Adopting a modern revenue management platform is no longer a question of if, but when.
Given how today’s platforms allow for better prediction of customer needs, better pricing strategies, better adaptation to market shifts, and more, they have become an indispensable part of modern businesses. Revenue management platforms can not only help deliver seamless and personalized experiences, but they can also streamline the billing process while helping curb revenue leakage. They help you to have a unified view of the revenue lifecycle: right from quote to cash. This means you have end-to-end visibility from the point a product is offered, to quoted, finalized through contract, invoiced, and finally how the payment is received.
But when it comes to choosing the right solution, organizations often find it difficult to choose between best-of-suite and best of breed platforms.
Choosing an end-to-end revenue management platform from a single vendor: Best-of-Suite
Best-of-suite revenue management platforms bring together innovative subscription management and billing features into one single, cloud-based platform. Such unified systems have all the capabilities needed to power lead-to-revenue generation experience for customers – from beginning to end.
With features across subscription management, Configure Price Quote, revenue and commission management, price personalization, order orchestration, Saas, VoIP, and Cloud billing and invoicing, contract management, and more, they help meet the needs of modern businesses with ease and precision.
Most modern solutions also offer added CRM features such as service desk, self-care portal, shopping cart, etc. which take the entire revenue management experience a notch higher.
Choosing an end-to-end, best-of-suite platform from a single vendor:
Reduces risk due to integrations:
Most subscription-based organizations often use numerous systems such as CRM, accounting software, payment gateway, provisioning, and activation systems to manage their day-to-day business. Manually operating each of these systems individually is time-consuming and integrating them is costly and complex. Manual processes delay service activation for customers. A best-of-suite solution reduces risks that occur due to integration while allowing you to manage all your operations end-to-end.
Offers better ownership and responsibility:
Having a single solution to manage your subscription business sets the foundation for better ownership, responsibility and accountability. Because you have the power to carry out and monitor every activity through its lifecycle, you have better visibility into the business and its challenges. This allows you to better plan for solutions and workarounds, fill gaps, mitigate potential revenue shortfall, and improve the subscriber experience.
Simplifies management:
Whether you are dealing with complex product offerings, manual processes, invoicing errors, revenue leakage, or compliance challenges, a unified system allows you to manage your subscribers, partners, and billing using a single platform. You can package and bundle your offering with innovative pricing, promotions, and discounts and quickly meet the needs of your customers.
Makes project and product upgrades easier:
Because the best-of-suite solutions are managed by a single vendor, you do not have to worry about updating or upgrading your solution. As you work on your pricing and billing strategies, your vendor will take care of every aspect of support, while making project and product upgrades easier, quicker, and extremely efficient.
Getting different pieces of the solution from different vendors: Best-of-Breed
Best-of-breed revenue management platforms bring together the capabilities of several different systems through seamless integration. Instead of offering all billing and invoicing features using a single platform, best-of-breed solutions get different pieces of the solution from different vendors, allowing you to
Have access to extensive capabilities:
Most best-of-breed solutions are niche solutions and sometimes tend to offer capabilities catering to a particular industry or business process. Because different features are brought together from different solutions, you have access to the functionality you need to meet the unique needs of your business.
Add functionality as needed:
If you are a business that has just begun its journey or one that experiences tremendous growth, a best-of-breed revenue management platform allows you to plan functional scalability. You can add functionality as needed and drive better ROI from your revenue management system.
Integrate many solutions together:
Best-of-breed solutions also offer high levels of flexibility, allowing you to integrate multiple systems through integrations or workflows. You can connect any system to expand your revenue management capabilities and improve customer experience: LOB, ERP, CRM, or any other third-party system of your choice.
Better meet unique customer needs:
If you have customers that have very unique or exclusive preferences and needs, a best-of-breed solution can provide you with the functionality you need to meet their expectations. You can cherry-pick the feature that best fits their needs and execute your deliverables with greater precision.
Make a sound decision
In the realm of revenue management, both best-of-suite and best of breed solutions have a lot to offer.
Best-of-suite platforms reduce risk of integrations, offer better ownership, simplify management, and make upgrades easier.
Best-of-breed platforms enable access to niche capabilities while allowing you to integrate as many solutions as needed to better meet unique customer needs.
However, because best-of-breed solutions bring together the capabilities of different vendors, they can be difficult to manage and maintain; the probability of introducing integration risks is also higher and needs to be dealt with efficiently and in a timely manner.
If you want to hand over all the troubles of managing and maintaining your subscribers, partners, vendors, pricing, and promotions and be responsive to customer and market needs, opting for a best-of-suite revenue management solution like OneBill can help you bill accurately, collect faster, and curb revenue leakage for a fulfilling subscriber experience.
