SAP Hybris Billing (SAP BRIM) – Evolution of the traditional invoice
SAP Hybris Billing, formerly SAP BRIM (Billing and Revenue Innovation Management), elevates the traditional invoice. SAP Hybris Billing brings more speed, flexibility, higher volumes of transactions and better integration with existing billing systems. A well-optimised SAP Hybris Billing system enables professional processes along the complete revenue chain.
The end-customer wants products, which are instantly available and individually tailored to his or her needs. Businesses from the areas of telecommunication, logistics, retail, utility, media and entertainment must act faster than ever before. New products with transparent and personal pricing models must be created fast, in order to offer your services and capture fast moving business opportunities for a large number of clients. This is particularly true for fast-paced, highly competitive industries.
Challenges:
- Very large customer base with high volumes of transactions
- Handle diverse credit rating classes to minimize outstanding debt
- Comply with complex national and international regulations
This is where SAP Hybris Billing comes into play. The whole consume-to-cash process can be displayed – from rating and charging of the used services (Convergent Charging) to the invoicing of those services (Convergent Invoicing) and handling collection (Customer Financials Management). Along the way, the system processes a high number of transactions and data. Its modular design enables optimisation of charging and billing processes and allows for real-time charging of services. Outstanding debts can be invoiced more easily, in compliance with all existing norms and regulations.
Adding to that, more and more third-party providers are included into business models. Revenue created from external content, apps and services can be captured and shared instantly.
Successful products and services grow fast. This requires fast and reliable processing of a large number of business cases. Those must be displayed on bills that are easy to understand for the end-user and can be paid on time. This depends upon reliable and automated processing to manage different credit profiles, payments and collections.
Along the way, it is important to offer the best possible customer experience to the end-user. A 360-degree overview of all customer information ensures that all billing inquires and disputes can be handled efficiently. In addition, SAP Customer Usage Analytics gives companies the tools to monitor customer reactions in real-time when introducing new pricing and billing models.
What can SAP hybris Billing do?
- Pricing, rating and charging in real-time to craft individual pricing models
- Convergent invoicing for multiple, high-volume billing streams
- Efficient handling of clients with different credit ratings in Customer Financial Management
Advantages:
- Faster time-to-market for new services
- Lower operative costs with consolidated rating systems
- Increased customer satisfaction by displaying all services on one invoice
- Reduce default-risk by considering the complete credit and payment history of a client
SAP BRIM offers the “best of breed” functional aspects including online rating, real-time changing and convergent billing, collections and invoicing among others. It can manage high customer transactional volume with ease. The SAP convergent and charging application delivers complete price flexibility and offers you good performance. The software also incorporates all third parties in price plans and seamlessly streamlines the whole invoice process. We have also introduced processes that provide more focus on customers, and your business stands to gain a lot from the efficient processes.
Benefits
The SAP BRIM software offers you a range of benefits like:
Time acceleration for better marketing of the new services and other cross-over promotional bundles
Reduction in operational costs by consolidation of the rating systems
Better customer satisfaction, as all of the exchanges, is displayed in one single invoice. Aids higher customer retention rate
Risk-lowering as the SAP module considers all the collection and credit history of the customers.
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SAP Billing Revenue Innovation Management or simply SAP BRIM is a solution that is build for telcos and utilities industry.
Just think of your mobile phone carrier. How do they know you have used up 2GB of your broadband quota? SAP BRIM. How do they know that you have exceeded your monthly credit limit? SAP BRIM.
The solution roadmap below shows the component of SAP BRIM with Offer-to-Cash (O2C) being the end to end solution.
For the next coming chapter I’ll start by showing the configuration of SAP Convergent Charging (SAP CC 3.0). Since you are a mobile subscriber let’s use that as an example to showcase what SAP CC does and does not do.
Business scenarios:
To implement most of these business scenarios, we need the SAP CC to be integrated with whole SAP BRIM components (e.g. CRM, CI, FICA).
- Customer and Contract Creation (Postpaid Services)
– Creation of a new customer and contract in the CRM Interaction Center for postpaid services - Use Service, Create Invoices, and Pay (Postpaid Service)
– Execution of the whole usage consumption, billing, invoicing, and financials process using the predefined postpaid product and an available customer who has subscribed to the product – based on a preconfigured sample of usage data - Customer and Contract Creation (Prepaid Services)
– Creation of a new customer and contract in the CRM Interaction Center for prepaid services - Use Service and Manage Balance and Financials (Prepaid)
– Execution of the whole usage consumption, billing, invoicing, and financials process using the predefined prepaid product and an available customer who has subscribed to the product – based on a preconfigured sample of usage data - Terminating a Prepaid Service (Closing a Prepaid Account)
– Automatic closing of prepaid accounts which are not used for a specific period of time, including all required follow-up processes in the SAP Billing and Revenue Innovation Management solution - Refill Prepaid Account via Voucher Activation
– Purchase of credit in retail outlets using vouchers or activation codes, handled by an upstream third-party voucher management system - Financial Customer Care – Financial Inquiries
– Inquire about financial data of a customer and initiate follow-up processes in A/R - Financial Customer Care – Bill Display and Dispute Management
– Access customer bill(s), including the bill detail information to handle dispute and necessary adjustments - Financial Customer Care – Collections in CRM Interaction Center
– Preparation and execution of outbound collection activities in CRM Interaction Center - Contract Change from Prepaid to Postpaid Product
– Change of a customer contract from a prepaid to a postpaid product - Refill Prepaid Account by “One Time Permission”
– Refill of the prepaid account through crediting a payment card - Daily and Monthly Closing
– Daily and monthly closing processes in SAP ERP - Consolidated Statements for Banking Postpaid Services
– Consolidated statements for postpaid banking services combine customer bills or statements from multiple accounts in multiple external applications into one consolidated statement
