Can you handle your subscribers’ fluctuating requirements and monetize opportunities at each stage of the life cycle? In an industry that’s in a constant state of flux, meeting changing customer preferences requires robust subscription billing management software – one that provides the agility and scalability that allows you to quickly and easily adjust to market changes and customer requirements – without the cost of custom development.
It’s important to understand all the aspects of billing software, subscription billing software, subscription management, subscription billing management systems, and what it takes to successfully implement subscription billing management software
Subscription Billing Management Software: What it is and Why it’s Important
It’s no coincidence that the continued rise of subscription-based businesses directly affected the growing popularity of the subscription billing pricing model and subscription billing software.
Billing software is a technology that allows businesses to perform basic financial tasks like generating and sending invoices, collecting payments, and calculating taxes. Used to simplify billing processes, billing software provides the automation needed to reduce or eliminate time-consuming and error-prone tasks such as collecting usage data, ensuring all data is recognized across the billing processes, transferring billing data to other systems, confirming billable items and pricing, linking contract information, pricing, and usage data together, managing contracts, and combining or splitting invoices.
Subscription Management Defined
Subscription management is the process of handling customer subscriptions for recurring products and/or services throughout the lifecycle. This process typically involves managing customer profiles, updating customer billing information, and providing customer support. While sometimes used interchangeably, subscription management differs from recurring billing in that recurring billing handles the process of charging customers on regular intervals, whereas the subscription management process handles the entire customer lifecycle – from customer acquisition through to subscription cancellation.
Tightly integrated with subscription management, subscription billing software enables the automatic collection of payments at set intervals – providing companies with a steady revenue stream. It handles the entire customer lifecycle, from onboarding subscribers, providing free trials, and managing subscription plan upgrades/ downgrades through issuing credits and refunds to handling billing processes on a recurring basis.
A subscription billing management system automates the entire process. All while taking into consideration any changes (upgrades/downgrades, credits, etc.) that occurred during the billing cycle. Focused on enhancing the customer experience, subscription billing management software provides the features and functionality needed to manage recurring business and pricing models. It has the ability to create and manage offers, billing, invoicing, payments, collections, revenue management, and analytics.
Additionally, this software typically provides features and functionality to manage promotional pricing, customer trials, upselling/cross-selling, partner management, and much more.
Why a Subscription Billing Management Software Deployment Plan is a Necessity
With everything else on your plate, you may be wondering… why should we take the time to develop a billing software implementation plan? You may also be thinking… surely, the billing vendor has successfully deployed subscription billing solutions before.
While the subscription billing software vendor may have an impeccable reputation, it’s to your advantage to remember that every organization is unique, so deployments vary. Using a proven implementation methodology for your subscription billing software deployment ensures:
- Project scope and goals are clearly defined
- Expectations of the vendor and your company are understood and agreed upon
- Tasks are easily prioritized
- Deliverables are completed in adherence to the documented timeline
- Everyone understands next steps and project dependencies
Without a deployment methodology in place, it’s likely that critical planning steps get bypassed. You need to ensure everyone involved in the implementation has a clear understanding of the project lifecycle. Otherwise, you can expect frustration that increases in intensity as the project moves forward.
Additionally, without clear deployment guidelines for system goals and processes, you may need to make numerous system updates that extend the project, tying up resources and increasing costs. Even more concerning is the possibility of implementing a billing system that doesn’t meet your needs.
A Phased Approach to Subscription Billing Management Software Implementation
To ensure that your subscription billing management system meets all your needs, the implementation methodology should take into consideration close collaboration between the vendor’s resources and yours. Some billing system providers require customers to employ outside consultants and technology partners, so be sure the subscription billing management software vendor you choose offers an in-house team of experts to guide you in the implementation of complex subscription billing scenarios.
In addition, a phased implementation approach with proven deployment methodologies ensures that even the most difficult subscription billing use cases can be handled with ease and accuracy. Let’s look at each of the phases, what they consist of and the benefits you’ll receive.
Phase 1: Definition and Analysis
The vendor spends time to understand and document your current processes, billing pain points, desired outcomes, and the best way to achieve results. This step ensures that everyone involved has a comprehensive understanding of the scope, assumptions, project plan, and dependencies. Once you sign-off, this document is used throughout the entire project.
This phase also includes project definition and problem analysis of three main areas of impact – people, processes, and technology. To alleviate ambiguity and issues as the project progresses, it’s important that all stakeholders, from management to end users, are involved.
Phase 2: Construction
This is when the tasks that were documented in the definition and analysis phase begin to come to life. During this phase, the system is configured and tested to ensure it meets your unique subscription billing needs. Many times, the work taking place during this phase is broken down into configuration sprints, where changes are worked on by predetermined groupings versus making all changes at once.
During the configuration part of the construction phase, the billing software vendor should initiate meetings to discuss the timeline, achievements and challenges, as well as provide milestone demonstrations. At the conclusion of the configuration, a final demonstration should be provided for your approval and sign-off.
With the system approved, end-to-end testing can now begin. This is when the vendor ensures that the subscription billing management solution works as expected and has been properly integrated with previously agreed upon disparate systems.
The last component of the construction phase is user acceptance testing. During this step, employees provide hands-on testing of the system and deliver feedback to the vendor for any modifications or corrections required.
Phase 3: Transition
With testing complete, technical knowledge transfer sessions take place. These should include sessions designed to bring everyone involved with the new billing software system up to speed on how to manage the implementation going forward. Plus, more in depth train-the-trainer sessions should be held for those overseeing the new billing platform.
The train-the-trainer sessions are extremely beneficial because they provide you with on-site expertise to answer questions as the transition moves forward. Additionally, these experts can be called upon to provide training to others within your organization. Your subscription billing management software vendor should always make themselves available to answer questions and provide support when needed.
Once the transition phase is complete, there is another phase – post-deployment support. It’s only after you and your team feel comfortable that the project should be considered complete, and you move into a post-deployment support mode. During this time, your subscription billing software vendor should be available to incorporate requested adjustments/changes and answer questions.
Launch Subscription Billing Management Software with Ease
Implementing a new subscription billing management software solution doesn’t need to be all encompassing or overly difficult. Since inception, our resources have been dedicated to the unique challenges encountered by subscription-based companies. At BillingPlatform, we embrace a hybrid approach to deployment that incorporates features from the traditional waterfall methodology. This includes critical milestones for planning and agile delivery such as collaborative cycles, as well as a continuous feedback loop to ensure all technical aspects of the system are quickly handled.
Imagine a subscription billing management software solution that not only maximizes efficiencies by automating business processes but improves billing cycle productivity, replaces manual processes, creates repeatable processes, and reduces manual errors. With us, you get the expertise needed to manage expectations, meet deadlines, and reduce transitional challenges.
Named a technology leader by the leading analysts, BillingPlatform’s differentiators include subscription management and billing management offerings that encompass metadata cloud architecture, a unified platform, accurate product definition & ratings, built-in mediation, compliance adherence, an option to expand solutions using pre-built connectors, and seamless integration with tax solution providers and leading payment gateways.
Are you ready to start your subscription billing management software journey? Our team is ready and waiting to help!
