Invoice in the digital age

As a flexible universal solution, SAP Billing and Revenue Innovation Management, BRIM, is used across all industries, for example, by telecommunications, logistics, media or utility service providers, but also in the manufacturing industry.

"With BRIM, we map the entire offer-to-cash business process" emphasizes Daniel Fellner, Principal Consultant at SAP partner GTW. "We offer full transparency throughout the entire billing process, from evaluation and pricing of the services used to invoicing, receivables management and dunning."

The biggest technological driver for innovations in billing is clearly the digital transformation, which affects providers and their customers alike. Digital technologies hold completely new perspectives and business areas in store.

Digital billing models

"Digital transformation always also means a revolution in traditional billing models"Daniel Fellner knows from his consulting experience. The application scenarios for BRIM are seemingly unlimited. In the utility environment, for example, new, digital services can be easily integrated into billing processes in addition to common utility services such as gas, electricity and water. Using standardized integration scenarios, the necessary processes can be developed in a very short time.

"Whether smart home or other digital utility services: there is nothing that we cannot map in terms of processes with BRIM. In this way, we open up new opportunities for providers to innovate further on the path of their digital transformation from classic utility companies and energy suppliers to digital service providers.", explains the GTW consultant.

In the case of IT service providers and system houses, these days these are increasingly Ma-naged services, cloud and SaaS offerings in addition to traditional IT services.

"No matter where an IT service provider goes in the future, we can implement all billing models with BRIM"Daniel Fellner assures us. It makes no difference whether the products and services are traditional or whether digital services are purchased as consumption-based subscriptions or bundles, for example.

"Whether prepaid, postpaid or partner participation scenarios, with BRIM we implement all billing variants, even with an extremely high number of platform transactions"says Daniel Fellner. For the billing solution, it is irrelevant whether the users of an Internet platform are B2B customers or end consumers; everything can be mapped individually with it.

There are also numerous examples of such flexible billing options from the travel, transport and logistics environment. For example, employees can use a customer card to check in for a rail trip and do not have to worry about buying a ticket first. Whether the company is then billed for a monthly rail subscription or per segment or kilometer traveled can be determined variably and individually. Even the billing date can be freely selected and configured.

Operators of e-fueling stations can also use the solution to offer flexible rates and billing models. For example, one company prefers to bill its fleet of e-vehicles at the end of each month, another wants to be billed immediately, one uses customer cards, another company credit cards. Similar billing models are conceivable for parking garage use, although here, too, very individual usage billing can be agreed, for example on an hourly, daily or even minute-by-minute basis.

Such flexible billing is also interesting for the rental of all types of vehicles. The rental of e-bikes, cargo bikes or e-scooters sometimes requires quite innovative billing options and activation via a cell phone app. Billing should be as uncomplicated as possible and automatic.

New billing models in the manufacturing industry are also interesting. Here, not only are machines or other operating resources leased today, but they are billed according to their actual use. In production controlling, cost-per-part has long been a concept - so why not also bill machine use according to pay-per-part?

On the one hand, the useful life per component to be machined could be recorded directly on the machine via sensors or MDE, and on the other hand, it could be determined in advance via CAM simulation or the digital twin. This is similar in the construction sector, where a construction site operator no longer rents an excavator or crane by the day, but only pays for the actual operating hours. Daniel Fellner: "This application scenario is also supported by SAP BRIM through individually configurable billing processes."