The Rolling Stones were mistaken. On a worldwide basis, companies are accelerating cloud migration rather than getting off it and for good reason. If you run a SaaS business, you’re already reaping cloud benefits and traditional business models are taking notice. For example, food manufacturers and distribution warehouses, who for decades relied on their in-house technology stacks, are now migrating to SaaS to improve agility, lessen technology burdens, and reduce costs. In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2022, SaaS will be a $143.7 billion dollar industry – up from $80.0 billion in 2018.
While you may be distributing your software using a SaaS business model, how are you handling one of the most financially critical aspects of your business? If you’re still using on-premise legacy billing platforms or time consuming and error prone spreadsheet, read on to learn why you should move your billing functions to the cloud and what to look for in the best cloud billing software for your SaaS business.
Get on the Cloud for All Your SaaS Business Processes
Although you’re already benefiting from having a SaaS business, you’ll gain even more advantages by moving billing to the cloud. Let’s count down the top five reasons you should swap your current billing platform or manual processes for a cloud-based solution.
1) Total cost of ownership
On-premise billing solutions not only require the initial software purchase, but you’ll also incur costs for hardware and personnel to handle the maintenance, monitoring, support, and more. While it may be difficult to capture an accurate total cost of ownership, keep in mind that a cloud-based model includes many of the costs listed above. Additionally, since you’re only paying for what you need, you’ll gain even more economic advantages.
2) Security
In today’s world, hardly a day goes by without a company reporting a security breach. On-premise equipment requires trained resources to monitor, identify, respond to, recover from, and minimize operational damage should a breach occur. All this costs money, not to mention potential damage to your brand. A cloud-hosted billing environment provides a team of professionals that are responsible for monitoring, managing and correcting any breaches – should they occur.
3) Time to value
On-premise billing deployments take time, which can result in missing the window of opportunity. By moving billing to the cloud, you can be up and running in just a few short months, sometimes even less. This means you start to see a return on investment (ROI) faster.
4) Scalability
As mentioned in our first point, you only pay for what you need. When your needs change, the best cloud billing software solutions allow you to quickly and cost-effectively scale up or down. Compare that to on-premise systems where you need to make purchases based on higher capacity requirements, which leaves the systems idle during slower periods.
5) Innovation
We’re all familiar with purchasing a car and as soon as you drive it off the lot, it loses value. The same is true with on-premise billing software and hardware – as soon as it’s purchased it begins to age and lose value. Cloud-based billing solutions provide the latest and greatest upgrades, capabilities, and features as they become available. All without you needing to spend time, money and resources on lengthy installation and upgrade processes.
Today’s market conditions are rapidly changing and you need the ability to not only keep pace but stay a step ahead of the competition. Doing so requires the best cloud billing software solution that provides the business agility to adapt to any billing need or business requirement.
Get the Best Cloud Billing Software for Your SaaS Business
Choosing the best cloud billing software solution for your business is one of the most important decisions you’ll make. If you purchase one that doesn’t meet your needs, you’ll face roadblocks to your billing processes, customer dissatisfaction, and ultimately additional costs to replace the software for something better. To help you make the right purchasing decision the first time, we’ve uncovered the five most relevant features your cloud billing software should provide.
- Pricing model flexibility: As a SaaS business you probably have different pricing structures, as well as bundles, discounts, promotions, etc. The cloud-based billing system you choose needs to provide the flexibility to easily handle any pricing model or discount scheme you desire.
- Dunning: We don’t want to think about it, but it happens and you need a cloud billing software solution that can automatically handle chargebacks and recurring payment cancellations. Dunning needs to automatically manage late fees, account suspensions, and customer notifications.
- Financial reporting: With ASC 606 and IFRS 15 in full swing, your financial reporting needs to be impeccable. The cloud billing software should automatically allocate transactions to specific GL accounts and execute revenue recognition in real time as events happen.
- Localization and globalization: Taking your offerings across borders requires more than just multi-currency and language support. If you plan to operate across state lines or on an international basis, be sure the cloud billing solution provides for easy integration with your external tax engines to ensure you’re in compliance with global, regional and local tax regulations. It also needs the ability to handle multiple currencies in a single account and automate the exchange rate conversion for rating usage and invoice generation.
- Customer portal: To build your customer base and develop customer loyalty you need to provide frictionless customer experiences. Be sure your cloud billing software provides a robust customer self-service portal that will empower your customers. It should give them real-time access to their account information, view usage, update payment information, make payments, etc. This functionality not only gives customers what they want but reduces calls to your call center.
Before locking into a cloud billing software solution, be sure to invest the time and energy to make sure it’ll provide you with the functionality you need today and into the future.
Move Billing to the Cloud
When you move your billing processes to the cloud, you’re able to eliminate pricey hardware and software purchases. Plus decrease the costs associated with managing and maintaining your IT systems – reducing both your OPEX and CAPEX. BillingPlatform provides an industry-leading cloud-based billing software solution specifically designed for SaaS organizations like yours.
With us you’re able to be up and running in as little as 8 weeks, saving you both time and money. Isn’t it time for you to gain the flexibility and cost savings that’s only available with the best cloud billing software solution for SaaS organizations? Talk to a member of our team to learn more!
