Blulogix Whitepaper
The Future Of SaaS Is Consumption Billing
Now that we are in a digital economy, the customer mindset is quickly evolving and if you aren’t already preparing for a consumption model, you are leaving a goldmine of opportunity hidden in your customers’ data behind and you’re setting your organization up for future failure.
Table of Contents
Technology has proliferated at an accelerated rate and your customers quickly adapted to subscription models for their billing. As technology continues its forward march at an ever-increasing speed, will your organization adapt accordingly as quickly as your customers did? Or will your reluctance to shift from subscription models to consumption models leave you behind in the coming years? Perhaps a more pressing question might be: Will subscription models even be relevant in the next five years?
The Billing Paradigm Is Shifting
Ten years ago commerce was centered on the macro data format; the customer purchased a product and received an invoice for it. That eventually evolved into a subscription model where organizations were able to boost their recurring revenue and began to grasp the concept of customer data. Now, however, organizations need to go beyond subscription billing. They need to understand that customers are adapting, yet again, to a consumption model – as in the same way they’re used to paying their utilities – and leverage their customers’ microdata to optimize monetization. Since customers are already very familiar with the consumption model, this familiarity will help for a seamless transition. Organizations will need to nimbly shift to a usage- based model in order to enhance the value it gets from the software, and meet their customers’ evolving needs and desires on how they want to consume products. Microdata is king now and if your system can’t handle large volumes of it, the time is now to prepare for the coming changes to the way your organization can monetize using a consumption model.
The Billing Platform Problem
Sure you can manually enter data into a billing platform and generate an invoice. However, that’s where the problem lies. As a result of digital transformation, billing is no longer bound to
paper, to one source, or to one platform – billing has undergone a transformation of its own. Just because you’ve been using the same billing platform for the last 10 years and it “works just fine” doesn’t mean it will for much longer.
Frustrations with current platforms are validated by their inability to meet evolving customer and market demands. This shift from subscription to consumption is leaving many organizations struggling to fit consumption products and processes into traditional business processes and systems. Legacy CRM and ERP solutions are simply not capable of managing large volumes of complex consumption data. When billing processes are married to an outdated modality of collecting data from disparate sources, like CRMs and ERPs, just to issue invoices,it creates a convoluted mess. Factoring in a shift to consumption, it becomes a nightmare. These outdated platforms will act as a bottleneck, slowing down your billing processes, inhibiting your accuracy, timeliness and customer transparency. Further, due to the propensity for mistakes to be made by the entanglement of varying data sources and human error, they put a severe limit on your ability to forecast projected sales goals.
If your billing platform and processes are already struggling as they try to leverage the goldmine of customer data, the problem is only going to get worse – and fast. As you add new customers, new goods and services, and team members, your growth outpaces your older platform putting your ability to expand at a severe disadvantage. Meanwhile, your competition gains ground on your market share and creates their own marketplace where your customers find easy access to the products and services they want.
Consolidate and Automate
Automation has been in place for some time but it’s likely not being used to its full advantage by many organizations – it can actually open an entirely new level of productivity. Your organization may have spent hours upon hours manually entering data for years and may not even realize that most, if not all, of those processes can be automated. Meanwhile, consolidation of multiple data sources, like CRMs and ERPs will immediately alleviate common errors and delays. Leveraging platforms that incorporate consolidation of data and advanced automation, the quote to cash process becomes seamless: you can issue an invoice, automate the process of generating a quote, have that process easily convert automatically to an order, and then automatically get provisioned. With that consolidated automation, you can then capture all the charging details so that at the end of the month, you can send a consumption-based invoice based on what was ordered and what was used, collect the payment against it, and then manage that payment against a balance within that whole process.
Consumption Made Easy
With consumption-based pricing, companies no longer have to pay for SaaS they hope will be used – the gambling aspect is removed and they only pay for what they use. For those that are prepared for this future, it can be a win-win solution. However, if your organization needs a guidepost on this transition, BluLogix has helped organizations solve these problems for nearly a decade for more than 100 enterprise customers across the globe with purpose-built solutions that integrate consumption business processes into legacy systems.
BluLogix provides an innovative, data-driven monetization platform for consumption billing and revenue management. With a custom-tailored service approach, BluLogix’s agile, flagship platform, BluIQ™, consolidates disparate information sources and complex billing operations into a single automated process so your organization can be ahead of the curve and set your company up for success in the digital age.
BluIQ™ affords organizations a better opportunity to monetize and leverage their own marketplace while managing the full range of billing scenarios, from the very simple to the most advanced and complex, including multiple microtransactions per day, expansion to global markets and serving multiple channels and different tiers of customers and recurring subscriptions – to ensure a cohesive overall approach to the quote to cash process. A single
platform for all billing, BluIQ™ creates a seamless, automated monetization process, bridging the gaps between CRMS and ERP systems and related business processes. With proven technology, its predictive analytics and advanced reporting offer visibility and insight for proactively managing customer relationships, reconciling billing issues and identifying new revenue opportunities, all backed by concierge-level service.
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Reviews
Michael R.
President, Allnet Air Inc. - Telecommunications
Best Outsourced Billing for Mobility
Karen R.
Manager, Cloud Billing - Computer Software
BluLogix has been a great partner.
“Over the last several years, I have seen continual enhancements and additions to the platform. BluLogix has created a comprehensive solution for users. They provide great communication regarding upgrades and address concerns thoroughly and timely.”
Sara K.
Marketing, Graphic Design & Social Media Management - Marketing and Advertising
Fantastic platform. Recommend!
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