By Inga Broerman

Beyond Subscription Billing – Why Does Monetization Matter in the Subscription Economy?

There’s little dispute that digital transformation has affected nearly every aspect of B2B commercial activity. Success in the digital economy requires that organizations move beyond traditional ways of doing business while accelerating market-facing responsiveness across all functional areas. Increased competitive pressures and shifting market dynamics complicate revenue predictability.

See How BluIQ Makes Subscription Billing Easy

Therefore, the ultimate measure of effectiveness will be how efficiently and accurately organizational expertise is translated into products and services that generate market demand and drive profitable revenue growth. In other words, organizations in the digital economy have no choice but to become monetization-focused.

 In real terms this means businesses must hone or develop skills related to:

  1. Identifying what customer’s value and aligning new offerings to meet these demands
  2. Expanding organizational awareness of monetization activities beyond the finance, accounting, and billing departments
  3. Creating an organizational “monetization mindset.”
  4. Articulating and implementing new business practices that cross operating areas
  5. Leveraging the economics of the digital marketplace to create new product and service offerings
  6. Optimizing sales and customer engagement strategies to capture recurring revenue opportunities throughout the customer lifecycle versus “milestone” billing events
  7. Evaluating existing business processes, resources, data flow, systems, and to create an optimum environment for monetization activity


Next steps:


Draft the framework

Once your organization has completed the review of your key operations, processes, systems, and activities – as outlined above – the organization will have the necessary information to create a draft Monetization Framework. You can download the BluLogix template for a Monetization Framework from our website or create an outline that works for you organization to compile your findings.

Organizational buy-in & kick-off

Once the initial Framework is drafted, the Monetization Champion should circulate the documentation for internal review and discussion to ensure that it reflects the input and concerns of key stakeholders. Once the appropriate input is solicited and incorporated the project should move into the subsequent phases of implementation and change management. With your Monetization Framework as a guiding document, the organization will be well-positioned to develop monetization as a core business discipline and impact strategic objectives.

Diy or get help?

The effort related to the development of a Monetization Framework should not be underestimated. Therefore, it’s worth considering whether or not to engage an external monetization authority to help with facilitation and development of the Monetization Framework.

See How BluIQ Makes Subscription Billing Easy

External facilitation can help keep a project on track from a focus and bandwidth perspective. External facilitation also injects third-party objectivity into the process and may spur fresh thinking about challenges and issues. A third-party may also be able to spot potential pitfalls, while also offering benchmark data and anecdotal case studies about the monetization initiatives of other organizations.