What is the need of SAP BRIM Solution for the Media and entertainment industry today? This industry has evolved rapidly over the past few years and has become the early adopters of technology. The evolution of the industry has led to a more subscription-based economy with a healthy dose of usage-based charging. Easy and flexible options to watch movies or their favorite shows which is now at their fingertip with the online streaming platforms like Netflix, Amazon Video, Hotstar, and the list goes on. The need to modernize and adopt a digital transformation-based approach has become imperative for the industry old timers to match with the new technology based streaming platforms.

Releasing movies on the conventional theaters and cinema houses is now being challenged by the new streaming platforms. There is a big shift in the revenue model for movie makers. More and more movie makers and studios are now releasing content directly on the streaming platforms making the traditional model close to obsolete.  Along with this the consumer expectations have changed considerably. They are now looking at pure subscription of their desired bundles or pay per use or a combination of the two. They are no longer willing to be tied to the conventional media content delivery, where the choice was driven by the media service providers.

Imperatives of Media and Entertainment World today –

Consumers of media are now the millennials whose expectations are completely different from yester years. The viewing habits and demands are very technology driven. It is very important to understand that the combination of new digital distribution modalities and evolution of customer’s consumption habits. This is continuously challenging the traditional Media and Entertainment business model. It has already been considered the start of a sweeping transformation that will continue to reshape the entire Media and Entertainment ecosystem.

We cannot ignore the unyielding competition as far as the media and entertainment industry is concerned, with even the biggest of industry players battling for the eyeballs of the viewers and subscribers. The media companies that will rapidly identify and react to the evolving requirements and consumption patterns of the end-users will survive in this rate race.

The rapid growth in advanced technologies has been the single biggest factor behind this resurgence. The same advancement in technologies has also created the commonly witnessed enlightening shifts. The audience now have understood their power and have become more demanding. Gone is the time when they use to adjust their daily routine, to the availability or airing of the content. Content providers are wrapping up their broadcasting and publishing as per the requirement and convenience of the customers. With the growing completion amongst the streaming platforms, the companies have become more customer-centric over time.

When at any given point people can exchange notes with each other about any of the newly launch media content by the means of several social media websites like YouTube or Instagram or review sites, the death or survival of any published or broadcast content can be decided in seconds.

One thing is obvious; consumers are more liberal and are keen to exercise greater choices and express personal freedoms as far as media & entertainment are concerned. Along with independence, consumption has also significantly gone up. This has led to a double-edged challenge for the content providers, greater opportunities, and much higher risks. In the era of technology shifts, it is imperative that only those media and entertainment entities that enable themselves rapidly, identify and act on this tectonic shift in the consumer mindset will survive and indeed thrive.

In summary, challenges faced by Media and Entertainment Industry –

Knowing the fact that the media and entertainment industry is witnessing massive transformation at the moment, it is also reacting by working towards improving the customer experience. Nevertheless, here are some major challenges that are being faced by this industry.
1. Higher Customer Expectations – The customers are expecting the various media and entertainment providers to deliver choice, convenience, and value, all these wrapped inside personalized and customized experiences that should be available on-demand and on a cross-platform basis which should also include limited advertising and strong data protection.

2. Adaption of new realities – Growing competition for viewers and advertisers, combined with ongoing declines in subscribers, has become quite a cause for topline media and entertainment business owners to relook at the new realities and adapt them for being all-time better. All that Media and Entertainment industry requires is a new level of operational superiority — the kind of strategic expense reduction that provides short-term results and long-term efficiencies.

3. Constant desire of customers for something new and unique – Speaking about the traditional Media and Entertainment model, creativity, distribution, and monetization were direct. It was common for consumers to be passive and wait for content that was made available at a time prescribed by others. Digitalization has changed the face of the world and that has reduced the need of an intermediary, that is more atomized, yet a bit complex and, above all, lively. As mentioned earlier, Media and Entertainment consumers are more inspired and demanding. Their expectations are rather high on being able to control how the content, products or services should be delivered to them. This behavior and expectations have been fueled by personalized experiences across their daily life, right from mobility and financial services to communications and indeed entertainment.

4. Mitigation of Cyber risks – Huge amount of data is being created every minute as a result of millions of clicks, views, and downloads. This data offers media and entertainment companies a real competitive advantage, however, this same data is a real threat for them as it acts as a magnet for cybercriminals. Companies need to have a better plan in place in order to deal with any cybersecurity issue.

5. Race to deliver the best content – The rapid growth in video creation and distribution platforms and a consistent rise in engagement metrics, subscription fees, advertising revenue or a combination of all of these together have created an intensely competitive landscape for developing and acquiring the best content.

With so much content available across many distribution alternatives, Media and entertainment businesses are forced to think of innovative strategies to deliver more compelling programs for their consumers to watch. AI and machine learning technologies can be leveraged by these companies to dissect viewing patterns from multiple perspectives to build personalized recommendations into consumers’ digital interaction.

Role of SAP in changing the face of Media and Entertainment Industry

The content offered by media and entertainment industry plays a crucial role in customer satisfaction, SAP S/4 HANA and the cloud platform can help in streamlining and personalizing the content as per the taste of the Audience. SAP S/4 HANA has collaborated with SAP Cloud Platform and is facilitating the media houses to digitize and innovate their business models.

Here are a few points that can help in understanding the role of SAP in media and entertainment industries –

Creating New Cloud-Based Multipurpose Applications

The SAP Cloud based platform is helping media companies to build new cloud-based mobile applications rapidly which can in turn help them for the next-generation audience, that are more technology driven and are always hooked online through their mobile devices.

Bundling

Many new media companies are opting for bundling service offered by SAP. Product bundling feature enables them to easily create complex and personalized product offerings of digital goods and services for their customers. With the help of this feature you can also offer flexible pricing and availability rules based on the customer selection

Packaging

In this competitive world of new digital a reality, SAP S/4HANA can help your deal with all packaging requirements efficiently.

Monthly Subscription Billing

SAP Subscription Billing solution can help your business with a simplified, automated approach to billing and ordering processes to help you create and monetize new offers quickly and effectively which can also be chosen on the Subscription basis.

Customer Experience

SAP Billing Services can help your company in delivering better customer experience by providing transparency and flexible billing choices. It can help you in managing huge number of users with ease and also keep a track of user-based charging.

SAP innovative software solutions remain the game changer when it comes to targeting the right audience, dealing with customer problems, establishing better connections with them, and a lot more.

Speaking about the facts, as per SAP’s official website, near about 83% of the media-based companies listed in Forbes Global 2000 are SAP customers, 74 % of radio and TV broadcasting content worldwide is produced by SAP customers and 90 % of the printers and publishers in the Forbes Global 2000 are SAP customers.

SAP’s easy approach to solve to your specific your specific media business requirements –

• SAP’s intelligent technologies optimizes the overall experience of your customers. Move a step ahead by increasing the transparency of end-to-end processes and leverage real-world awareness which involves consumers, talent, and also business to business (B2B) partners get more innovative.

• SAP innovative solutions can help you in unlocking business values and potential with digital technology. Get an all new approach to content delivery by connecting innovative technologies with integrated business solutions and get more closer to creating an intelligent enterprise

SAP CX to improve Customer Experience –

With a lot of new options coming up in the market so promptly, it is quite a task for businesses to win customer’s trust and keep it intact in the long run. These fascinating options for the customers are capable enough to drag their complete focus away from you. SAP Customer Experience is one of the best solutions to make each step of your customers journey count. Understand their intentions, interact frequently to show that you care, offer them complete support at each step of their journey. This is how SAP helps you in providing the best of customer service.

SAP BRIM Solution to improve customer experience – Example of the Use-case

The role of SAP  BRIM solution for the media and entertainment industry can be clearly understood with the help of an example of the use-case where the primary requirement was to improve the customer experience. 

Business challenges –

In this use case, the media and entertainment industry wanted a system to deal with:

• Product bundling and pricing,
• Manage subscriptions
• Manage offers efficiently
• Single billing for subscription and consumption events

They required a provision that can offer the customers bundled product with a lot of unique options for them and a robust OTC process that includes quotation approval.

What SAP Innovative solutions were used to deal with the above-mentioned challenges –

SAP BRIM Solutions can significantly reduce manual efforts and operational cost by offering support for businesses that deal with subscription models. A few SAP BRIM solutions that are involved in this process includes SAP CX C4C, Commerce, Data Mediation, SAP BRIM and Subscription Billing.

Depending on your business goals, SAP BRIM solutions are implemented which helps the businesses understand the scenario of getting numerous advantages for both customers and business itself.

 SAP BRIM Solution Architecture for Media and Entertainment Industry

Benefits

After implementing SAP BRIM solution, the end user was provided with a highly scalable and high-performance SAP CX Integrated solution along with a 360° view of customer records to accelerate collections processes and improve customer service. The business also gets the benefit of provision of performing usage and recurring based billing.

How Acuiti Labs can help –

Acuiti Labs is a UK based SAP Silver Partner and offers innovate solutions like BRIM, Subscription Billing, CPQ, C4C and more. Business growth or improving customer relationships, we can help you with customized solutions for all your requirements. We can help you in accelerating implementation time, reducing risks, reducing manual processes, enhancing sales activities, improved customer interactions and moreover, get you ready for your digital journey with our SAP based solutions.

The word subscription is not a new term when it comes to ease the business flow and offer your customers an option of recurring payment for any service or product could be taken with right combination of subscriptions, one-time fees, and usage-based charges. Industries like telecom, media, entertainment etc. have been providing their services for longer duration with a flexible choice of subscription and payment options. They have been doing this since decades; Earlier it was Newspapers, Cable Television Networks, and Landline Telephones bills, whereas today these have turned into Consumer goods, Jobs, Travelling, Dating, Netflix, and other such offerings.

However, with the increase in growth of mobile communications and the internet, the face of subscription-based business models has dramatically evolved and is changing the way customers use to look at buying options. Every business is becoming a connected one by moving from products to services. Earlier it was only a handful of industries that offered the choice of recurring payments, today a lot of industries have already moved into this business whereas, several others are planning to opt the option of offering services and products on the basis of subscription.

Subscription Based Billing – Win-win for Customers and Business

It is not only businesses that are being benefited with the use of SAP Subscription Billing model, but customers are also get more options to choose from and buy only what is required. This also help businesses in maintaining continuous cash-flow and building stronger and lifetime relationships with the customers.

As growth persists, such companies have already started realizing that to maintain and support the new and more creative subscription-based offerings, stronger, more efficient, and flexible billing solution is required and using traditional ERP and CRM systems will not be enough. These systems lack the capability of managing the diverse requirements like fulfilling the recurring billing demands for the customers or managing large volumes or real-time competencies linked with the hyper-connected world.

Although the internet can help you with the hits on subscription billing, you need to have a proper understanding about the important features of subscription billing to get benefitted as a business.

A Few Key Features Essential for a Subscription Billing System

Flexibility : The subscription billing model is required to be flexible and should come with the option to be easily deployed in the cloud, on-premise or in a hybrid way depending on the requirement of the customer.

Responsiveness : With rapidly changing billing requirement, Agility is one of the most important key features of any billing solution. businesses need to have a solution that is responsive and powerful with the ability to create any type of pricing rules imaginable in hours or days – not months. Any subscription billing system that do not require a lot of highly trained developers for its installation, implementation or management is considered to be the best.

Real-time and Centralised Pricing Model : An ideal billing system possesses a real-time and centralized pricing model. Along with the simple integration of all the systems that require pricing and customer information (typically in real-time), a billing system should also be capable of providing needed support to all subscription products and services that are offered by a particular company.

Scalability : You can easily manage the scenario in the initial phase of using a subscription billing model for your business as you might have fewer customers at that time. But as you grow, this number will also increase dramatically and will require a system that can support a huge number of subscribers and can process billions of transactions in a single day. Thus, scalability is one of the important features of any subscription billing system.

Usage metering : We need to understand the fact that the simplest subscription models are based mostly based on flat recurring fees. There are a lot of businesses that need to meter customer usage so that they can efficiently manage pricing, discounts and other options like up-sell. Another advantage of usage metering is reporting and revenue recognition.

Financials and reporting :  An effective billing solution provide complete customer financial management and integration with the Backend Accounting Module. Reporting and Business Intelligence must be leveraged at real-time speed to keep a check on the company’s health and growth rate.

When it comes to managing the subscription billing process for your business to maximize its benefits and growth, you need to have a billing system that is fast, agile, flexible, convergent, scalable and powerful at the same time. Choosing a billing system with the above-mentioned important features will not only ensures that your business can reap the most benefits from this investment but also offer your customers exciting new products and services with better customer experience.

Advantage of Choosing SAP Billing and Revenue Innovation Management (SAP BRIM)

While you choose SAP Billing and Revenue Innovation Management Solution for your business, you get the advantage of monetizing subscription and usage-based business models with agility and with the advanced capabilities like revenue management and recurring billing. This also increases the transparency of the entire revenue management process with the help of its dedicated scalable, agile, flexible, and highly automated software that helps in billing, invoicing, and revenue management.

Below are the key benefits of using BRIM

1.    Supports high-volume processing and Scales up businesses : Provide support to the Internet of Things and connected devices with high-volume, automated, and transparent processing across usage-event and financial postings.

2.    Easy Migration from selling products to selling services and physical goods bundled with services : Offer your customers outcomes-based on subscriptions and real-time usage-based services, while supporting revenue-sharing models across your extended ecosystem.

3.    Ease and flexibility of operationalizing your business model : Get the freedom of enabling any variant or combination of prepaid and pay-as-you-go business models with rules-based, smart automation of invoicing and accounting processes.

4. Supports Partner Revenue Sharing : Partner Revenue Sharing option by SAP BRIM helps the partners in establishing a successful cloud practice with lower liabilities and risks providing maximum benefits to them.
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How SAP Subscription Billing and Revenue Management Contribute to managing Subscription-based order management?

Below are a few points that will help to understand how SAP Billing and Revenue Innovation Management can help companies that are looking for an effective solution for managing their subscription billing process.

• The automated process ensures accurate delivery and billing process. This is done by capturing and monitoring subscription orders.
• Promptly and automatically addresses contract changes, renewals, extensions, and billing cycles to avoid errors.
•  Provides Ease of managing master agreements, which includes invoicing hierarchies, specialized catalogs, and shared credit.
• Automated payment handling from any channel. Integrated Credit, Collection, and dispute Management.

SAP Commissions is a simple yet very effective way to improve and align sales performance management according to your business goals. Already chosen by many successful businesses, this is a new age end-to-end solution to deal with business requirements and helps in streamlining incentive compensation management, distribution process, approvals, and workflow, it also helps in reducing overhead and maximising plan effectiveness.

Grow revenue, meet business goals and keep your sales team motivated with SAP Commissions. This innovative solution allows you to create, optimize and deliver incentive compensation plans and align sale behaviors to maximise profits while gaining the transparency to increase commissions ROI and remove errors. No matter you are dealing with direct sales force or indirect sales force, this solution can easily manage a complete incentive compensation process for you right from sales order to payment.

SAP Commissions is designed in a way that it fits perfectly into your business process and brings in the agility to meet the rapidly changing market scenario. While using this for your business you can eliminate the commission errors, align sales to your business goals, and monitor your expenses wisely that are specifically assigned for compensation budget.

If you are also looking for a simple way to deliver transparent incentives in an agile manner and get your sales team fully aligned with your business goals, SAP Commissions is for you! Powerful and fully customisable dashboards and prepackaged reports with SAP Commissions make sales performance management process even faster, accurate, and transparent.

SAP Sales Performance Management with SAP commissions

Below are the key features that will help you understand how Sales performance management can be best done along with SAP Commissions:

1. Execute your Sales Plan in a better way

This is the best way to align all your compensation plans in one place which is also a great advantage for sales representatives and sales managers. SAP Commissions comes with complete transparency and allows the sales reps to have visibility about the payouts and performances, in a way that they can have a proper understanding about commission plans and raise compensation disputes, see detailed compensation statements and performance metrics and forecast income at their convenience, anytime, anywhere and on any device.

2. Easy integration with the back-end systems

Best part about using SAP commissions for sales performance management is that it can easily be integrated with major and most frequently used latest platforms like CRM, ERP, HR systems etc. where the integration can be done both at data level and at the processing level. So, you can easily enjoy the real-time data insights and have the flexibility to execute business processes across different systems without worrying about worrying about logging manually, every time.

3. Ease of one-click Traceability

This solution comes with complete audit trail visibility & traceability for Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) compliance. Get complete details of audit logs on each of the available screens as information is tracked from time to time and it has all the records about which changes are done, who did the changes and when these changes are done. Sales reps can easily trace any payout amount back to the originating sales transaction just with the ease of one-click traceability.

4. Precise and Built-in Crediting

SAP Commissions allows you to easily and precisely process any complex split; so that any number of direct or indirect payees, that could be across internal and external hierarchies can be credited with being delayed.

This is a robust built-in crediting engine, that you can credit over complex roles, relationships, and numerous functions with the help of simple drag-and-drop actions.

5. Quick Settlements of Compensation Disputes

Every business understands the pain of resolving compensation disputes as the process is not only time consuming, but also can also have a lot of errors to be resolved. SAP Commissions can be very helpful in resolving the compensation disputes quickly and precisely. This not only reduces the number of errors and disputes a business might have to deal with but also simply and smartly deals with disputes as and when they occur.

Who should opt for SAP Commissions?

Businesses that are looking forward to enhancing their sales performance management can opt for SAP Commissions. Visit our SAP Commissions page and learn more about this solution. Also, get in touch to have a brief understanding of SAP Consulting Services that we offer.

SAP CPQ is one of the best sales configuration systems that any business can use to ease the complexity of selling solutions that feature multifaced combinations. Choosing CPQ can streamline and automate the selling process so that you deliver a solution that perfectly matches the requirement of your customers.

SAP CPQ is designed with a purpose that can help users to automate and accelerate the sales cycle. While combining products, there is a possibility that you might have to deal with product combination complexities. Simplify this entire process with the help of robust configuration tools that SAP CPQ provides and give your user the advantage of defining component requirements, analyzing functional specification, combing various solution components, and settling interdependencies.

Why CPQ and CLM could be better together?

Enhanced sales, better customer experience, quick processing of deals and minimised errors, these are a few basics required by a sales team in any big or small business. CPQ is the most trusted and efficient system to deal with sales-related problems and provide quick and accurate quotes to the customers with the help of which error-prone and time-consuming processes of sifting through multiple spreadsheets can be avoided.
Automating the complete sales process, including the contract, is another added advantage when it comes to improving the sales cycle. The pace of business is growing faster than ever and businesses in this situation cannot afford to experience any kind of delay in deal/contract finalization. And here’s when CLM (Contract Lifecycle Management) makes your task easy and provides complete surety to the sales reps so that they do not face any difficulty during the legal steps’ finalization.
There are a lot of companies today that have already realised the importance of Contract Lifecycle Management for the business growth and moreover has understood that it is not just record-keeping system but CLM Software’s combination with CPQ system can be the best choice to get you one step closer to your revenue goals
Here are 5 major reasons that show why SAP CPQ integration with CLM is a good idea for businesses today –

1. Helps in Closing Contracts/Deals faster

The complicated manual process of contract finalization demands the sales team to wrap up the legal formalities which indeed are time-consuming and also carry the risk of losing the deal as the customers can lose patience and step back due to frustration.
While at the same time, the automated process guarantees a smooth and quick deal processing where sales reps have the freedom to:

• Easily create contracts with the help of self-service wizards and templates.
• Import third-party contracts.
• Get the advantage of automated approval escalation.
• Negotiate contracts with the help of pre-approved clause library.
• Get a collaborative workspace that enables real-time tracking of all redlines plus version control

The reason why a CLM solution streamlines and speeds up the contract process is its parallel cloud presence that gives the flexibility of contract reviewing to multiple approvers at the same time.

2. Enhances Sales Experience

The Sales reps, instead of focusing more and more on the selling process, are required to indulge in the manual process of preparing proposals and contracts for customers. This affects the overall sales of the organization and also demotivates the sales team. Using CLM and CPQ together enhances the sales experience by allowing the reps to speed the entire process from the quote to closing the deal with a signed contract. It gives reps a streamlined and easier way to interact with legal teams and the deal desk. They can focus on selling and driving more revenue.

3. Generate for revenue by never missing renewals

The combination of CPQ and CLM is very helpful for the sales reps as through it they can receive email notifications of contract milestones, renewals, expiration dates, etc. well in advance. You will not need any extra process for the renewals as with this combination all the required information remains at the fingertips and can be easily processed whenever the contract is requiring renewal. This facilitates the sales reps to:

• To take action ensuring contracts are renewed correctly
• Follow-ups on upsell suggestions are provided by an AI-enabled CPQ

All this process saves a lot of time and manual efforts which in turn generates more revenue for the business.

4. Boost the overall productivity of your business

Reaching your revenue goals and increasing the productivity of your business is a lot easier with the combination of CPQ and CLM. The SAP CPQ integration with SAP CLM not only simplifies the sales process, but it is also helpful in minimizing the total amount of time that a legal team might take to wrap the entire contract process.
Store all your contracts in a single online repository with the help of which you can have complete visibility and version control to keep a track of each step. You won’t require different applications for different processes like contract creation, negotiation, renewal, etc. and all this can be done with the combination of CPQ and CLM.

5. Offer Better Customer Experience

Deliver optimal customer expertise by providing accurate and quick services with this advanced combination of SAP CPQ and CLM. Avoid any misunderstandings that might occur when working without an automated tool and speed up the entire process by opting for this new online platform. Do not let small manual mistakes and confusions ruin your reputation in front of your valuable customers. When you choose SAP CPQ integration with CLM, you not only choose it for offering the perfect and accurate quote to your customer but also give them the flexibility of being updated with the complete contract processing through this advanced and straightforward integrated system offered by SAP.

Apart from CPQ, CLM can be integrated with –

SAP C4C

The combination of C4C with CLM allows businesses to manage contracts and quote negotiations more efficiently! This happens because a new CLM tab is added to C4C just after the integration is done thus giving the users the privilege of switching between both the applications (CLM and C4C) without having to log in again and again. Other settings such as Contract status check and permissions etc. are configured in CLM just the way it is done in CPQ.

Salesforce

CLM’s integration with Salesforce can help businesses in leveraging CRM data in making informed decisions and managing contract negotiations efficiently. While using this combination, your sales team can easily manage all the related activities through a single dedicated platform thus simplifying the entire workflow for them.

Netsuite

while used along CLM, Netsuite can help users in utilising the guided selling capabilities that are provided by the ERP solution. This integration is also most helpful in streamlining the entire contract management process for the businesses.

DocuSign

CLM and DocuSign integration cut downs the unnecessary costs that you might be spending on printing, scanning, and copying paper documents and enables a completely electronic workflow. This automated system collects information, and sign contracts online with electronic devices like your computer or mobile phone and speeds up the process.

Adobe Sign

Speed up the workflow, manage contracts efficiently, offer clear and full reporting compliance by integrating CLM with Adobe Sign. This combination allows businesses to securely automate workflows and sign contracts online electronic devices like computers, laptop or mobile phones. As an administrator, you can integrate and set up Adobe Sign with CLM and add the e-signature capability by signing an agreement.

How Acuiti Labs can be your best choice for integrating CPQ with CLM?

Acuiti Labs is an UK based SAP Silver partner with expertise in SAP’s latest technologies including Configure Price Quote (CPQ), Cloud for Customer (C4C), Contract Life-cycle Management (CLM), SAP Billing (BRIM), SAP Subscription Billing, and more. We have already deployed several SAP solutions successfully with Global Clientele and have also created a system with the help which you can easily go for SAP CPQ integration with SAP CLM.

Contact us to get more details about how Acuiti Labs can be your best partner in getting CPQ integrated with CLM and making your businesses process a lot more seamless and quicker.

Contract activity is an essential business aspect that requires proper management during the complete cycle. SAP Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) service is a practical and systematic way to manage the entire contract lifecycle right from initial stage, through award, agreement and renewal (if required). A few advantages of using CLM for your business includes simplifying sourcing and procurement processes, accelerate compliance with negotiated terms, and enhance competitive advantage.
Below listed are a few reasons why businesses find it difficult to manage contracts –

• Contracts management take significant time to copy, file and store which businesses fail to give and thus the process becomes difficult for them.
• There’s no streamlined process to keep a track of price and payments which creates revenue loopholes.
• Lot of time consumption in approval process from various ends can put a wrong impression on the customers and can also make you less valuable in their eyes
• If working without a proper CLM software, split management can result in incorrect and incomplete information or even overlook policy compliance

Choosing SAP CLM can be very helpful in overcoming all the problems that you might face and can also be helpful in improving cost savings and efficiency of your business. Having proper understanding and automating CLM minimises organisational liability and increases compliance with legal requirements.

Benefits of Using CLM (contract lifecycle management) for your business

Here are certain ways through which you can understand the use of automation software and how it can benefit your business with contract lifecycle management (CLM):

1. Standardized and managed process right from start to end

You need to first properly understand how the complete process of customer lifecycle management works. We can take an example of following steps that a CLM could involve:

• The first step is ‘generating a quote’ with the help of CRM (Customer Relationship Management system) that you might be using.
• Next, you will be sending over an e-sign document to bind the contract.
• Further, you might have to carry out the operation of making the sale and supplying the product
• Once all this is done, you will store your contract in a database
• And at the last, you will book the contract using Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and keep track of your contracts from there.

CLM, instead streamlines all contracts based on the business’s operations thus helping you in managing multiple applications like separate CRM and ERP software from the same place. By doing this, you will be able to manage all steps of all contracts in one single program, where the collaborating with your partner or client becomes faster and you can also easily manage and track different tasks.

CLM minimises your chances of missing any deadlines and also provides access to required information from any part of the process just with a few clicks.

2. Minimises the requirement and dependency of manual tasks

Contract Lifecycle management is the new generation, smart software with the capability to deal with contract’s front end and back end experience without any requirement of creating custom code. The standard businesses today use a dedicated CRM software for customer relations, and an ERP software for doing the booking. However, they carry out the steps in between manually.

CLM is the best solution to automate the complete manual process and streamline it in the following ways:

• An auto-generated contract sent to the customer to sign based on the quote that has been selected
• Approval and renewal notifications are sent to the appropriate people and applications in charge of moving the contract along once the task is complete
• Contract is automatically updated and stored in the database once it has been signed by the customer.

When you choose to use CLM, you make sure that you are not missing any important steps in your contract’s lifecycle with the freedom of running through the complete sales process without worrying about completing and focusing on manual tasks.

3. Automate everything between and after first and last step of the contract

The above two steps clearly signify how CLM can imitate the contract procedure and manage it smartly for you. Though, these steps are covering up the entire process of managing a contract, there are many businesses that need to be smart enough while taking care of a few little details that they might come across before and after the first and the last step of the contract.

This can be better explained with the help of an example in which, when you are sending a quote to you customer, then first you will have to go through your business’s pricing module to understand it and find out in which category your customer’s profile fits perfectly. You will also look for the discounts that your customer might be eligible for. Similarly, while finishing up the contract, there are some formalities that you might need to finish.

Once you choose CLM software for this, it will automatically take care of the all the details that require attention right before you start the contract and after the deal is done. Irrespective of what platform these details function in, CLM software can easily access them from anywhere. For example, if after the booking is done and contract is signed and now you need to activate a special benefit plan, CLM does it for you automatically.

4. Streamlined Process of Personalizing Contracts

When it is about details, we have to understand that contracts are the strong connection that two parties share with each other and it should be feasible enough for both the parties to remain updated and navigate through it. A streamlined process to personalize contracts assure that the both you and your customer have accurate and up-to-date info and neither you nor your customer is wasting time during negotiations.

Once you start using CLM, it takes all the responsibility of creating and managing numerous drafts of your contract. It accesses and edit the necessary information whenever you need. Contract Lifecycle management software along with easy tracking options also offers advantages like:

Transparency : When using CLM, you don’t have to worry about where and by whom the contract has been drafted. The details of the contract will always remain easy to track so there is no pressure on manager of going back and forth to manage the contract.

Effectiveness : Using CLM increases the efficiency as you and your customer will get alert notification about the latest drafts that are being used so that both the parties are not wasting time on the incorrect draft.

Accuracy : Stay more accurate as any manual or automatic change is always is being tracked, documented and automatically stored along with all the previous version.

5. Measure and stay updated about the Success of your contract

SAP CLM that you can use for the Contract Lifecycle management of your business comes with an analytics tool which will help you in having a 360-degree view of your success. It is very important to keep a track of how your contract is moving and how is the progress and this can be easily done with the help of SAP CLM Software. Here are a few ways how CLM software with the help of already installed analytical tool can help you in managing and tracking the whole process of contract signing or renewing:

• The software can easily find out steps in the process that are taking too long for the approval and get them wrapped up quickly.
• You can also check for step that require permanent changes in a pricing model.
• You can also remain updated about any change that customer might want to make in the e-sign document that needs your attention.

The CLM software keeps you ahead in the race so that there is no delay from your end when it comes to signing the agreements of making very important changes in contract’s lifecycle early on. This makes it easy to verify whether or not that particular contract is helping your business to reach the planned goal. By this it will be easy for you to determine if there is any serious change that you have to make in the process or even you have to continue working on the project. This is very helpful at the time when your business is dealing with a large number of complicated contracts.

Reasons to Implement Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) Software for your Business

1. Saves money and Time : When you choose good CLM, there are less chances that your business will have to deal with issues like penalties for non-compliance, missing important opportunities from special terms and rebates, missed payments or other payment errors, incurring fees and other penalties. This all is handled in the right manner because of good contract administration thus saving a lot of money and valuable time for you. CLM helps in simplifying processes in the contract administration and thus saves a lot of time and cost.

2. Prevent any legal process from contract non-compliance : There are many contracts that deal with a major of compliance. If contractual commitments remain incomplete, the potential for a legal action can be higher. A good CLM software prevents you from any such situation.

3. Deliver best to your customers : Being a business, what else would you need than fulfilling and exceeding your customer demands and expectations. This is only possible through a planned contract performance that can enhance any organization’s value and lead to better customer relationship.

4. Justifies the difference between the functionalities of contract managers contract administrators : The Contract managers and contracts administrators are different and are assigned to do different tasks. CLM software helps in letting them do their tasks the best, thus saving time and it also avoids any confusion that might occur.

How Acuiti Labs can help?

From contract drafting, it’s management, to its completion, SAP CLM software that we provide at Acuiti Labs is capable of supporting businesses to simplify their entire process of Contract Lifecycle. So, choose SAP CLM (Contract Lifecycle Management) for your business today and see how it plays an important role in closing deals faster and growing your business. Contact us for more details about CLM and Acuiti Labs.