating all forms of transport, including local bicycle services, ride-hailing, car-sharing, and a lot more. Contact us for more details.

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02 JulBusinessSAPTechnology

Role of SAP Billing / SAP BRIM in Transforming Tolling Business

Transformation of tolling business with SAP Billing / SAP BRIM Solutions – Tolling is generally an amount, or a fee paid to access any road, bridge, or tunnel and the revenue generated by this is utilized for maintenance, construction, and/or other such operations

Toll Business can be simply understood as a way to deal with transportation challenges and provides a positive impact on freight transport in several ways. The toll in many ways has been benefiting society without placing an excruciating financial burden on the entire transport system. The advantages the toll business offer include improved transport efficiency increased revenue for the public budget and reduced external costs of road vehicles.

There is numerous research that has time and again proved that tolls can positively impact transportation in several ways. Below are a few examples –

  1. Improved Transport Efficiency – With the road tolls being introduced, empty headings have been seen to decline. Additionally, tolls are also helping in reducing the vehicle km required for transportation as trucks are improving loading rates because of the pricing pressure.
  2. An affordable choice, without impacting consumers’ prices – In most of the industries the range of transportation cost is between 1% to 5% of the total production cost which is comparatively low, and the accumulated statistics will not show any significant effect.
  3. Significant contributions to transport sector funding comes from the toll revenue – This is true that money that comes from toll revenue is one of the major sources of funding that the transport sector earns.

How Tolling business can help in reducing the worldwide challenge of traffic Congestion?

The increased number of vehicles on road is certainly the cause of massive traffic jams during peak hours in many parts of the world.  Managing the traffic congestion problem on a high scale would not only be a sign of relief to the economies of various countries across the globe but, this would also be helpful for sustained productivity and competitiveness.

A report by the UK government suggests that congestion may cost the economy of England ÂĢ22 B a year in lost time by 2015. The U.S Transportation Institute said in 2011 that the cost of congestion is more than $120 billion, nearly $820 for every commuter in the U.S. World’s record traffic jam in China, Hebei province, was 110 km long during 12 days in August 2010.

There are three main purposes of road pricing and tolling among these tolling is utilized to generate revenues. The other two important reasons include congestion or value pricing which helps in managing demand and environmental pricing to reduce environmental impacts.

E-Tolling System – What is E-tolling and what are its advantages:

E-tolling or Electronic tolling collection (ETC) is a wireless means of automatically collecting the usage fee or toll charges from the vehicles using toll roads, HOV lanes, toll bridges, and toll tunnels, etc. without requiring any action or stopping by the driver. This not only is time-saving but also keeps the entire process of toll collection transparent. Electronic tolling is also cheaper when compared to a staffed toll booth as it does not require manual processing and it helps in reducing transaction costs for both government and private road owners.

Advantages of E-Tolling –

  1. No stopping of vehicles at a toll booth
  2. Time-saving
  3. The reduced traffic congestion problem
  4. Can save gallons of gasoline every year
  5. Efficient, safe, and secure

Evolution of Business Models and Non-toll Revenue. Transformation of tolling business with SAP Billing –

Toll pricing models have been evolved the most in the past few years. With the evolution and several new innovations, it has become more complex with customers demanding loyalty benefits, discounts, and vouchers. Especially the customers who own a large number of vehicles, deal with a lot of such task forces, and have to take similar journeys several times.

Tolling charges vary depending on what time of the day the trip was taken. How many travelers are there in a car, total distance covered, or even customer’s residence? The payment itself could be prepaid (wallet based), postpaid (Bank settlement) or hybrid model. Also, taxes could depend on the type of vehicles to subsidize electrical vehicles.

Besides the pricing and billing complexities in Toll itself, tolling companies have a lot of avenues to grow the non-toll business and get additional revenue. The same vehicle cards which are being used for Toll could be used for paying for fuel, parking, E-vehicle charging, hiring bikes, and car wash services.

Challenges Faced by Tolling Business

  • Road transport accounts for around 16% of global man-made CO2 emissions. Also, the number of crashes subsequently increases due to congested roads.
  • Tolling business deals with a lot of administrative tasks and paperwork which becomes quite a headache if not managed with the help of proper dedicated solution
  • Juggling between too many transponders and navigating the customer service maze

Role of SAP BRIM Solution in Toll Collecting –

Transformation of tolling business with SAP Billing is super easy with Acuiti Labs!

Billing and Revenue Innovation Management (BRIM) solution under the hood comprises of various different solution components that are pre-integrated in a suite. The Customer, Products Master and Order, Contract Management is handled in the Subscription Order Management (SOM) component that allows new customers to register, along with their e-tag information. On the tolling plaza where the vehicle information is actually captured by tolling operational systems which will then pass that on to Convergent Mediation which allows data massaging and validation.

SAP BRIM Platform can orchestrate information to downstream systems or can couple separate events together like vehicle entry and exist events received from two different toll points on the same route. Convergent charging takes care of the complex rating and charging logic and find out whom to charge and how much to charge for the journey. Finally, Convergent Invoicing can handle billing, invoicing, and settlement processes with banks and postings to subledgers.

Tolling Systems – Open versus Closed

In the closed tolling system, the vehicle is tracked both at entry and exit points. While in the open system toll plazas or charging booths are charging points for the applicable road section.

Tolling System

Customer Journey

The customer journey begins right from the moment when he/she either purchases a card or e-tag from the store and registers it along with the vehicle registration details. Customers can then top-up their card/e-tag using banking services like bank mobile app or ATM. Now when the customer makes a toll-applicable journey, based on a closed or open toll system the toll plaza will record the details or his card/e-tag verifying them against the vehicle plate number to detect any fraud.

These details will then be fed through Convergent Mediation where there will be further validations like multiple journeys on the same path in very short amount of time or improbable time difference between entry and exit timestamps recorded. Once the event data is validated it is rated by the Charging system to create billing items (records) of transactions. These transaction records/items are aggregated to be shared with the customer and the bank for any applicable settlements later. To minimize credit exposure it may very well happen that the entry point registers the vehicle entry and reserves or block some amount on customers’ e-tag accounts and at the exit point the charges are calculated and the e-tag balance is either deducted immediately or send to the bank for settlements.

Advantages of Using SAP BRIM –

  • Simplified Customer interactions
  • Meeting real-time expectations
  • Real-time insight for true customer 360-degree view
  • Increase Transparency and efficiency 
  • Real-time Execution for context-sensitive offerings
  • Improved Customer engagement
  • Innovative pricing and Bundles
  • Consolidated Billing to manage credit and collection efficiently
  • Handles hybrid payments

While now you already know what role SAP BRIM plays in managing toll business efficiently than ever, it also important to get a holistic view of some other advancements offered by SAP solutions to its customers and how Acuiti Labs could be the most suitable choice for you –

Business Responsiveness – SAP BRIM offers Innovative pricing model, charging and billing models and also opens up a smart revenue stream that are personalized for your B2B offerings and you get a chance to know your customers better and thus can offer customized solutions to them.

Efficient Revenue Management – SAP Solutions could be the best choice when you are looking forward to increasing customer satisfaction and improve financial performance with a converged view of a customer account, receivables, payables, and disputes.

The flexibility of Deployment – Get the flexibility of deploying complete, integrated customer care and next-gen billing system with SAP Billing Solutions or choose to deploy in smaller implantable steps for targeted incremental value. You get the freedom of doing it the way you wish to choose!

How Acuiti Labs can be the right digital partner for the transformation of tolling business with SAP Billing?

Acuiti Labs’ can help in the transformation of the tolling business with SAP Billing solution and efficiently handles the issues that toll businesses are currently facing.  We can manage the toll Industry pain points and also support potential future growth avenues. Contact us for the digital transformation of your tolling industry today!

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