When you’re running a subscription business, having a billing and monetization platform that operates in isolation, without proper integration with other existing systems can negatively impact your company’s growth.
Disjointed and inefficient processes created by these siloed systems tend to weaken your business structure and demand constant effort in managing distinct workflows instead of just one unified workflow.
In addition, you end up wasting valuable time in accessing the right data at the right time to resolve customer tickets and also in contacting multiple vendors for support-related issues.
When your billing and monetization platform integrates seamlessly with your ERP, CRM, payments, taxation, and accounting systems, it means you can operate your business in a unified manner, streamline the customer experience, and focus more on aspects that need the most attention.
Let’s explore six benefits to seamlessly integrating your billing and monetization platform:
1. Streamline operations
Integrating your billing system with your enterprise resource planning and other point-of-sale systems means you can bypass the time- consuming (and error-prone) process of manually entering, managing, editing, and deleting data across multiple systems. Since any change in billing data gets automatically updated across your existing systems, you can streamline your operations, ensure all entries are updated in real-time, and improve efficiencies and cost savings for your business. Anytime access to the latest and most accurate transaction history also paves the way for automatic insight and better reporting.
2. Enable better personalization
Enabling integration between your billing and CRM systems allows you to overcome the challenge of poor visibility, inaccurate reporting, and inconsistent customer interactions. Through integration, you can tie contract and invoice creation directly to existing opportunity workflows and achieve more accurate customer tracking, management, and retention. Such visibility can help in creating unique, personalized upsell and cross-sell opportunities and enable you to improve trust, loyalty, and retention.
3. Efficiently monitor payments
Integrating your billing and subscription management system with payment gateways can help in automatically monitoring when payments have been made. Since payment details are constantly synced with subscriptions, you can enjoy cash flow predictability while reducing failed and late payments by a large margin. Such integration allows you to overcome the challenge of managing several different payment processing workflows separately and having to toggle between two systems to resolve a chargeback or handle a failed payment.
4. Reduce revenue leakage
An integrated billing and subscription management system also paves the way for improved risk management. Since it allows transparency to permeate through all aspects of your subscription billing ecosystem, you can always be aware of the changes that are happening with your customer accounts, allowing you to avoid payment delays, revenue leakage, and dwarfed profitability. Since all data is regularly updated and synchronized between different departments and systems, it provides you with a single source of truth and helps in eliminating costly billing errors and plugging revenue leaks in time.
5. Gain valuable financial insights
With an integrated billing system, your accounting system can throw much-needed light on the financial position of your business – with a simple touch of the button. Since all accounting-related data is constantly updated across your billing system, you can accurately track earned versus deferred revenue and ensure proper revenue recognition. Such integration can allow you to see when (and where and why) money is going out (or coming in), determine trends within your organization, and prepare for fluctuations in demand.
6. Enhance customer experience
An integrated billing and subscription management solution also helps in better assisting customers and enhancing their overall experience with your business. It can serve as a detailed customer database for your business, and help track sales, register leads, spot trends, fuel engaging customer interactions, and improve marketing efforts towards more precise engagement and targeted promotions. Since all customer-related data and metrics are constantly updated, it can help in fast and accurate reporting, so you can take the required steps in delivering excellent service.
For businesses looking to expand their customer base, integrating your billing and monetization platform with existing ERP, CRM, accounting, and payment systems via open APIs can ease day-to-day functioning. Such integration means you spend less time hopping between different systems and more time focusing on tasks that play a larger role in streamlining operations. It enables personalization, monitors payments, reduces revenue leakage, helps you gain insights into financial position, and enhances the overall customer experience.
Through OneBill, seamlessly integrating with your wider Enterprise systems can be made possible through an intelligent open API framework. Take a tour of the platform today.
