Finding Sanity in a Subscription Based Economic Environment
In today’s world, we have shifted to a subscription-based model for many sectors of business. Netflix is great example of subscription billing, but everything from professional services to telecommunications are adopting usage-based and subscription service contracts, further driving the need for software that can manage this requirement. Too much manual effort is being spent on this process, thus raising the internal costs.
Since the magic wand option is not realistic, clients need a way to accurately bill for subscription payments. NetSuite SuiteBilling readily provides customers (such as those in Telco, Services, or Marketing agencies to name a few) with everything they need to manage subscription billing. For example, users get access to:
- Standard and customer specific price plans with volume, tiered and flat pricing models.
- Rating engine to automate usage/ consumption billing.
- Automated recurring subscription billing with automatic renewals.
- Ability to maintain subscription-based billing.
- Consolidation capabilities for charges from multiple subscriptions.
Here are 5 reasons why NetSuite SuiteBilling is the ideal solution for companies that utilize a subscription model:
1. SuiteBilling supports multiple pricing models, making it possible to bill customers in a variety of ways, ranging from a simple flat rate each billing cycle to complex volume or tiered scenarios.
- Flat Model – Charge customers the same value each billing cycle.
- Volume Model – Based on consumption or entitlement where the highest volume tier rate reached is applied to the entire quantity to charge.
- Tiered Model – Where the rate for each unit of consumption or entitlement tier is applied to a given range. The total end-rated value is comprised of varying per-unit rates to achieve the final amount to charge.
This customer-specific pricing allows for more accurate billing and less manual effort.
2. NetSuite SuiteBilling’s Rating Models give businesses the choice of billing subscriptions as either one-time charges or recurring fees, either in-advance or in-arrears. With multiple rating models, companies can create subscriptions that capture setup fees, license counts and variable consumption all in one step significantly increasing billing process efficiency.
Flexibility in contract billing models gives Software companies the ability to charge for multiple items and services with intersecting cost or cost models. Accurate billing promotes an improved DSO for our clients.
3. SuiteBilling supports subscription models from evergreen to traditional time-based (e.g. 1-year, 3-year). Changes to subscriptions such as upsell, down sell, suspend and terminate are easily managed. Revenue Leakage is reduced with automated renewals.
4. SuiteBilling allows organizations to schedule and automate changes to subscriptions. NetSuite clients have the ability to schedule an immediate or future dated change to pricing and/or quantities on subscriptions. With SuiteBilling, these changes can be recorded at the time they are identified and will be active upon reaching the effective date set on the change order. All change orders support pro-rating of invoice lines to capture pricing and/or quantity changes over a period of time based on the set effective date. Further, any backdated change orders, already billed to the customer, will automatically generate a credit.
5. SuiteBilling provides the ability to create both common pricing templates and customized scenarios to support customer specific deal negotiations and contracts. Generic subscriptions can be created and used for all customers or a specific subset. Customized subscriptions built off alterations to existing subscriptions, or net-new, enable users to create specific pricing and contract agreements for customers, including specific discounting rules per item in the subscription.
Outside of the SuiteBilling module, NetSuite natively offers many other solutions that help optimize a recurring revenue model. Standard functionality that accompanies NetSuite includes:
- A workflow engine to automate and enforce a company’s specific business rules.
- Reminders to help monitor and provide oversight for subscription billing and reporting.
- Multi-Currency / Multi Language to help companies with a global impact.
- Real-Time Reporting that provides insight into areas like billing detail and customer churn.
With the move to a subscription economy, businesses need a way to generate invoices that accurately reflect pricing and consumption over a defined period. NetSuite SuiteBilling helps companies streamline billing operations, providing real-time visibility into billing and financial activity. From consolidated invoicing, automated rating processes and support of multiple pricing models, SuiteBilling provides transparency around all billing activities.
If your business utilizes a subscription billing model, contact ScaleNorth today to learn how SuiteBilling can help you streamline operations while providing a more positive user experience.