What Allowances Are and How To Implement Them In SAP BRIM?

Let us first check what allowances are.

By definition, an allowance is a credit for a service consumption that an end customer can redeem for one or more services on a quantity basis or for a specific amount of time. For example, a credit of 3000 SMS, which must be consumed within 30 days. 

The service allowance is part of the provider contract data which allows an end customer to consume one or several subscriptions- and usage-based services that are limited in quantity or in time. 

Allowances allow you to design and configure the following models on the SAP CC catalog:

• A credit bucket, which is a credit bought by an end customer to use one or several services. Could be monetary or non-monetary bucket – For example, 10 EUR credit valid for 30 days for international calls.
• A spending limit, which is the right for an end customer to use a service or a group of services limited in quantity or in time – For example, 1 GB of Data per week
• A promotion, which can be limited in quantity and time – 10% discount on national SMS during Christmas time, for only two weeks.

How can we implement allowances?

An allowance refers to an allowance plan in the pricing catalog for the service to monetize. In the SAP BRIM solution, SAP CRM creates allowances in SAP CC on demand or automatically when the provider contract is created or changed. Below schema shows which are the necessary pricing object needed to create in SAP CC in order to create the allowance plan and how the objects are related to each other, producing the final pricing object assigned to CRM Products, called Charge Plan.

To create an allowance plan, we have first to take care of:

Allowance Event Classes

The allowance event classes are like chargeable item classes but only custom properties. It defines and describes the event relating to the debit of an allowance.

Allowance Logic

The allowance logic consists of a decision tree that defines rules and conditions of use of an allowance event class. The allowance logic can be triggered by a periodic allowance event, a one-shot allowance event, or any event-based allowance.

Allowance Plan

The allowance plan consists of one or several allowance logics objects. It defines the behavior of an allowance when charging is performed.

The allowance plan object is called and used during charging from the Charge object. Once the Charge object is designed and configured, it is used to build and create the final pricing SAP Convergent Charging object, Charge Plan. The Charge Plan then is assigned to the respective SAP CRM Product, via cross-catalog mapping configurations.

In a strong market competition where the same service, is offered from several service providers, allowances are very important to make you win market shares. Allowances are fast and easy to configure, bringing back a fast return of investment. Help to improve your customer policy retention by offering different promotions. They offer the necessary flexibility to compete in market and increase your customer satisfaction.