Every company understands that billing consumers is a crucial component, and it must be precise and efficient. When offering subscriptions to companies, however, almost everything else related to invoicing is considerably different.
Hence, prior to developing your subscription commerce go-to-market strategy, you should familiarize yourself with the criteria for the billing system you will need as a major component of the subscription commerce platform.
Getting Recurring Billing Ready for Subscription Commerce
There are hundreds of recurring billing systems available in the market that can manage subscriptions. However, to support the complexity of different channels, billing across ecosystems, varied pricing depending on a variety of use situations, procurement across huge enterprises with diverse procedures, etc. needs subscription commerce of next-level flexibility.
Subscription Commerce-ready Billing
Subscription billing which is ready for use in the subscription economy should comply with the below factors:
- Billing in three dimensions
Quantity and price are the two most important variables in one-time purchases. Due to the obvious extra dimension of time in subscription commerce, billing becomes substantially more complicated. Based on the pricing model, your business invoices a client a sum on a recurrent basis.
Let’s take an example of an industrial device such as a wind farm component. It used to be sold as a stand-alone item, but the maker incorporated sensors that sense heat and vibrations. Subscriptions to the component’s data, along with proactive maintenance, are now available through the firm. These add a third dimension to the billing process, i.e., time, as the consumer is paid at predetermined intervals that occur periodically but can’t be foreseen. Here, time also plays a crucial role in the entire subscription-based billing process.
- Customer Usage Dependency
In the subscription commerce industry, the overall tendency is to migrate to usage-based pricing, where users only pay for the services they use. Businesses that sell a major platform solution may charge a blend of recurring payment for the main product plus transaction, features, and other usage-based charging. Your billing system must comprehend and apply consumption data to generate proper monthly pricing for every client, including recurring or fixed fees.
- Holistic and Agile Subscription Billing System
B2B commerce has always been product-centered with a catalog of actual products sold and sent to clients. Items, inventories, and one-time transactions to sell the products to clients were embedded into back-office operations and peripheral systems, like ERP systems. ERP system and other billing solutions were created to automate bills and collect payment for items, to put it simply. On the other hand, B2B subscriptions commerce is dynamic.
- Flexibility in Recurring Billing Solutions
Traditional billing abilities are pretty stiff, and a few solutions make it impossible to adjust the price after it has been established. Billing for recurring goods and services, on the other hand, must be highly adaptable. Customers should be able to pause, continue to enhance, or degrade subscriptions, add people or locales, add additional capabilities or goods, and more.
When a modification is made, the billing system must grasp the relationship conditions and compute price accordingly, including prorating costs correctly. It must manage these alterations gracefully and effectively, without relying on manual fixes, which lead to inefficiency and mistakes, as well as a negative client experience.
- Firmly Support B2B Commerce
The subscription billing system should support advanced billing solutions that enable modern and emerging B2B commerce, such as reseller and supplier reconciliation, taxation, and various payment types like credit cards, invoices, and some others. It should also be able to handle the complexities of subscription commerce with ease.
Conclusion
A recurring billing system is a game-changer in the business. You’ll need to contend with firms in your field if you don’t have a subscription component for your business. Whichever type of consumer you deal with: one who purchases a single item once or one who purchases a product monthly? The subscription model incorporates one of the most important aspects of business: recurring consumers!
