As Internet of Things (IoT) becomes more and more popular, many businesses are looking to leverage the concept through subscription commerce.
With innovation becoming a key driver for subscription-based businesses, and with competition heating up, businesses are looking for new ways to provide value to customers. Addressing unique customer demands requires providers to tactfully monetize the solutions in an environment that is being steered by multiple technologies and multiple vendors. They need to package different services together in a bundle and price them in a way that maximizes revenue.
If you’re looking to reduce time-to-market for new offerings while successfully monetizing new and innovative services – faster and more effectively – here are some tools you need for monetizing your IoT solutions:
Tool to Configure Price and Quote:
Rolling out recurring, one-time or usage-based IoT solutions quickly to market requires you to define a variety of charge types like one time, recurring, usage-based, hybrid (fixed recurring + usage based), feature-based (dynamic pricing based on a number of features opted), volume-based pricing (slab based) and rule-based pricing.
Since usage charges are a powerful way of billing your customers, the configure price and quote tool can help a great deal. By mapping your CDR (Call Detail Record) files to usage charges, the tool allows you to innovate your pricing strategy, allowing you meet the evolving needs of your customers more easily. With endless possibilities to price your offerings, you can get the flexibility to pick and choose different pricing strategies to drive value as well as revenue.Tool for Channel Management:
Extending and expanding IoT solutions as value-added services to your partners and resellers can take you to the pinnacle of success.
Using the channel management tool, you can effectively track commissions and manage settlements with your partners and resellers. Since your partners and resellers need intuitive services to strengthen capabilities and maximize revenue, using the channel management tool, you can quickly and easily onboard new partners and allow for differentiated pricing – based on their needs.
By allowing them to select products from your catalog, you can drive higher efficiency and build stronger relationships with them. What’s more, easy commission calculation and automatic settlements can further strengthen your bond.
Tool for Automated CDR Processing:
With millions of IoT services simultaneously being used by subscribers, accurate computation of CDR files is not easy. Using a CDR processing tool however, you can precisely configure complex CDR files with no coding. The tool automates the computation process and takes care of all associated aspects including pricing and taxation.
By mapping CDR files to usage charges, you can define usage charges based on the time of the day when the service was purchased or used. The tool also allows you to upload bulk usage transaction records. In addition, you can create rules and get real-time insight into transaction time/date, errors in processing transactions, successful process, status, count checks for reconciliations. You can also use the tool to specify the day and time to give away special offers to your top customers.
Self-care Portal:
No matter how experienced and proficient your customer care team is, offering a self-care experience is a great way to engage and empower customers to manage their own IoT subscriptions.
By integrating the portal with your billing platform, you can display compatible products for customers when they wish to change their plans. You can also provide integrated views that showcase their orders, subscription, invoices and payments – and improve the customer experience. A branded product catalog, and a self-care portal that is integrated with the eCommerce cart can, in addition, ensure the checkout is smooth and the customer experience amazing.
Tax Compliance Tools:
The taxation process for any subscription based business is hard. Calculating the right tax for the IoT services offered, examining the applicable taxes, and coming up with accurate taxation report can be a nightmare if you don’t have automated billing solutions.
Using a tax compliance tool, you can configure tax definitions accurately – no matter what your product/service type is. The automated tax calculator takes the complexity out of the taxation process; you can define tax rates based on the location of your subscribers and apply taxes for specific products or specific charges within a product.
The tool allows you to exempt certain subscribers from certain taxes and generate a detailed tax report that enlists all the taxes charged for different transactions. You can also leverage the tool to tag transactions to relevant accounting codes for financial reporting purposes, and accurately represent taxes on the invoice so your customers know the actual amounts being charged.
Drive Higher Efficiency:
As the line between telecom, cloud, and IoT blurs, and as new players enter and dominate the market, subscription-based businesses have to be prepared to tackle the new and evolving market place.
With subscription-based business becoming a way of life, accurately monetizing your IoT solutions is critical for competitive advantage. And although the process can be difficult, given the distinct profile of geographically dispersed customers, each with a different need, embracing certain tools can make the process far simpler. Tools such as configure price and quote, channel management, automated CDR processing, self-care portal and tax compliance can help you not improve customer experience, but also drive higher efficiency and bring in higher revenue for your subscription-based business. Leverage these tools to keep the best interests of customers in mind, and offer solutions that are highly available, affordable, and manageable.
