As we come to the end of another year, this is a good opportunity to look ahead at the key trends to watch during 2024.

In previous blog posts, we have addressed the challenges and opportunities regarding digital transformation and the Digital Solutions Economy (DSE) across a range of industries including, software & SaaS, semiconductors, media & entertainment, medical devices, transportation, electronics manufacturing,  energy, and utilities.

Most of us have encountered situations that call for turning to specialists with deep expertise in a specific area whenever it is critical for our health or safety.

For example, if tests conducted by your primary physician show problems with your heart, you'd expect a referral to a cardiologist rather than having your general practitioner do surgery in their office.  Or if the construction of your dream home encounters issues with soil stability in an earthquake prone area, your general contractor can be expected to bring in a trained geological specialist to deal with the situation. 

In business, the same concept holds true; especially for situations such as optimizing revenue recognition and reporting compliance for subscription-based product and service offerings, which often include complex entitlements, usage-based scenarios, bundled elements, and/or dynamic, on-the-fly, customer-driven changes within the end-to-end Quote-to-Cash process.

Previous posts in this blog series have addressed how SAP solutions such as Quote-to-Cash (QTC), the Billing and Revenue Innovation Management (BRIM) portfolio, and Revenue Accounting and Reporting (RAR) can be meshed seamlessly to integrate frontend and backend processes for subscription-based Digital Solutions Economy (DSE) offerings.  We have also explored how SAP RISE and GROW can enhance and streamline overall implementations.

This new blog post in our ongoing series about the Digital Solutions Economy™ (DSE) looks at how new developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) are impacting the ways that companies deploy and manage subscription-based, usage-based, entitlements, ratable, bundled, and other DSE offerings.

Over the past eight years, many episodes in this blog series have focused on revenue recognition and how SAP solutions such as Revenue Accounting and Reporting (RAR) have provided a robust foundation for compliance with ASC 606 and IFRS 15. The evolution of SAP RAR and overall Automated Revenue Management (ARM) capabilities has unfolded along multiple paths to support existing users while also establishing a forward roadmap to some signficant new capabilities in SAP Public Cloud deployments.

Previous posts in this blog series on Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) and carbon accounting have spotlighted carbon accounting as a trend to watch, looked at ESG impacts on M&A, and tracked the emergence of new ESG standards.

As we reach the halfway point in 2023, it is a good opportunity to take another look at over-arching trends, both to update those we have already identified and to add some new ones, such as the unprecedented explosion in generative AI applications.

Several times in the past, this blog series has focused on various big picture issues regarding environmental, social and governance (ESG) programs, compliance and carbon accounting solutions.