Billing takes the center stage in new business models. It becomes clear that the billing experience is essential to a long and profitable customer lifecycle. However, with more complex business models and more dynamic client interactions, it becomes harder to get billing right.
Business strategists are acknowledging the importance of flexible billing platforms as a tool to future-proof their client relations. Here are a few trends that will change billing in the future, which might also impact your billing practices.
In the future, we will see more service-driven businesses, such as X-as-a-Service and Servitization. This means a shift in focus from acquisition to retention, a need to manage a longer and more complex customer lifecycle.
Customers will want a sense of control. They will want more insight and influence on the lifecycle and be able to act on new events. Your billing platform will need to deal with entitlements, client-initiated changes, usage insights, and contract optimizations. And your management will want to be able to report lifecycle profitability even on the client level.
Read more about customer-centric billing
With the rise of networked service models, we see cross-division but also cross-company billing data being processed. Think, for example, mobility-as-a-service, where multiple external services are being aggregated and presented to the client against pre-set business rules.
The networked environment in which we do business becomes more complex, and our billing platform needs to be able to integrate to adapt and process external billing data.
Gone are the days of simple, linear billing. With increased data and insights, the markets demand more agility to adapt to new or changed circumstances. Your billing platform needs to be all-compassing to ensure you stay in control.
A winning element of your future business strategy will be the predictive and signaling function of your billing solution. It will allow you to pick up changes in customer behavior and swiftly optimize your business to new circumstances.
Analysts expect that billing takes a more prominent role in your future operations, and advocate for an agile recurring billing platform. This way, external and internal billing events can be processed at a granular level against comprehensive but flexible billing rules. Call it a digital twin for your assets, services, and contracts. From there, with AI capabilities, you will be able to identify behavioral changes in the client’s lifecycle, alert the customer and propose an optimized usage plan. Your customer will reward you for it.
If you feel your billing needs will outgrow your current recurring revenue billing solution, or if you are just curious to learn how Good Sign does things differently, feel free to take us to the test! We will gladly take on your challenge and prove to you it can be done, and that the new world lies beyond just subscriptions.
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