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

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

What is Mobility as a Service (MaaS)?

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

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

Benefits of Mobility as a Service?

New age service Maas offers various advantages including – 

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

What were the typical city transport billing platform challenges?

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

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

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

The Digital Economy has enabled new services … and changed the way customers buy

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

SAP BRIM – Advanced Billing Platform for City Transport

• Account Registration
  • Register customer account
  • Add credit card details

• Journey Planning (Purchase)
  • Check routes and possible legs of the journey
  • Buy rides/journeys in advance

• Journey: Tap-In & Tap-Out
  • Every journey start and end are recorded by NFC, Proximity Sensor Bluetooth devices using the phone
  • Separate events are clubbed together to record the journeys for charging
  • Digital Presentment

• • Responsive and Integrated Reporting / Customer-Centric Statements and Forms
  • The customer receives a statement on mail for monthly usage

• PayG Payment –Fair Price Promise
  • Flexible Billing/Invoicing and Payment process
  • End of the day all PayG charges are collated and payment run deducted the total from Credit card Service Charging

• • Flexible Business Logic for Services Charging
  • If the ride is already purchased that entitlement is used otherwise the charge is calculated for Pay

How Acuiti Labs can help?

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

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

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

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

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.

SAP is the new age technology and calling it as one of the most intelligent, yet simplified technology of the last decade couldn’t be wrong! From digitally transforming a lot of businesses to giving them an entirely new face for the customers, SAP has truly been a technology that has changed the business game for many in the past years.

As 2020 is already here, many businesses involved in big data spaces are eager to understand and grab upon the next set of SAP Innovations and latest technology trends that this new year has got in for them. Measures to achieve organisation’s bigger goals, transforming and redefining business strategies to offer significantly better customer experience, and focusing on the latest trends to remain ahead of the competitors are a few points that every business promises to follow while at the starting of a new year. 2020 is no different when it comes to enhancing the business and following the latest tech trends.

Another thing that remains static, is the focus on innovation. These innovations could be in the form of anything like launching a new product, or a solution, or it could also be a service. The businesses that will keep innovation as their primary focus in 2020, will flourish and here is when SAP’s latest tech trends are going to help you!

Role of SAP Innovations to fulfill Customer Demands

Customers are evolving over the period of time and so are their expectations. This has somehow created a virtual world of outgrown competition with which every business is dealing in reality. If you are looking for a solution to solve the most complex business problems and want to bring your company’s vision to life, SAP’s innovative solutions can help you. Many businesses are already taking advantage of SAP’s offerings and had achieved the greatest goals through unique and leading-edge software innovations. In 2020, it’s your turn to collaborate with SAP to provide a unique experience to your customers right from discovery to delivery.

Industries that have been benefited with SAP innovations in 2019:

SAP’s latest tech trends and innovations had already helped many organizations in bringing their vision to life and transformed the way they use to deal with their business problems.

Get Benefited from SAP’s experts who have built over 4000 innovative solutions for more than 1500 clients across the range industries including:

1. Health Care

The American Society of Clinical Oncology is shaping the future of cancer care by providing individualised solution. With the help of big data stored in the cloud, people can easily access it and use it to create personalised evidence-based treatment plans which will further result in better patient care.

2. Agriculture

In agriculture, ‘Stara’ – which is a farm equipment manufacturer is reimagining its ecosystem and fundamentally changing its business models with the exceptional solutions by SAP that are helping to digitally connect ‘the internet of things across people, plants and machines. These innovations are helping the company realise its goals in a better way.

3. Transportation

Trenitalia, a high-speed rail company is using a tailored, dynamic magnets management SAP solution that harnesses the internet of things to analyse censored data from trains in real-time. Now customers enjoy better service and the company is saving 8-10% cost annually

4. Retail

A retailer company, Tata CLiQ launched the first of its kind ‘phygital’ marketplace with SAP Hybris Solution to combine the Physical and Digital world. Now, the customers are enjoying seamless omnichannel shopping experience that is personalized so that they feel special every time they visit or buy from here.

5. Entertainment:

Cirque du Soleil, has revolutionized its fan experience by investing in an interactive mobile app. This app is creating a more impressive fan experience.

Make your innovations real with SAP innovative solutions. Now, it is your turn to best utilize these and let your business bloom in 2020. Bring your concepts to life with high value, individualised solutions built by SAP experts.

SAP Tech Trends and Predictions for 2020

1. Big Data

Big Data is the huge collaborated data that we deal with almost every day in our lives. This data keeps flowing and moving from one computer to another computer or devices like mobile or machine sensors. With the use of the right big data tools, your organization can easily manage, store, and analyse this data and get valuable insights that were earlier impossible to imagine.

Big Data can play a vital role in transforming the decision-making ability of you your business with the help of technologies like in-memory data management, analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning. Big data solutions for SAP can easily manage your various data landscape – across data warehouses, data lakes, and databases – with perfect to use on-premise and Big Data cloud solutions.

With the use of SAP HANA, you can easily transform the way you deal with the business challenges and get the responsiveness and processing power to make the most out of new opportunities.

2. Machine Learning

Machine learning is a smart technology that educates the computers to perform tasks in a desired way through learning from data – instead of getting it done to explicit programming.

Through the collaboration done with top universities in the world, SAP is all set to explore the more futuristic choices of machine learning and expand the technology for businesses. This collaboration will help SAP in focusing on a lot of different machine learning research topics and work on resolving open AI challenges in various industries.

3. Cloud Computing

Cloud computing can be simply defined as the process of delivering the applications, platforms, data storage, operating systems, and other computing resources over the Internet instead of doing it over on-premise infrastructure.

Businesses like yours can be benefited by choosing the cloud solution as by doing so you don’t need to make direct investments in hardware or IT staff, but get a subscription to the computing resource based on your requirement and pay the amount only for what you use.

These are three main SAP innovations cloud deployment options from which you can choose the best fit for your business requirement – public, private, or hybrid cloud. SAP promises to provide the most secure cloud platform that is maintained with the highest quality standards so that your data is safest.

4. The Internet of Things

The Internet of Things can be defined as a network of physical objects like vehicles, objects, machines, home appliances etc. that use sensors & APIs to connect and exchange data over the Internet.

5. Blockchain

Unlock the potential to revolutionize the way your business currently operates with Blockchain technology. Blockchain is based on distributed ledger technology, which securely records information across a peer-to-peer network. Join SAP Blockchain group and stay ahead of the competition. Easy communicating and networking with peers, staying updated with the latest industry trends and knowledge from speakers and SAP experts are a few best advantages that any business will be able to take while using Blockchain.

6. Digital Transformation

A fundamental rethinking of customer experience, business models, and operations is what digital transformation is all about. Any business that chooses digital transformation automatically chooses new ways to deliver value to the customers, generate better revenue, and improve efficiency.

Now or later, every business will eventually have to opt for digital transformation. A few businesses are under pressure to go for digital transformation and built a strong clientele, while there are others that are looking forward to it and moving ahead with slowly. Are you among those businesses that need to be transformed digitally in 2020?

Customer Satisfaction remains the primary goal for businesses in 2020 too –

Just like 2019, 2020 will also be a year for businesses that will keep their primary focus on Customer Satisfaction. The market will be dominated by the businesses that will understand the customer requirements better than ever before and offer them exactly what they need, even before they know they need that.

Innovation and success of your business success go hand in hand and thus SAP innovations are going to play a vital role in defining the success rate of business growth in 2020.