Subscronomics is not just the latest buzzword or trend in the market. It’s actually a term that is being used to articulate the important role that technology has to play in facilitating business models that are based on recurring revenue. Subscription models are bringing in significant cash with the global industry hitting a high of $288 billion in 2021. Moreover, the subscription market is anticipated to have a turnover of more than $481 billion by 2025.
The underlying need behind the subscronomics movement is that customers want less ownership and to “reduce their decisions to one single moment of commitment”.
So if you’re a business that relies on recurring revenue for your core business model, how does the subscronomics movement impact the technology you adopt to manage recurring revenues?
Here are three signs to look out for.
1. Adaptable Experience
In a climate where customers are shying away from long-term commitment and are easily enticed by the next best deal, they may be wanting to update, extend, downgrade, or discontinue their service at a moment’s notice. Even though keeping on top of this volatile behavior can be cumbersome, the downgrade and discontinue experience that a customer has can end up ‘making or breaking’ their decision to return to their original service down the line.
Therefore it’s critical that you have a revenue management system that can easily update a subscription with minimal steps in the workflow. Furthermore, it’s imperative that the system can clearly communicate the change of status of that subscription in a timely manner.
2. Subscription Plus
Speaking of customer volatility. When you’re operating in a landscape where your major competitors are offering similar subscription plans, how do you stand out from the crowd? One key lever to pull is to offer a unique, customizable product or service that can be bolted onto the subscription to add value to your offering. At the end of the day, customers still want a sense of personalization. Hence, by monitoring and learning about their preferences, you can offer an additional service that speaks to their core needs.
For example, subscription streaming services like Hulu leverage this as a tactic to upgrade their customer’s plans. For example, through analyzing the user’s viewing habits and preference towards certain genres, Hulu is able to push promotions to lure their users into buying an additional subscription to a channel that specializes in that genre.
However, in order to efficiently execute this tactic, you need a revenue management system that powers you with the capability to configure promotions with pricing rules and set start and end dates. Furthermore, adding these bolted on services to an existing subscription plan should be seamless. Therefore, it is important that the system can easily amend a current order and execute an accurate invoice that reflects the updated order.
3. Instantaneous Delivery
One cultural trend that is tied to the subscronomics movement is the growing customer need for instant activation. Customers expect that once they pay for a product or service, they can begin their experience instantaneously. In fact, delayed service activation is one of the top reasons for why customers leave telecommunications providers. As this is one of the first few touchpoints that a customer has with their business, this one poor experience can leave a lasting impression.
So how can you ensure that you mitigate service activation delays?
Esure you seek out a revenue management platform that has open APIs and the ability to integrate with your downstream enterprise platforms that are responsible for activating a service. Therefore, once a new subscription order is created, you can configure workflows within the revenue management platform to turn on a downstream soft switch and orchestrate and provision the order.
Through OneBill’s advanced revenue management solution, you can efficiently manage your subscription-based business and ensure your offerings can be adaptable, customizable and ensure that service delivery is king. Take a tour of the OneBill platform today.
