The UCaaS market has grown dramatically over the past couple of years and has earned the favor of the enterprise. It is estimated that by 2021, this market will be worth USD 28.69 Billion. Low cost of ownership, the flexibility to integrate multiple forms of communications on one platform, a pay-per-use model of charging are some of the reasons why enterprises are moving away from their legacy phone systems in favor of UCaaS. According to an IDC survey, 43.8% of enterprises in the U.S had already transitioned to UCaaS by the end of 2017.
What do customers look for in their UCaaS Service providers?
When it comes to UCaaS, the choice of the customer matters the most.
- Simplified scaling to meet the dynamic needs of the market, resiliency against outages, and low cost of deployment and implementation are few things that customers look for in their UCaaS providers.
- Along with this, flexible billing and cost savings enabled by eliminating the burden of hosting a business phone/voice communications system in the enterprise data center are attractive to the customers.
- Robust support services can also be a game changer in the UCaaS market.
- Enterprises also look for robust SLAs to ensure that the UCaaS vendor can meet the business requirements in the entire gamut of UCaaS functionalities offered.
The UCaaS providers, thus, have to offer customizations to meet the diverse needs of the business, have the capability to scale their offerings according to changing customer needs, can play well with other solutions and hybrid strategies. And one of the most important things customers look for in UCaaS service providers is a proven track record in helping their clients achieve success.
UCaaS Service Providers – Are you Losing Money?
Customizations and flexibility are two benefits that ring loud in this UCaaS environment. The UCaaS provider offering most of these is also most likely to win the game. However, in a bid to meet the changing needs of the client, UCaaS providers might be losing money that could have gone into their coffers. Here’s a look at how these silent offenders work.
Is the Subscription Management Software doing its job right?
Since UCaaS services are subscription based, it is imperative that the software used for the same manages to track and bill for each service that is being used. The software has to have the capability to manage flexible consumptions, have adept pricing personalization, allow elastic subscription as well as value-based pricing. However, if the subscription management system is not robust enough or needs manual intervention, then you could be giving away services for free as from these flexibilities arise complexities.
Your subscription management tool might not account for some services. If there is manual intervention needed to accommodate changes or customizations, there could be chances of billing errors. With no way of tracking the subscriptions to the last detail, you will often end up releasing services and not charging for them.
Are Complex Billing Cycles Being Managed Correctly?
As mentioned earlier, enterprises are drawn to UCaaS because of the flexibility it offers – both in terms of services and pricing models. While UCaaS pricing is quite straightforward for the customers owing to the transactional billing model also known as ‘Pay-Per-Use’ or ‘Pay As You Go’, ensuring that the billing is right, comprehensive and accounts for all services used can be a challenge for the UCaaS providers.
For example, an eCommerce company, during a high traffic season might ask the UCaaS provider for more bandwidth. They might ask them to lower the bandwidth immediately after and then bring it back to the usual usage a week later. While this seems rather straightforward, it can be a daunting task for the UCaaS vendor to ensure that everything that is consumed is tracked correctly.
For this, they have to have a system in place that ensures that every service used is billed in the right order with detailed analytics and reporting to ensure no revenue slips through the cracks.
Are all your Services Being Charged Appropriately?
Customers love the customization capability of UCaaS. However, for UCaaS providers it can be challenging to define the service buckets and often do not end up charging a premium for certain services. This usually occurs when the subscription and billing solution in use is incapable of handling the varieties of customizations and does not have tracking capabilities.
In such cases, UCaaS providers end up not charging for premium services. Let us take the example of a customer is utilizing free internet services with free audio call service. However, video call services will be charged. In such cases, how can UCaaS providers ensure that the service in use is being tracked correctly and a corresponding bill is being generated accurately as well? In most cases, this does not happen, and UCaaS providers end up losing revenue as they have no account for the same.
Clearly, UCaaS providers need greater visibility, transparency, and flexibility to update orders, and strategize pricing to plug the holes in the revenue bucket. The solution to this problem lies in a comprehensive, robust and flexible billing and subscription management platform that not only recognizes these challenges but also helps UCaaS providers run their subscription business with ease and precision. With no revenue loss.
