Series 2
SAP BRIM
Acuiti Talks - Episode 01
SAP BRIM - Transforming Business Finances
In this episode we dive deep into the game-changing world of SAP BRIM with Rishi Singh, SAP Practice Head at Acuiti Labs. Discover how this powerful solution is revolutionizing the future of business finance management by streamlining billing operations, enhancing revenue streams, and supporting business scalability. Whether youâre looking to optimize your billing processes or accelerate your companyâs growth, this episode offers valuable insights from an industry expert. Tune in to learn how SAP BRIM can help future-proof your business and gain a competitive edge.
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Transcript
Hello and welcome viewers to our podcast series Acuiti Talks. In this series, we are going to be covering a new topic, which is, talking about how the industry is shifting from manual systems to automated billing and also usage-based subscription-based models.
In this series, we are going to be welcoming a special guest, Rishi, who is the SAP Alliance and Head of Practice at Acuiti Labs. He brings an immense amount of experience and knowledge in the field, and we are very excited to have him on board. Hello Rishi and welcome to the series of Acuiti Talks. We are very excited to have you here. How are you feeling today?
Very excited Rhea. Thank you for the introduction. very excited to share my experience, my knowledge, what I’ve gained after this conversation.
Yeah. That’s great. So I think first topic or the first question that I have for you today, we have been seeing this immense shift in the industry of, you know, shifting from manual systems to usage-based models and subscription billing.In your experience, how is that bit?
I would say gone are the days when any seller or business wanted to one time sale of their product and services. Things are moving towards subscription because business is looking for, long terms steady recurring revenue stream and I feel subscription is answer to that. Even and that, a lot of evolution in pricing and, modeling is happening.So if you look at the journey, it’s started with a very large subscription where in for the services there was a fixed amount, which used to get chargerd. Even there are still some companies which work on that model. But then, things evolved and it’s shifting towards usage consumption based on pricing. And even in that usage consumption based, you see a lot of variations.
So as the market is maturing and customers are getting ever demanding, businesses or the customers are coming up with so innovative pricing models to attract more and more customers so that customer can get more value of any money they have spent. So if you talk about the different variations let say, the usage-based billing, one is simple plain vanilla usage-based billing. But if you look at these customers paying for what they’re using, but if you look at, from the sellers perspective on, there’s always a limit of uncommitted revenue. So in the down market, you can see that the revenue and the consumption is dipping which then adversely impact the seller. And this is where slowly, they’re thinking of revised variation or a different model where in customer can give upfront commitment of the usage.
Definitely it’s good for the seller, and even for the customer, because they know what they’re paying. They are aware of their consumption. They can control the cost. But, as the businesses are growing. Right? So if you look at from the customer perspective, they definitely would have, negotiated on the price or the committed. But if the demand of the usage is fluctuating, that might not be able to get the right price for when they are at the peak. And this is where, I see a lot of transition happening to a hybrid pricing model, which definitely is a variation of the usage-based, but it’s a mix, or amalgamation of usage plus some commitment given to agreed between the users and the seller. More flexible, more adaptive to the current need and more predictable revenue stream for this as well.
If there are customers who want to experiment, before committing to something, then definitely that goes along well with this hybrid pricing model. So as you see, it started with plain, simple subscription. But things are evolving in this area as well.
That’s actually very interesting insight. I think that by that, you know, the usual shift of technology and the speed at which things are growing and innovating, it’s so important that companies also get on board and, you know, stay ahead of the curve in their innovation so that they can ultimately keep the customer happy as well as themselves like avoiding the whole, manual systems, which are prone to soo many errors and things like that. My next question from that would be derived to BRIM, which is this amazing software suite. Right. And how that has become or can be a game changer for various companies. So I know we touched on this topic before with Manoj in our series one, but would you like to share any insights on it?
Definitely. so according to me, technology should always be leveraged, to what businesses are looking for. I still see a lot of businesses still running on their old outdated system, which were implemented decades back, definitely. they are not flexible, they are not scalable. they can’t meet the current demand and if you look at SAP BRIM as a product, it’s business agnostic.
So it’s not confined to one line of business or telecom or any other thing. anything which can be, which requires a subscription or usage-based or variations of usage-based BRIM is a solution. It is made to manage, complex, B2B contracts and tariffs and also manage large volume B2C customers as well. So you can see telecom customers onboarding to BRIM.
Which talks about billions of transactions they have a month. But it’s it can also be used for industries like more B2B centric which is an example could be your whole business. But in big liners would have very complex tariff with you and it’s able to manage that too. So it gives a point variety of options to a customer to adapt to whatever latest one they want to offer and stay competitive in the business.
So when it comes to dealing with industry specific challenges, what do you think are the innovative approaches that businesses can, you know, align with and get onboarded so that they can get out of the cloud and ahead of the curve?
Two common things which comes out, in conversation from customers. Okay, let’s move on to come to businesses while still running on all old implemented systems their long standing DSOs, still a lot of manual processes within the system. And, everyone is looking for, a system which can support their growth directory. They are looking for a flexible system, which can scale, to ever evolving business need. And they also want to be very agile when it comes to, launching or with their go to market strategy.
And BRIM definitely is one of the solution. And, I won’t market our self or sell our self, but, we are working as well. So what sets us apart is basically, focus on Q2C processes and, these are perception that SAP BRIM implementation is IT implementation. Whereas what we see you so it’s a business transformation.Technology definitely is the layer. But what is getting changes is the way business operates, right? So but definitely understanding of BRIM is very important. But having that domain experience is also as important as understanding of the product is. And that is one of our key because all of are people, as we are very much focused on Q2C, not only have very strong understanding of BRIM, but how different industry operates.
And if you look at our customer base, we operate from telecom to travel logistics to. So that that definitely sets us apart because we can talk in the language business. Want to hear, with all our industry experience, we can share all, our knowledge. and when we are doing that implementation, it’s not only about implementing what the business requirement is. We do a lot of discussion, collaboration on what best practices are being followed across and how we can simplify and automate the business processes with a very simplified data model as well. And if we try to simplify business processes or data models, the scalability becomes very easy for them. So these are few things which are definitely businesses are attempting to, again, working with that makes a little easy.
I think re-iterating on the point that you mentioned for Acuiti Labs having that expertise, do you think from your perspective, you know, just knowing BRIM or actually working with leaders in that space and, you know, experienced professionals makes a huge difference for companies that are implementing BRIM and overall, like, you know, getting them and guiding them to more, operational efficiency levels.
If you see across, the common, it’s every project, every engagement will be different in terms of their, demand. in terms of their so expectation, what will happen, what magic will happen in after implementation. But one thing is very common, which is the outcome. Everyone wants to have a successful implementation. And if you look around definitely that so many experience is very important.
And, if you look at our, consulting base or the people who are working with us, they have seen BRIM evolving as a product. So it’s not that you are very new to this, and that helps us because we know how product is maturing and the product is maturing to manage it to what the customer or business demand is smart.
So that way definitely helps. We also have gone ahead a little bit. definitely SAP recommends activate as a project methodology to implement it. But if you talk about BRIM, it’s a different piece or a different ball game altogether to implement BRIM for any because, BRIM is primarily for large enterprises or midsize enterprises, and it’s a massive change, in terms of how business will be operating with the new system, we have fine tunned to activate and made it custom fit for BRIM implementation, we internally call it as Activate Plus.
And definitely that has worked for all the engagement that we are currently involved in. And this is where all the engagements on, you see, all the engagements have 100% success. And when we say success, that means it’s quantifiable, right? we use all our customers reference. they will only talk good about us just because they would have seen value working with us.
I think that completely speaks volumes, right? Because it’s not just us talking about it, but rather we do have, like you said, 100% of percent success rate, which is like such a huge number. I mean, there’s nothing in it that’s completely amazing, right? Listening about all of these things, I think it’s kind of, you know, our viewers would probably like to know the successful stories that we’ve had or for our clients or any other, you know, stories that you can think of will be one or many, as much as you’d like that, companies that have thrived or stream implementation.
Okay. So, let me talk you through, so for the success, which is from SAP BRIM, and then we’ll talk about a couple of transformation that in we have supported customer. As I said earlier, BRIM is business agnostic. Right. So if you look at the breadth of offering from SAP BRIM, you see Microsoft using BRIM for the customer value, you would see Reliance Jio using them for their quote-to-cash process. A lot of, airports on seaports and even, postal companies are using. So this talks about the volume of what you SAP BRIM can bring and table for the business around, the different business verticals as well. If you talk about, success stories, very recently, we implemented, SAP BRIM for a seaport company in the Middle East, and then we joined the value study just to see what transformation they’re seeing after this.
And the results were so encouraging that, the company or organisation decided that, they move on to the next port and just two months back, we concluded that implementation as well. And now we are in talks with rolling this solution out to the 22 other ports which are located globally. So definitely we see this customer has seen the value not only with BRIM, but with us as well. Another example is an Ad tech company in France. Ad tech is a very competitive space. And for them, go to market startegy is very important. They need to be very agile to join in having their products launch chances. And definitely BRIM has helped them again after implementation. So they already have implemented BRIM and they have nearly rolled out that solution to all their line of businesses, cross flow because they have a vision in some 70, 80 countries.
In their value study on their assessment of this transformation, suggest that they have seen significant FT saving, again and said the time to market has obviously improved, as they are into B2B. So they don’t want to have disputes because they have got bigger invoices to the customer. And then again, B2B is very different way of dealing to the customer compared to the B2C.
So again, the billing accuracy has improved. because SAP BRIM gives you an option wherein even for the final invoice you have a proforma invoice you can review, so that you don’t have disputes later on. Right. and this all is leading to the reduction in DSO they have been able to build, the gap on their revenue value leakages, which all leading to their improved top line and bottom line.
So these are for example. But there are other stories as well. If you have some other time, you can talk to each of my customers.
Thank you very much, Rishi, I think these were some very insightful points, but I think this is not the end of it. We will continue this conversation in our upcoming episodes with you, and definitely try to dig deeper into this topic.
So that was it viewers for this episode of our podcast Acuiti Talks. We we’ll meet again in the upcoming episode where we will continue exploring this topic for the guest. Thank you.
Sure, thanks for hosting me Rhea. It was my first experience. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you.
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