What Is SAP BRIM

In the dynamic business environment of the present era, digitalisation has allowed the development of personalised services and products to be pushed to market almost instantly. The latest products with personal pricing models must be created faster to provide services quickly and grab fast-moving opportunities for an extensive range of clients. 

SAP Billing and Revenue Innovation Management (BRIM), previously called SAP Hybris Billing, is a helpful solution in this scenario. It is a comprehensive solution meant for businesses with high-volume consumption. This modular billing solution is used to streamline complicated billing and invoicing procedures. It allows workable consumption models and is being used in various industries today. 

Let’s dive into what SAP BRIM is and explore its components, features, and advantages. 

What Is SAP BRIM - Table of Content

What is SAP BRIM? Components Peripheral Solutions Frequently Asked Questions

What is SAP BRIM?

SAP BRIM allows several workable consumption models. This one is an adjustable solution specifically created to optimise a business's all-inclusive lifecycle of designing, sales, billing, and delivery. 

The beginning phase of SAP BRIM illustrates design. Herein, SAP BRIM helps create a consistent design for pricing and a business model. It also provides a master agreement used as a foundation for other ensuing processes. 

After this, the second phase brings solution sales. Herein, organisations devise a plan for selling products via a contract management system or a quote management function that the SAP BRIM offers. 

The next phase calls for solution delivery. Here, organisations outline the charging method for the portfolios. Simply put, this happens when organisations decide how much they will charge their customers based on their business model and how this will be executed. For instance, if a firm follows an event-based model, it will define the transaction or business events that trigger customer payments. If a firm goes with a consumption-based model, it will calculate the consumption tiers wherein the customers will get charged. 

The solution billing is the final phase. In this last phase, SAP BRIM allows organisations to regulate their invoicing and billing methodologies for customers based on what they zeroed down in all the previous phases. Moreover, SAP BRIM helps in revenue recognition management and the handling of several tools for the purpose of revenue evaluation. 

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SAP BRIM Components

SAP BRIM comprises these core components. Apart from the ones mentioned below, it also provides peripheral solutions you can integrate to improve the core BRIM solution. 

SAP BRIM Subscription Order Management (SOM)

In the recent version of S4/HANA SOM turns out to be an essential part of the end-to-end BRIM solution. It is created as an additional function and is based on SAP CRM. Before this evolution came into the picture, SAP CRM was the front end through which firms connected with customers for service and product selection. 

SAP SOM and CRM are the beginning point for SAP BRIM as it handles the entire product catalogue, orders, distribution creation, and contract lifecycle management. It is implemented with Advanced Variant Configuration (AVC) for malleable product configuration. Once the contracts and orders get created in the SOM, they get replicated to SAP FI-CA and SAP Convergent Charging for additional processes, such as invoicing, billing, charging, and rating, to take place. 

SAP Convergent Charging

Convergent Charging (CC) is the foundational rating engine for SAP BRIM. It is specifically designed to provide price flexibility when charging consumers. SAP CC is used to comprehend the charges, like usage-based, one-time, and recurring. 

SAP CC is liable for two primary processes in the whole offer-to-cash: rating and charging. Charging helps determine the account of the consumer who is paying for the consumption of services. At the same time, the rating process is focused on calculating the usage of a specific service cost. 

SAP Convergent Invoicing

 

Convergent Invoicing (CI) provides a flexible solution for automating billing and invoicing procedures. The process begins by accepting input (complete bills, recurring charges, or rated events) from one or multiple billing or rating software systems. It stores the inputs based on the status and combines them into one invoice for consumers and an individual outstanding receivable. 

SAP CI combines several billing sources into a simplified, single invoice from varying sources. Once the rated and charged items reach SAP CI, they get stored as billable products, and the processes of billable item aggregation, invoice creation, and billing take place. 

SAP Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable

This one is the last fundamental component of SAP BRIM that deals with financial documents, credits and collections, management of disputes, and making or receiving payments. SAP Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable is the financial backend that offers sub-ledger accounting postings customised to cater to the needs of industry sectors wherein organisations should interact with several customers and transactions. FI-CA also provides an extensive range of features, such as tax calculations and taxation, along with country-specific procedures, like partner settlement, collection management, payment processing, and accounting principles.

Peripheral Solutions

For most of it, the four fundamental components of SAP BRIM in the core SAP ERP system are suited to meet most business needs. But, in a few unique scenarios, organisations can create a more flexible and robust solution by integrating additional peripheral solutions in the market. 

Below are some well-known peripheral solutions complementing the SAP BRIM solution. 

SAP Convergent Mediation by DigitalRoute

As the name suggests, this one is an SAP partner product created by DigitalRoute. The primary role of SAP Convergent Mediation is to allow a standardised methodology for data mediation. This means that the solution accumulates data from several sources. And then, the data gets filtered and converted into such a format that other components of SAP BRIM can easily consume. 

The benefit of SAP Convergent Mediation is that despite being developed by a third party, it has been pre-integrated into the system of SAP BRIM and can be deployed almost instantly. The advantages coming with this solution comprise:

• Decrease of several integration points needed to manage data
• Decrease in infrastructure costs
• Increased efficiency in data processing, leading to better scalability

OpenText

OpenText comes from a company with the same name. It complements the SAP BRIM solution by expanding the document management capabilities of all SAP modules. It allows companies to comprehensively view scanned documents and relevant data across applications and systems. The advantage of OpenText is its pre-integration with SAP modules. Alongside this, it also can standardise and optimise document management through automation to make sure there is compliance and productivity. 

Payment Gateways

Payment gateways is merely a generic term used to refer to a set of applications provided by several vendors to offer portals for payment processing. Such applications provide functionality for the secured processing of payment via significant financial methods, personal and payment data tokenisation, as well as fraud monitoring. 

SAP Customer Financial Management

This is a set of solutions developed to streamline the analysis and optimisation of financial processes. SAP Customer Financial Management offers cash management, financial risk management, debt, and investment management solutions. In most situations, it is used with SAP BRIM to analyse, measure and regulate the risk of a business partner defaulting on financial responsibilities. 

SAP Revenue Accounting and Reporting

SAP Revenue Accounting and Reporting allow companies to handle their income and revenue recognition cycles with varying accounting policies. The solution is available with diverse accounting rules and standards preconfigured and automated. It also offers a gamut of configurable reporting functionalities for situations wherein the standard reports are not capable of meeting the requirements of organisations. 

SAP Entitlement Management

This one helps streamline and automate the processes of entitlement management for organisations. The solution handles the entitlement lifecycle. This ensures transparency for what customers are entitled to when it comes to both consumer and sales reps. In turn, it enhances customer satisfaction and offers more chances for cross-selling or upselling. 

Also CheckOut: SAP ERP Interview Questions

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. What is SAP BRIM used for?

SAP BRIM is used for recurring and usage-based billing, invoicing, and revenue management. 

2. Is Brim part of S/4 HANA?

Yes, BRIM is a part of S/4 HANA, and you can implement them together. 

3. What are the prerequisites for SAP BRIM?

If you wish to use SAP BRIM, you must have a core understanding of SAP S/4 HANA. Along with that, you must have an experience with revenue and billing management. 

4. What is the difference between SAP Hybris and SAP BRIM?

SAP BRIM was previously known as SAP Hybris. It offers more flexibility, speed, and high transactional volumes, along with better integration with existing billing systems compared to its previous version. 

5. Is SAP BRIM a module?

SAP BRIM is a module in the SAP ERP system. 

6. Which industries use SAP BRIM?

Majorly, SAP BRIM is used in the telecommunication industry apart from others. 

7. What is the salary of SAP BRIM employees in India?

On average, an experienced SAP BRIM employee earns anywhere between INR 18,00,000 to INR 20,00,000 a year. 

8. What is the full form of the BRIM?

BRIM stands for Billing and Revenue Innovation Management. 

Conclusion

In conclusion, SAP BRIM is a robust solution used to handle subscription and recurring revenue sources. With this solution, companies can implement customer requirements faster and better. Moreover, high volumes of data can be processed efficiently. Ultimately, with SAP BRIM, you can effectively streamline the entire process of selling services and products and revenue sharing.