SAP Archives

Category: SAP

Driving growth with SAP subscription based business models

In today’s digital economy, many businesses are shifting towards subscription-based models to offer their products and services. Whether you sell products or services, subscription billing makes it feasible for your customers to make choices based on their convenience and budget thus allowing them to utilize your services in a much better way. One of the greatest benefits of choosing Subscription billing for your business is the ease that it gives to the customers so that they do not have any trouble in coming to a decision of what to buy when to buy and how are they going to manage the budget for it. Well, when your customer buys any of your service or product and go for a subscription-based plan, they will have a choice of paying through a recurring payment method which is the most feasible and budgeted way to own anything that they are looking for.

With its robust features and capabilities, SAP Subscription Billing Services helps businesses streamline their billing processes, enhance customer experience, and drive revenue growth.

Why SAP Subscription Billing?

One of the greatest advantages of choosing SAP Subscription Billing solution for your business is the effectiveness with which it handles the entire billing and invoicing process for your customers. This billing solution is crafted to grow your business in all directions and provide a simplified, automated approach to billing and ordering processes. It can successfully handle your customer’s end-to-end subscription billing life cycle which makes it the most commonly used subscription billing platform today that is transparent, effective, customer-friendly, and economical all at the same time.

Following are a few reasons why you should get rid of the traditional way of creating and sending manual bills and invoices to your customers and opt for the innovative way through SAP Subscription billing:

Meet the needs of the outcome economy with the advanced subscription billing solution likes the one offered by SAP that allows you to plan, innovate, and adapt your business model with speed and agility.

The market is constantly evolving, and staying up-to-date with the latest trends is crucial to remaining competitive. Here are the top 5 benefits of SAP subscription billing that make it the perfect solution for businesses:

Deliver Exceptional and Accurate Results to your customers

Most customers prioritize accuracy and perfection when deciding to purchase a product or service. By utilizing SAP subscription billing, your business can enhance customer satisfaction and retention through the implementation of a dependable and automated order-to-cash process.

Give your business the capability to deliver superior results to your valuable end customers by choosing the SAP Subscription Billing option and integrating it into your current billing and invoicing system. Most businesses have already integrated this into their existing billing system and are significantly delivering better and more accurate results along with great customer satisfaction.

Helps in creating new business model

Subscription billing is all about offering the flexibility of getting a service or product on a subscription basis and to pay for it accordingly. As technology is growing and evolving at a faster pace, most customers are inclined towards taking the subscription for the required time instead of completely owning it and this is only going to increase in the coming years.

Streamline Sales and Billing

Faster delivery and more effective experience for your customers with SAP subscription Billing! It simplifies and harmonizes sales and payment processes in a way that the entire flow turns out to be seamless and time-saving. Automation and streamlining of the billing and invoicing process not only saves your customers time but also gives them the flexibility to understand the complete flow. Preciseness, accuracy, and timely delivery are a few attributes every customer looks for in the product or service they are buying.

The desire of customers for personalized experiences is rapidly increasing over time. In the upcoming years, it will be crucial for businesses to thoroughly analyze customer requirements and develop a plan that is fully aligned with their needs.

Rapid Innovations and Continuous Evolution

Change the way you deal with the billing and invoicing process in your organization and start enhancing your business with one of the most efficient and fastest-growing business models – ‘The SAP Subscription-based Billing Model’. Get the privilege of delivering the right mix of subscriptions, charge based on the usage and periodic fees and enable product bundling and service bundling to create personalised offers for your customers.

SAP Subscription billing allows your business to remain upgraded with the latest billing tools and tactics and provides your customers with the most updated version of the billing system. This not only retains your old customers for your business but also builds trust for the new customers to come on board and experience the best billing and invoicing that you are going to offer to them.

Simple yet effective order-to-cash cycles for consistent growth

Get the feasibility of creating and editing orders instantly as and when required with the right mix of subscription services and products. Also, you can easily automate order fulfilment processes throughout the different systems. Easily monitor all the order arrangements, right from the initial stage to the activation of the subscriptions. Customers have become too smart and are continually evolving with every passing year.

In current times, customers believe and follow the mantra – “The simpler, the better.” Businesses are looking for simple yet very effective systems to deal with their billing requirements. And this is the reason a lot of emphasis is being given to the SAP Subscription Billing system. This is the complete package for modern-day billing and will surely be the best choice to deliver complete customer satisfaction efficiently.

Agile billing system – An added advantage to Enhance customer experiences

SAP Subscription billing is an agile billing system that gives an added advantage of improving the overall experience of your customers. We cannot ignore the fact that the billing solution of any business is highly responsible to provide a rich opportunity in delivering a positive customer experience and gather valuable insight. According to a new Forrester study, billing and revenue management solutions are the basic requirements to project digital transformation and superior customer experience. In its report “Transform Your Business To Deliver Superior Customer Outcomes With An Agile Billing Solution, an October 2018 commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of SAP,” Forrester has clearly explained how most of the organizations are planning to move away from highly customized, on-premise billing systems to modern SaaS billing and revenue management platforms. This study provides invaluable insight into:

Why the market is tipping towards Subscription billing solutions
How Subscription billing solutions help you build better customer connections and deliver superior outcomes.
Why billing needs to be a part of your overall customer experience strategy

Why Choose Acuiti Labs for SAP Subscription Billing?

Acuiti Labs is a UK-based organization and an SAP Silver partner offering a wide range of SAP solutions to its clients from around the Globe. Among these solutions is the SAP subscription billing solution, which is designed to help businesses streamline their billing processes and improve customer satisfaction. By leveraging this solution, businesses can automate their billing processes, reduce errors, and gain greater visibility into their revenue streams. Acuiti Labs is committed to helping businesses achieve their goals by providing them with the latest SAP solutions and exceptional service.

Industry Experience: We have vast experience working with clients from various industries including telecommunications, media, utilities, and more. Our industry-specific knowledge and customizable products allow us to tailor SAP Subscription Billing Services to meet your business’s unique needs and requirements.

Proven Track Record: Acuiti Labs has an impressive history of delivering successful implementations and satisfying clients. Our expertise and the positive outcomes we have achieved for other organizations can be demonstrated through references and case studies.

End-to-End Solution: The SAP Subscription Billing solution offered at Acuiti Labs is flexible and can meet changing business needs with speed, and agility.

Customization and Flexibility: No matter how big or small your business is, Acuiti Labs can provide a complete billing solution based on your requirement. The solutions offered here are personalized for individual user, enabling companies to successfully build, maintain and promote customer loyalty.

By choosing Acuiti Labs as your partner for SAP Subscription Billing Services, you can be assured that you are collaborating with a proficient and well-experienced team. We can assist you in efficiently implementing and optimizing SAP BRIM solutions to simplify your subscription billing processes

Contact us to learn more about one of the most scalable solutions for a subscription-based business model that can easily be integrated with other Cloud solutions such as SAP Sales Cloud. Acuiti Labs can also help your business by providing other sap solutions like SAP BRIM, SAP Sales Cloud, SAP Commissions and more. Explore the website to have a proper understanding of the services and solutions offered here.

302

11 MaySAP

Streamlining Credit Management with SAP BRIM Integration

Credit management enables companies to operate centralised credit management. The credit worthiness and payment behaviour of your business partners has an immediate impact on the business results of your company. Efficient receivables and credit management reduce the risk of financial losses and help you optimise business relationships with your business partners. SAP Credit Management (FIN-FSCM-CR) supports your company in determining the risk of losses on receivables from your business partners early and in making credit decisions efficiently and, in some cases, automatically. It also supports you in a heterogeneous and distributed system landscape: by using system-independent XML interfaces, you can also connect external non-SAP systems.

SAP Billing and Revenue Innovation Management (BRIM) can integrate with SAP Credit Management using XML. The applications connected (such as Subscription Order Management, Sales and Distribution, and Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable) report the commitment of a business partner to SAP Credit Management. These reports are then consolidated into the credit exposure in SAP Credit Management and checked against the current credit limit for the business partner. In addition to the credit limit check, you can also carry out other checks, such as the oldest open item, maximum dunning level, or last payment.

The following graphic illustrates the process of transactional data flow for credit checks and exposure updates between S/4 HANA BRIM and Credit Management.

When a customer signs a subscription with a service provider, the service provider must ensure the creditworthiness of this customer. To do so, a credit check is executed during the order (or quotation) capture process. In a subscription order or solution quotation, subscription items are enabled to run credit management functionalities, such as credit check, credit exposure, or documented credit decision. If an item is relevant for integration, by default, the item’s gross value is used to execute the credit check and create the credit exposure. The gross value is calculated using the contract end date or the end of the contract term (if the contract end date is unavailable).

In the business scenario, the initial check is executed in a subscription order or solution quotation, either if the item is released manually and the order or quotation is saved or released or when the order or quotation is submitted or accepted. After a credit check is executed the first time, it will always be triggered when the order or quote is saved or released. The credit check is always executed at the payer level. If there are different payers in a document, the amount per payer is calculated across all relevant items and sent as a single amount to SAP Credit Management.

If the credit check is successful, the credit exposure is created in the order or quote with exposure category 120 (Subscription Order & Solution Quotation). On contract activation, it is copied over to the contract with exposure category 130 (subscription contract). During billing of billable items, the exposure is transferred to one of the billing categories, 220 (unbilled BIT), 210 (billed BIT), or 200 (open item), depending on the BIT status when data is uploaded to SAP Credit Management. When the open item is paid, the credit exposure is finally cleared.

The subscription-specific credit exposure is created on an item or contract level with the following object keys in credit management:

If the credit check fails, a Documented Credit Decision (DCD) is created in SAP Credit Management for the corresponding payer, and the order or quote is blocked for further processing. The order or quote can be submitted or accepted only if all items pass the credit check successfully, and only then will the subscription contract be created. A credit manager can check such a DCD and either release it manually or do a recheck. Items that are sent to a credit check are updated with the system status Credit Check Ok or Credit Check Not Ok, depending on the result of the credit check. A cumulative status across all items is displayed at the header level. Completed items are not considered in this header status. Order or quote cannot be submitted or accepted if even a single item has a failed credit check.

If a BIT that is relevant for integration with SAP Credit Management is created (a one-off BIT, a BIT from a billing plan, or a recurring BIT from SAP CC), the field CM_OBJECT_KEY is filled with an indicator so that the corresponding contract exposure can be reduced when billable items are loaded to SAP Credit Management. It is assumed that a credit check is executed for all relevant BITs if a credit exposure exists for the corresponding BIT. For example, if you have a billing plan for the contract main and sub-items, it is assumed that both items are sent for a credit check. If this is not the case and for some reason only the main item was credit checked, you must implement a corresponding check in the BADI BADI_FKK_SOM_CM_BIT so that BITs from the sub-item are not considered relevant when reducing contract exposure.

If a BIT is reversed or excepted, this is also reflected in the contract exposure. If a BIT that already reduced the contract exposure is reversed or excepted, the contract exposure is increased again.

Once the BITs are billed and invoiced, the open items are created in FI-CA. To ensure credit decisions are based on a current dataset, you must therefore transfer the credit exposure (the total of open items) to SAP Credit Management at regular intervals. In the credit exposure update from Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable, the total of all current open items for the business partner is always transferred to SAP Credit Management.

In FI-CA, there are mass activities for the following functions:

Sending the credit exposure of a business partner to SAP Credit Management
Sending the payment behaviour summary to SAP Credit Management
Replicating the rating values between Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable and SAP Credit Management

Further, FI-CA supports the following features, such as

Commitment Query: In SAP Credit Management, you can specify whether the current credit exposure is queried in the connected components for a credit check.
Partner Messages: Partner messages enable the credit exposure to be updated in SAP Credit Management for a business transaction across module and system boundaries, with no chronological gaps.
Credit Information Display: You can display the credit information from SAP Credit Management, for example, in the Interaction Center.
Credit Check: In Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable, you can also carry out a credit check for a business partner in SAP Credit Management.

Limitations

SAP Credit Management must run in the same SAP S/4HANA system as Subscription Order Management. A distributed landscape is not supported.
Only subscription items are enabled. Service and sales items are not supported in a solution quote or subscription order.
Integration with billing is only supported for Convergent Invoicing/FI-CA on a BIT level.
You can release or trigger a recheck on a documented credit decision only from the Manage Documented Credit Decisions Fiori app.
You can change neither the document currency nor the payer once a credit exposure is triggered for an item.
Phased contracts are not supported.
The pricing procedure must be in sync between the solution quote/subscription order and subscription contract. That is, the price calculation must always return the same value for all objects, otherwise, there will be inconsistencies in credit exposure and during delta calculation in a change order.
The credit check cannot be triggered manually from the subscription order/solution quote.
FI-CA does not support DCD case creation as an out-of-the-box functionality. No DCD case will be created when a credit check is performed from FI-CA using the function module.
There are also certain limitations when using APIs:
No credit check is executed on a change quote. It is executed during change processing in the change order.
If a solution quotation is created and accepted in a batch process and the credit check fails, only an error is returned. No DCD can be created because no quote is created in this case.

Why choose Acuiti Labs?

Acuiti Labs is an SAP Partner and a Business Consulting company that specializes in providing services and solutions for SAP Billing and Revenue Innovation Management (BRIM). BRIM is an end-to-end solution that helps businesses manage their billing, revenue, and customer engagement processes. Acuiti Labs can help streamline credit management processes and enhance the customer experience by integrating BRIM with other SAP modules.

Here are some potential benefits of working with us for SAP BRIM integration:

Expertise: Acuiti Labs has a team of experienced consultants who are knowledgeable in SAP BRIM and related technologies. We can help you identify the best solutions for your business needs and implement them effectively.
Customization: Acuiti Labs can customize SAP BRIM to meet your specific business requirements, such as credit management, invoicing, subscription billing, and more.
Integration: We have the capability to integrate SAP BRIM with other SAP modules and third-party applications, such as CRM, ERP, and payment gateways. This can help streamline your business processes and enhance the customer experience.
Support: We provide ongoing support and maintenance for SAP BRIM to ensure your systems run smoothly and efficiently.

If you are looking to streamline your credit management processes and enhance your customer experience, contact us today! Acuiti Labs – a specialised technology company in SAP BRIM could potentially provide significant benefits. For more details on SAP BRIM, visit – https://www.acuitilabs.com/sap-brim/

294

14 FebSAP

SAP BRIM and its relevance to various line of business

SAP solutions are designed to help businesses streamline and optimize their operations, including financial management, supply chain management, and human resources management. One of the key benefits of SAP solutions is their ability to integrate with one another and with other systems, allowing businesses to benefit from a seamless, end-to-end solution. SAP solutions are also scalable, meaning they can grow with a business as its needs change. SAP Solutions have a strong presence in a variety of industries, including healthcare, financial services, manufacturing, etc. It is used by large and small businesses around the world to manage their operations and customer relationships.

In 2023, SAP BRIM is expected to continue gaining popularity in various industries, as it offers a range of benefits and features that can help organizations drive efficiency, reduce costs, and improve customer satisfaction.

Why choose SAP BRIM for Business?

SAP BRIM for businesses is designed to manage the billing and charging of their products or services and optimize their revenue management processes. There are several reasons why businesses might choose SAP BRIM (Billing and Revenue Innovation Management) solutions:

Streamlined billing and charging processes: SAP BRIM can help businesses to automate and optimize their billing and charging processes, reducing the risk of errors and increasing efficiency.
Improved customer relationships: SAP BRIM can help businesses better understand and segment their customer base, offering tailored pricing and packages. This can improve customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Increased profitability: By streamlining and optimizing their billing, charging, and revenue management processes, businesses can increase their profitability.
Enhanced data management: SAP BRIM provides a central repository for billing and revenue data, allowing businesses to easily access and analyze this information.
Scalability: SAP BRIM is a scalable solution that can grow with a business as its needs change.
Integration with other SAP solutions: SAP BRIM can be easily integrated with other SAP solutions, such as SAP S/4HANA, allowing businesses to benefit from a seamless, end-to-end solution.

SAP BRIM (Billing and Revenue Innovation Management) is a comprehensive solution for managing billing and revenue processes in various industries. It helps organizations automate and streamline their billing and revenue management operations, ensuring accurate and timely billing, revenue recognition, and revenue assurance. With SAP BRIM, companies can better manage their customer relationships, pricing, and revenue streams, leading to increased efficiency and profitability.

Here are some ways through which SAP BRIM can benefit different industries:

Telecommunications: SAP BRIM is a powerful tool for telecommunications companies, as it helps them manage the complex billing and revenue processes associated with their services. It can handle the billing of various services such as data and messaging, as well as subscription-based and pay-per-use models. SAP BRIM also offers features such as rating and discounting, which can help telecom companies optimize their pricing and offers to customers.

Utility companies: SAP BRIM is a useful solution for utility companies, as it helps them manage the billing and revenue processes associated with the services they provide. It can handle the billing of various utilities such as electricity, gas, and water, and offers features such as usage-based billing, which helps these companies accurately bill customers based on their consumption.

Healthcare: SAP BRIM can also be beneficial for healthcare organizations, as it helps them manage the billing and revenue processes associated with the services they provide. It can handle the billing of various healthcare services such as consultations, procedures, and medications, and offers features such as claim management, which helps these organizations streamline the process of submitting and tracking claims.

Retail: SAP BRIM can also be useful for retail companies, as it helps them manage the billing and revenue processes associated with the sale of their products. It can handle the billing of various products and offers features such as customer segmentation and loyalty programs, which can help retail companies optimize their pricing and offers to customers.

Media: In the media industry, SAP BRIM can be used to manage the billing and charging of subscription-based services, such as streaming platforms and online publications.

Other industries: SAP BRIM can also be used by companies in other industries, such as financial services and transportation, to manage their billing and revenue management processes.

Acuiti Labs has designed industry-specific business accelerators to help businesses resolve billing and invoicing challenges. Here is the list of various accelerators we have customised and built to offer you the most efficient and flexible way to simplify your business process:

The below products are listed on the SAP store and are available for businesses to download

AcuitiMobi – Mobility-as-a-Service App: helping public transport customers with a modern and innovative way for an effortless travel experience.
AcuitiPay – A BRIM Accelerator for Connected Cars: World’s first end-to-end dedicated commerce, billing, subscription, and data management platform. Explore more.
Acuiti Subscription Manager: An omnichannel app to enable self-serve and manage subscriptions for your customers. Explore more.

Following are the customized BRIM-based industry-specific accelerators:

AcuitiPostal: Tailored to simplify and monetize postal operations. It is a BRIM accelerator designed by Acuiti Labs to attain high performance in postal transformation.
AcuitiPort: A dedicated BRIM Accelerator to monitor and simplify the billing procedure at Sea Ports.
AcuitiMedia: Helping Media and entertainment businesses in simplifying billing complexities and delivering an up-to-the-mark experience for their customers.
AcuitiAirport: Helps in transforming and digitalizing aeronautical billing

Overall, SAP BRIM is a versatile solution that can benefit various industries by helping them automate and streamline their billing and revenue management processes. By implementing SAP BRIM, organizations can improve efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance customer satisfaction, all while ensuring accurate and timely billing and revenue recognition.

How can Acuiti Labs help businesses with the implementation of SAP BRIM Solutions?

Assessing the business’s needs and goals: We can help businesses to assess their current billing, charging, and revenue management processes and identify areas for improvement. We can also help businesses to define their goals for implementing SAP BRIM.

Customizing SAP BRIM to meet the business’s needs: We can help businesses to customize SAP BRIM to meet their specific needs and goals. This may involve configuring SAP BRIM to work with the business’s existing systems and processes or building custom extensions to meet the business’s unique requirements.

Providing support: We can provide support to help businesses get the most out of SAP BRIM. This may include ongoing support to ensure that the solution is running smoothly and effectively.

Overall, Acuiti Labs is a leading provider of solutions for billing and revenue management. Our comprehensive range of solutions can help businesses to streamline and optimize their operations, leading to increased efficiency and profitability.

Contact us to get a detailed understanding of SAP Solutions and how we can help you grow your business with customized BRIM products/accelerators – https://www.acuitilabs.com/

356

31 JanSAP

SAP BRIM Integration with Vertex Tax Solution

Corporations are required to collect and remit tax on the sales and purchases of goods and services. These are known as “indirect taxes.” It is levied by various tax regimes around the world and called by different names like sales tax, value-added tax (VAT), goods and services tax (GST), etc. Order and invoicing transactions originating from SAP BRIM system(s) may require the computation of indirect taxes depending on the nature of the goods or services being sold or purchased by the enterprises, the place of destination, and/or the receiver enterprise(s). When it comes to indirect taxation on goods and services, SAP supports broadly two options to calculate tax on sales and purchases of goods and services.

These options are:

Internal Tax Calculation
External Tax Calculation

In this blog, I want to focus on the external tax calculation via a third-party tax solution such as Vertex. SAP provides a tax interface system that is capable of passing required data to an external tax system that determines tax jurisdictions, calculates taxes, and then returns these calculated results back to SAP. The tax interface system also updates the third party’s software files with the appropriate tax information for legal reporting purposes. External tax systems, such as Vertex, can integrate with subscription order management and contract accounts receivable and payable to calculate sales, use tax externally, and record the tax data for a later tax return.

What is Vertex Tax Solution?

Vertex Tax Solution is a third-party tax software that integrates with SAP to automatically calculate the indirect taxes on sales and purchases of goods and services. It is an exception-based system. By default, all the transactions are considered “taxable,” unless you identify an exception.

Vertex calculates tax based on jurisdiction and various data elements provided in the transaction, such as the order date, invoice date, company code, registration ID, etc., and automates compliance and reporting for your organization. It has the capability to provide over 100 different fields in a report that can be configured to meet organisation-specific needs.

Vertex’s product range includes various series, but the “Vertex Indirect Tax O Series” is the latest one. It can be deployed on the SAP cloud, on-premise, or as a hybrid. The below depicted diagram explains the general process flow of the Vertex O Series:

How does taxability determine?

Indirect taxes are calculated on sales and purchases of goods and services. The taxability of a business transaction depends on “What, Where & Whom” as highlighted below:

What

Where

Whom

What attributes determines the goods and/or services that are being sold or purchased by the enterprise.

This can be identified by configuring appropriate material group in SAP ERP at product level. For example –

Subscription
Support
License

Material groups are mapped to a Vertex category (Taxability deriver) that determines the taxability of the product.

Where the goods and/or services are delivered. The tax rate is determined based on the ‘Ship-To’ and/or ‘Sold-To’ address.

Addresses are maintained at Business Partner level in SAP ERP.

Vertex needs following location information to calculate correct tax.

Ship-To-Address
Ship-From Address
Bill-To-From Address

Whom you are selling goods and/or services. Basically, ‘Whom’ attributes provide additional exemptions (details) that would otherwise not be available based on only ‘What’ & ‘Where’ attributes. For example –

Customer Exemption Certificate
VAT/Tax Registration Number

Exemption Certificate is a customer specific record that provides exemption from sales and use tax for a specific company code in a specific jurisdiction.

Data Flow between SAP S/4HANA-BRIM and Vertex Tax Solution

In SAP BRIM, tax on sales and purchases of goods and services is calculated during the order capture in Subscription Order Management (SOM) and during the invoicing in Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable (FI-CA). Tax calculated during order processing is considered “estimated tax,” and tax calculated during the invoicing process is considered “final tax.”

The following graphic illustrates the process of transactional data flow for tax calculation between S/4 HANA-BRIM and Vertex Tax Solution.

Subscription Order Management leverages SAP S/4 HANA central pricing to determine the prices for the products and/or services, which makes it easy to integrate with an external tax solution such as Vertex. Further, the Vertex accelerator installed within the SAP S/4HANA system gathers all the required information for the tax calculation during order processing via BAdI and passes it to the Vertex tax solution engine.

Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable is a type of subledger accounting that is tailored to the requirements of specific industry sectors and cross-industry sectors. It can integrate with SAP Finance modules (such as General Ledger, Special Ledger, etc.) and other solutions to accomplish additional business tasks. During the invoicing process in Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable, taxes on sales and purchases of goods and services are calculated in real time. The data related to invoicing, such as customer ID, registration number, product details, etc., is passed to the tax interface through Vertex Accelerator. In the standard system, contract accounts receivable and payable supply the interface to the external tax system only per line item. You can choose an alternative approach at event 1110. For documents from invoicing, at this event you can transfer the complete business partner items to the external tax system.

Why Choose Acuiti Labs?

Acuiti Labs offers businesses solutions to transform their OTC process using BRIM (Billing and Revenue Innovation Management). We have expertise in areas such as subscription billing, revenue recognition, and taxation.

We can help you configure the Vertex tax solution and integrate it with your SAP BRIM platform. This includes setting up tax jurisdictions, rates, and rules in Vertex, as well as configuring the SAP BRIM platform to handle tax calculations and reporting.

In addition, Acuiti Labs can help you with testing, and ongoing support to ensure a smooth and successful integration between your SAP BRIM and Vertex tax solution.

Overall, Acuiti Labs can provide the expertise and resources needed to streamline the integration of SAP BRIM with Vertex tax solution, improving your tax compliance and reducing the risk of errors or delays in your billing and revenue management processes.

Author,
Amit Kumar Shaw
SAP Specialist, Acuiti Lab

368

15 DecBusinessSAP

The economics behind digital business models and how they have evolved in recent times

The world as we know it today is continuously changing, and one of the fundamental drivers is digital transformation. Across industries, new digital business models have emerged—many in response to the pandemic as companies are forced to innovate their ways to meet customer demands. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, many digital-based subscription business models fared well due to their promise of convenience and strong business continuity. Organizations now more than ever feel the pressure to leverage digital investments to innovate with existing or add new monetization models.

According to Gartner’s predictions, digital business models (such as subscription-based business models) will continue to evolve for competitive advantage. Gartner also proclaims that organizations can turn continuous change into an asset if they sharpen their vision. Now, what does it mean? To put it plainly, digital business models are here to stay and have tremendous potential to grow in the years to come. These predictions bring us to our next BIG question.

How big is a digital transformation market?

A recent report from Grand View Research evaluated the global digital transformation market size at USD 608.72 billion in 2021 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23.1% from 2022 to 2030. Similar projections were made by Fortune Business Insights in their report. They predict that the global digital transformation market will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22.1% from 2021 to 2028.

Looking at these figures, it is abundantly clear that digitally driven industries are growing faster than any other industry globally. Companies across industries are adopting different monetization models either to stay relevant in the market (survival) or to uncover new revenue streams (growth). One of the best examples is Kahoot!, the Norwegian educational gaming company founded in 2013 and now valued at roughly USD 2.2 billion. The company was born as a free platform for social learning, targeting particularly the education industry. It then changed its model and started to also target businesses with a commercial subscription offering that provides customers with premium features such as the number of participants.

According to IDC’s Digital Monetization Models report, 55% of organizations globally will focus on the digitalization of their products, services, and customer experiences. The key focus area for 2022 will be the revenue engine – in other words, how companies can leverage digital technologies to create new revenue streams and new monetization opportunities. This includes:

Enhancing the customer experience by leveraging new digital interfaces
Creating new ways to charge and monetize, such as subscription and usage-based models

Types of Digital Business Models

On a broad level, digital business models can be classified under four major heads. These are:

Free (ad-supported) or Freemium business models are business models where users get free access to a basic version of the product for free (ad-supported). If users want to use premium features, then they can upgrade to the premium version by paying service fees. A great example would be Spotify, LinkedIn, etc.
Subscription-based business models are business models in which a customer pays a recurring fee on a regular interval period for using products and/or services. Examples like Netflix, Office 365, Salesforce, etc. are moving from transacting with customers to building long-term relationships and recurring revenues.
Usage-based business models are the new business models in which customers pay according to the usage of resources. In contrast to the subscription-based pricing model, the consumption-based pricing model charges customers based on the per-unit usage of the resources rather than a fixed price. Examples like AWS, Abertis, AXA, Uber, etc.
E-Commerce or Marketplace business model is a business model where a seller and a buyer use a third-party platform to trade their goods and services. Examples include Zalando, Amazon, Facebook, etc.

These heads can be further classified into sub-heads such as On-Demand business models (examples like Uber), Access-over-ownership models (examples like Airbnb) etc., depending on the digital offerings.

Among all the different digital business models, the e-Commerce subscription business model is the largest in terms of annual revenue and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 25% from 2022 to 2025, as per the UBS Wealth Management report, followed by streaming services (18.74% CAGR) and cloud computing services (17.9% CAGR).

How do Acuiti Labs fit in this economy?

The boom in the digital business model economy over the past decade has also led to the growth of businesses supporting those models. Major players like SAP, Salesforce Cloud, Zoura, Stripe, Nami ML, etc. have seen tremendous growth in recent years. Further, digitally driven innovative consulting firms like Acuiti Labs, Deloitte Consulting, PwC Advisory, etc., are not far behind. Acuiti Labs, being a specialist consulting firm in the field of “Consume-to-Cash” or “Quote-to-Cash” business processes, is uniquely placed with expertise to deliver business technology and digital transformation by deploying subscription and billing management tools such as SAP BRIM on S/4HANA, SAP CPQ, SAP Subscription Billing and Entitlement Management. With a proven track record in delivering the most complex business use cases with 100% efficiency, it has helped organizations globally to transform their manual or semi-manual billing environments into the fully automated billing process. Considering the current growth trajectory of the digital transformation market, Acuiti Labs can be hugely benefited from its expertise and experience in providing technical support and digital transformation for B2B and B2C customers. Currently, the company caters to multiple industries, from shipping to media, from SaaS to postal services, etc., and has also developed different industry-specific accelerators (for example, AcuitiMobi for public transport; AcuitiPay for connected vehicles; Acuiti Subscription Manager for subscription management; AcuitiPort for seaports; AcuitiMedia for media and entertainment; and AcuitiAirport for automating aeronautical and non-aeronautical billing) to meet the industry’s needs.

Author, Amit Kumar Shaw SAP Specialist, Acuiti Lab

382

06 AprSAP

Consume-to-Cash process Transformation for High-Volume Businesses

How can Acuiti Labs streamline the billing process for your business?

The growing competition has led businesses to think innovative and push the boundaries to stand distinct in the crowd. To remain a step ahead when it comes to product commoditization, rapidly increasing competition, declining margins, monitoring pressures, and most importantly demanding customers with unique requirements, have led many companies from various industries to redesign and rethink about their business models. Businesses are not only thinking to launch new and innovative services and products, but they are also topping them up with various customer-friendly add-ons that make the service more flexible.

The businesses that are primarily opting for a change in their business models are from various industries like telecommunications, media, high-tech, transportation, logistics, utilities, and financial services. The widespread and globally adopted internet and mobile network services has bought a huge change in the way we use to look at the businesses and services a couple of decades back. The smart mobile devices and faster internet services and deployment of machine-to-machine telecommunications has unleashed a different and an all-new era when it comes to creative services.

Why Consume-to-cash process is important for businesses today?

To match up with the latest business trends and address growing opportunities, businesses have to face a lot of challenges when they look forward to launching any new service for their customers. It becomes yet more challenging when you are addressing a very large number of direct customers along with massive transactional management volumes in an ever more competitive high-cost and low-margin environment.

The greater task for businesses here is to maintain the diversity of and for the customers and take care of increasing the average revenue per customer. This is the reason why businesses like yours look for different ways of successfully identifying the most valuable customers and providing them with the services that seek at a price that will keep them coming back.

When it comes to back-end business software solutions, most of the companies typically opt for a customer relationship management (CRM) solution to help with centralizing the customer information, and an enterprise resource planning (ERP) software that assists in managing operational service processing and other financial processes.

Mostly these software solutions are developed to support the selling of products across several indirect channels, but these often miss out to resolve the challenges faced during the monetization of newly added services. To resolve such business challenges, businesses need a solution that can take care of business processes for service monetization. These processes are referred to as consume-to-cash processes in SAP.

SAP Solutions include –

The SAP® Convergent Charging application
The SAP Convergent Invoicing package
The SAP Customer Financial Management

This package consists of the integrated SAP software solution for the consume-to-cash business process (as shown in the diagram below). This best-of-breed software offered by SAP can help businesses in simplifying complex ratings and streamline the billing processes. The SAP Software efficiently handles accounting, billing, payments, and collections; and enhances financial customer care for larger volumes of customers and transactions.

Choosing SAP Software can assist businesses in obtaining the consistency it requires to manage billing and payments from customers, as well as handle complex revenue sharing with upstream and downstream partners. It is a fact that SAP solutions are flexible way elements of the solutions and can be rapidly deployed within the organizations’ existing IT software landscape to add value where it is most required.

Streamline the Billing Process for your business

Role of SAP Convergent Invoicing – The SAP Convergent Invoicing package helps businesses in pulling out information from different billing streams and separately rated events to combine all payments/orders into a single invoice for a consolidated view of the customer.

SAP Convergent Charging provides modular online balance management, that provides complete support in convergent account management for different types of payments like – prepaid accounts, post-paid accounts, or hybrid models.

With SAP Convergent Invoicing, any business can easily go for partnerships with third parties and upgrade new services effectively. For example, you can configure the software so that revenues shared with a specific third-party provider are only distributed to that provider if the end customer has actually paid the corresponding charges.

SAP Convergent Invoicing offers unique functionalities that allow businesses in defining flexible rules to automatically trigger discounts. This helps you initiate invoice-level discount programs and manage their details. For example, the applicable discounts and offers could be calculated and applied to invoices when complete charges surpass a certainly defined threshold value or when the subtotal within certain customer services or products exceeds a defined limit.

Business Benefits of Choosing Consume-to-cash Process –

Helps businesses in accelerating time to market for fresh services and cross-promotional bundles by allowing them to keep pricing entirely under their control
Offers reduced operational costs by combining different pricing systems, automating routine tasks in the credit and collections processes, enhancing staff workload, and reducing the overall number of invoices that a business generates.
Adapting the consume-to-cash process helps businesses in offering customized promotions and personalized customer experience. The customers get an invoice that clearly displays all charges on a single, easy-to-understand invoice that enhances customer satisfaction.
Reduced risk because there will be complete transparency about the credit and collections history of new and existing customer

Key Features:

Following are the key features of choosing Consume-to-Cash for your business

Real-time charging – Consume-to-cash offers real-time online charging for pricing. It allows businesses in packaging required services, automate the partner settlement calculations based on the requirement, and offer the customers more flexibility in real-time account-balance management controls.
Single billing / Single Invoicing as an output – Helps businesses in producing and providing single bills to the customer by combining multiple, high-volume billing streams into a single bill with one accounting document.
Effective financial management for the customers – This allows businesses in dealing effectively with customers when it comes to various financial concerns effectively.

Consume-to-cash Process Transformation and Optimization by Acuiti Labs

Businesses, especially the ones that are dealing with huge volumes, have started to understand that to prepare for the technological innovations of the future, they need to align their business processes in the best way possible today. Acuiti Labs helps businesses with SAP software and services so that they achieve best-of-breed functionality and can successfully align the entire consume-to-cash process for themselves – right from online rating and charging to convergent billing, and invoicing, and collections.

When you choose Acuiti Labs and support your consume-to-cash business process with the SAP software that we offer, your business process becomes more flexible to react rapidly and adapt appropriately to tomorrow’s market demands, even if in complex business scenarios.

467

06 DecBusinessSAPTechnology

Benefits of Switching from Manual Billing to Automated Billing. Why Choose SAP BRIM for Billing Automation?

Automated billing software not only helps businesses in streamlining their invoicing process, but it eliminates errors that manual billing causes and helps in deriving valuable business insights that you can leverage for your overall growth.

Handling larger volumes of recurring customers through a manual billing process can be tedious, time-consuming, and might require extra resources. The manual billing process is also susceptible to inaccuracies and is not quite recommended for businesses handling a large volume of data to avoid errors. When a business offers subscription-based services, the processes including billing, invoicing, payments, and revenue recognition are almost impossible if are being carried out manually.

Businesses that offer usage-based or subscription-based services should definitely choose to go with recurring billing software to update and automate their billing systems. This will not only streamline the complete billing procedure but will also fully eradicate the probability of manual errors.

A lot of subscription-based businesses are already leveraging the benefits of their shift from manual billing to fully automated billing software. And it is certainly important and recommended for all the businesses dealing with a large volume of customer data that are still using the conventional billing software.

The points below may help you to clearly understand the importance of automated billing software –

1. Saves additional time and effort:

You lose a lot of time and effort if you look at each customer manually to determine its subscription plan and deploy its bill accordingly. Manual billing can further complicate the process for you and your customers when there is some change in the existing plans where you will have to track each new add-on, product removal, and customer update manually. In simple terms, working with more customers and continuing to use the manual invoicing system is not practical.

An automated billing software saves you precious time that you spend needlessly sending bills to customers and collecting payments on a recurring basis. Billing automation is the best option to go within these modern times. When you use this, you put instructions in place in advance and save your billing team a great deal of time and effort.

When you opt for an automated, self-serve system for your company’s billing requirements, you provide your customers the freedom of altering their preferences whenever they wish to. They can review their bills and make the payments themselves, saving your team time and effort.

2. Improve accuracy and eliminate errors

Recurring manual billing and invoicing processes increase the risk of human error and can result in several errors and inaccuracies in customers’ invoices. The more repetitive the manual activities are, the greater will be the risk of inaccuracies in the end results. Aside from the fact that errors are expensive, there are also long-term costs associated with declined customer satisfaction.

With the billing automation process, customer information or subscription plans are required to be entered into the system only once. This means that any time you update a new subscription, the information will always be accurate every time a customer is billed, no matter what number of customers you are serving.

Automation is about being able to drive and grow your business with confidence.

3. Improved understanding of the Major Subscription measures.

Each business must have a complete understanding of what is going on behind the scenes and what the data suggests. For SaaS (Software as a Service) and other subscription-based businesses, access to relevant reports is a critical component in monitoring business health.

The reporting features offered in the automated billing system can provide you with significant business information to project future revenues. You get to access reports that allow you to see what’s working and what isn’t and quickly fix it. This will assist businesses in making informed strategic decisions going forward.

4. Automated billing system can simplify the way payment collection is done.

Payment collection is easy when you use a modern recurring billing software like SAP BRIM. This is because it automates the entire invoicing and collections process for your business. It also helps small and large businesses in identifying and flagging customers that have due payments and sends out past due notices automatically. Once you start using a system that automates these processes, you will immediately get an idea about the customers’ payments that have not been received, so you can easily identify which clients you need to pay attention to.

Using traditional billing solutions can make it difficult for your company in handling partial payments and payments in various currencies. Tracking partially outstanding payments and converting international payments to your local currency will take up your time and energy if the number of customers you are handling is huge. Automated billing software like SAP BRIM can automate similar activities, saving your significant time and efforts and making payment collection a hassle-free task for you.

5. Improved relationships with customers.

Easy access to client accounts resulted in a better understanding of client behaviour, which resulted in the identification of turnover risks.

Recurring or r automated billing software is much more advanced, sending automated email notifications to the customers once payments are received, which is yet another way to that adds to your relationship with your customer.

No matter how much money a bill is for customers still enjoy receiving this little thank you from your company. As a matter of fact, a simple ‘Thank you’ note can increase your chances of being paid more.

6. Offers Improved security

Automated billing adds an extra layer of security and where certain tasks could only be allowed to certain people within the organization. When an automated billing system is used, it gives you total control over who can do what on your billing platform.

Most businesses have security as one of the major concern when looking for an automated billing system. SAP BRIM solution for Billing automation assures safety for its customers and is the best choice to go with if looking for an automated invoicing billing system.

SAP BRIM for Billing Automation:

Below are SAP BRIM advantages of the on-premise solution –

Conclusion –

Manual billing processes are comparatively slow, inaccurate, and prone to errors, and they do not offer the agility needed to innovate and compete. In order to position your large-scale business that offers subscription or usage-based services and succeed in this increasingly competitive landscape, having an automated billing system is crucial. Automated billing software is an often-overlooked component of a complete digital transformation. And unfortunately, a lot of businesses do not think of improving their billing procedure until some of their pain points have already appeared. But, as a business, it is important for you to maintain a healthy cash flow and keep your business performing at its best in terms of efficiency, security, and customer satisfaction. Go for SAP BRIM automated invoicing system as it is an essential development for your organisation to grow.

Acuiti Labs can help you Switch from Manual Billing to Automated Billing

Automated billing increases accuracy and reduces costs. With an automated billing system, you can save time and streamline your billing process. Acuiti Labs’ team of experts can help you make the transition from manual billing to automated billing with ease, providing direct support for all questions and issues as well as recommendations for upgrades or new systems.

How can we help?

Assessment and Analysis: Acuiti Labs can conduct a thorough assessment of your current billing process to identify areas for improvement and determine the best approach for automating your billing process. We customize the process to fit your business needs, implementing any necessary changes to ensure high-quality oversight throughout the process.
Implementation: Let Acuiti Labs implement a comprehensive, automated billing system that is tailored to your specific business needs. It can include configuring the software, integrating it with other systems, and training your staff on how to use it.
Customization: Acuiti Labs can customize the automated billing system to meet your unique business requirements. This can include customizing the user interface, adding new features and functionalities, and integrating with other systems.
Integration: Acuiti Labs can help to integrate the automated billing system with other systems, such as SAP, Oracle, or Microsoft Dynamics, and integrate with third-party systems. This can help to ensure that your billing process is seamlessly integrated with your other business processes and systems.
Ongoing Support: Once you have your automated billing system in place, Acuiti Labs can provide ongoing support and maintenance for your automated billing system, helping to ensure that it runs smoothly and that any issues are quickly resolved when they do emerge. Our team of experts is available to discuss options and answer questions, so you can be sure you’re getting the most out of your billing system.

Overall, Acuiti Labs can make the transition from manual to automated billing smooth and efficient, and with minimal disruptions to your business. With its expertise in billing automation, Acuiti Labs can ensure that your new billing system is effective, and it is tailored to fit your specific needs.

475

22 NovBusinessSAPTechnology

SAP BRIM Application Management Services for your business, just the way you want it!

Acuiti Labs’ full Implementation and Management support for your BRIM system allows your team to leverage the maximum potential of your SAP solutions.

Let your team focus more on strategic and essential activities. Give your IT team the advantage of accessing on-demand SAP support in different functional and technical areas depending on your requirements. Services are easy to work with, easy to access, and always available.

Why Choose a Dedicated SAP AMS Service Provider for your Business?

Enables businesses to be more Strategic and Focused

Get benefits from strategic & focused methods that can drive more value from your existing SAP system. Customized SAP BRIM Application Management Services can free up your internal IT resources and allow your team and business to leverage the full potential of your SAP system.

Helps in meeting business goals with custom AMS Solutions

AMS Partners, help you remain updated with changing IT needs. They can work together in describing right-sized and right-shored delivery models based on the specific requirement of your business.

Continuous Assistance for Your SAP Applications

Businesses that choose a dedicated SAP AMS partner get expert SAP assistance on-demand, in any functional or technical area, without extra effort. Services are easy to access, easy to work with, and always available.

Advantages of Exclusive SAP BRIM AMS Services

Below listed are some of the major advantages that are offered to you when you choose SAP BRIM Application Management Services from Acuiti Labs:

Allows your employees to focus on internal projects and take care of other priority tasks.
Reduces cost of operation with the help of a hybrid delivery model and flexible support model.
The benefit of leveraging best-practice methodologies designed by SAP BRIM knowledgeable experts.
You do not have to worry about resource availability while you use SAP Application Management Services.
SAP AMS gives your business the flexibility to scale up and down as it grows. Avoid hiring delays and the charges associated with the frequent shift in the workforce.
Strategic SAP consulting and operational SAP application management from a single source.
Use resources as and when you need them without paying anything extra.
Help businesses in cutting the infrastructural cost for the team.
Complete support with high resource requirements to ensure 24/7 in-house operation

Why SAP BRIM AMS Services is unique and offer a world-class experience?

Acuiti Labs’ team of SAP Experts comes with vast industry knowledge and experience providing complete assurance of utilizing your SAP Landscape in the best and most optimized manner.

Our SAP BRIM Based Administration Services include:

Monitoring and maintenance of your SAP Landscape.
Storage space monitoring and Expansion as required.
User management.
Managing safety and security of Apps.
Upgrade and Migration to SAP S/4 HANA.

Below are a few reasons you should right away go with our AMS Services

We offer AMS Support irrespective of location, industry, and size of the organization.
We are flexible and utilize different support models (shared or dedicated).
We have the expertise to offer the best in market support for CC, CI, FICA, SOM, etc. with the help of our knowledgeable and experienced team of SAP Experts.
Our flexible pricing models fit both small and large enterprises.
Right from development, to upgrade, to maintenance, of your SAP Landscape, we do it all.

Our SAP AMS Support Models

Dedicated support model

This support model can help your business with an effective transition of SAP business systems into a competent managed services model, letting your business focus on what really matters for your growth and success. Our agenda takes full responsibility of your application life cycle with the flexibility and affordability you would want from your AMS partner.

Shared support model

There could be times when businesses might struggle with the availability of skilled and adequate number resources or do not have a sufficient budget. Acuiti Labs’ AMS Shared support model brings predictable value that leverages best-in-class strategies, processes, templates, and reporting framework. Our shared support model features a centralized pool of talented, experienced, and knowledgeable SAP Experts who can help you in maintaining, enhancing, and managing your SAP BRIM system with complete flexibility.

Why Choose Acuiti Labs?

Choose us for SAP Application Management Services for your BRIM System, because our SAP BRIM AMS Services offers a full range of industry-leading services with complete transparency and reduced costs. We have a proven methodology designed to take care of your business’ application management services.

Our models cover application, technical and functional support for Application Maintenance and other support services. Our highly knowledgeable SAP Certified experts make us the perfect partner when it comes to delivering maintenance and support services for your business.

Conclusion

Our process allows business to combine all their different data and processes into a single tool. This eliminates extra work which is associated with manual data entry, multiple database usage, and other unwanted and time-consuming aspects that help keep your BRIM system up and running.

For more details, visit now – https://www.acuitilabs.com/application-management-services-for-brim/

438

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 especially when it comes to the pricing and billing options you are offering to your customers.

A lot of companies are rapidly moving towards adopting 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? The 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. SAP BRIM is a new-age solution to choose usage-billing option for your business.

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.

Business benefits of choosing Usage-based Billing

Usage-based pricing does not have 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, the requirements of their 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 flexible, easy to use, and comes with several customer benefits.

Why Usage-based billing is even better than a 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, the 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 helping businesses in reaching maximum revenue numbers.

When the fixed-rate subscriptions are combined with flexible usage-based pricing, it results in the form of a 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 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 the 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 that any business should understand to fully leverage the advantage of the 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 a 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 – This allows the customer to choose and pay for their exact scope of usage. Helps overcome buying constraints and budget thresholds.

3. Scalable – Generates more, spends 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 a 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 the 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 the usage-based billing model may not be the right fit for your business.

Therefore, 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 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 customers.

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 a 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 the 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 their format, to track usage and apply the right pricing. This is where executing and integrating a robust charging and billing system is important. It helps in streamlining the payment processes and producing itemised invoices.

Conclusion

Usage-based pricing/business model is a very effective way to improve business performance. However, billing for a 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.

473

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 a connected vehicle billing service– 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 billing service 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 –

454

Cookie	Duration	Description
__cf_bm	1 hour	This cookie, set by Cloudflare, is used to support Cloudflare Bot Management. Cloudflare Bot Management helps us to block any undesired or malicious Internet traffic.
AWSALBCORS	7 days	Amazon Web Services set this cookie for load balancing. Load balancing is the technical means by which we ensure that our site continues to run smoothly even if a large volume of people are visiting it at the same time.
cookielawinfo-checbox-analytics	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checbox-functional	11 months	The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checbox-others	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
CookieLawInfoConsent	1 year	CookieYes sets this cookie to record the default consent button state of the corresponding category and the status of the California Consumer Privacy Act. It works only in coordination with the primary cookie.
elementor	indefinite	The website's WordPress theme uses this cookie. It allows the website owner to implement or change the website's content in real-time.
JSESSIONID	6 hours	This cookie creates a unique ‘session identifier’ for you so that the tool we use to monitor our website performance (New Relic) can keep count of how many times you have visited our site.”
LS_CSRF_TOKEN	session	Cloudflare sets this cookie to track users’ activities across multiple websites. It expires once the browser is closed.
viewed_cookie_policy	11 months	The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.

Cookie	Duration	Description
_ga	1 year 1 month 4 days	Google Analytics sets this cookie to calculate visitor, session and campaign data and track site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookie stores information anonymously and assigns a randomly generated number to recognise unique visitors.
_ga_*	1 year 1 month 4 days	Google Analytics sets this cookie to store and count page views.
_gat_UA-*	1 minute	Google Analytics sets this cookie for user behaviour tracking.n
_gcl_au	3 months	Google Tag Manager sets the cookie to experiment advertisement efficiency of websites using their services.
_gid	1 day	Google Analytics sets this cookie to store information on how visitors use a website while also creating an analytics report of the website's performance. Some of the collected data includes the number of visitors, their source, and the pages they visit anonymously.
_hjSession_*	1 hour	Hotjar is a behaviour insights tool which we use to help us understand what visitors to our site do and why. Hotjar sets this cookie to ensure data from subsequent visits to the our site are attributed to the same user ID (which persists in the Hotjar User ID, which is unique to that site)
_hjSessionUser_*	1 year	Hotjar sets this cookie to ensure data from subsequent visits to oursite are attributed to the same user ID (which persists in the Hotjar User ID, which is unique to that site).
_hjTLDTest	session	Aiming to identify the predominant cookie path to utilize instead of the site's hostname. This approach ensures that cookies, if applicable, can be shared across subdomains.
_lfa	1 year	This cookie is set by the provider Leadfeeder to identify the IP address of devices used for visiting the website, for marketing purposes.
663a60c55d	session	Zoho sets this cookie is used to build a sales analytics cookie
AnalyticsSyncHistory	1 month	LinkedIn uses this cookie to retain information regarding the timing of a synchronization with the lms_analytics cookie.
ga_	1 year	Google Analytics sets this cookie to calculate visitor, session and campaign data and track site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookie stores information anonymously and assigns a randomly generated number to recognise unique visitors.
siqlsdb	never	Zoho sets this cookie to generate a unique ID for the session. This allows the website to obtain data on visitor behaviour for statistical purposes.
utsdb	never	Zoho SalesIQ sets this cookie to register data on visitor's website behaviour.

Cookie	Duration	Description
bcookie	1 year	LinkedIn sets this cookie from LinkedIn share buttons and ad tags to recognize browser IDs.
bscookie	1 year	LinkedIn sets this cookie to store performed actions on the website.
li_sugr	3 months	LinkedIn sets this cookie to collect user behaviour data to optimise the website and make advertisements on the website more relevant.
test_cookie	15 minutes	doubleclick.net sets this cookie to determine if the user's browser supports cookies.
VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE	6 months	YouTube sets this cookie to measure bandwidth, determining whether the user gets the new or old player interface.
VISITOR_PRIVACY_METADATA	6 months	YouTube sets this cookie to store the user's cookie consent state for the current domain.
YSC	session	Youtube sets this cookie to track the views of embedded videos on Youtube pages.
yt-remote-connected-devices	never	YouTube sets this cookie to store the user's video preferences using embedded YouTube videos.
yt-remote-device-id	never	YouTube sets this cookie to store the user's video preferences using embedded YouTube videos.
yt.innertube::nextId	never	YouTube sets this cookie to register a unique ID to store data on what videos from YouTube the user has seen.
yt.innertube::requests	never	YouTube sets this cookie to register a unique ID to store data on what videos from YouTube the user has seen.

Cookie	Duration	Description
_zcsr_tmp	session	Zoho sets this cookie for the login function on the website.
li_gc	6 months	Linkedin set this cookie for storing visitor's consent regarding using cookies for non-essential purposes.
lidc	1 day	LinkedIn sets the lidc cookie to facilitate data center selection.
uesign	1 month	Zoho sets this cookie for the Visitor Live Chat.
UserMatchHistory	1 month	LinkedIn sets this cookie for LinkedIn Ads ID syncing.
wp-wpml_current_language	session	WordPress multilingual plugin sets this cookie to store the current language/language settings.

Cookie	Duration	Description
alr	1 hour	Glassdoor sets this cookie to track which users have shown interest in which job postings. The cookie ensures that the most relevant job postings are shown to the specific user.
AWSALB	7 days	AWSALB is an application load balancer cookie set by Amazon Web Services to map the session to the target. Load balancing is the technical means by which we ensure that our site continues to run smoothly even if a large volume of people are visiting it at the same time.