By: Akansha Srivastava Shahi, Consultant, LTIMindtree

In my last blog, we gained much information regarding subscription models, emerging trends in the D2C domain and the variations and advantages. In this post, we will understand how to achieve and maintain a subscription business.

What is an SMS – Subscription Management System?

SMS is the process of overseeing and controlling all aspects of products and services sold repeatedly through a weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly subscription-based pricing model. It is a process of making sure that your customer experience is a happy one by providing them with a ready-to-go payment option, which helps you concentrate on other important business aspects like marketing and customer service.

SMS also automates the billing and invoicing on a regular basis, and handles subscription accounts, thus making sure that the right account is charged the right amount. It provides the analytics systems and dashboards, and dunning tools, to help provide sales-related information, and mitigate the impact of failed payments respectively, thus leading to revenue recognition. These systems normally have a high quality UX that attracts customers and helps in retaining them as it provides ease of payments.

One can implement and manage subscription models by integrating through any of the various SMS available in the market depending upon the requirements and needs. Some popular systems include Chargebee, Chargify, Zuora, Stripe, Recurly, SaasOptics, Sage Intacct etc.

The foundations of web 3.0 have been developed on the technologies such as blockchain, artificial intelligence, semantic web, and machine learning. Currently, our main focus is on developing Minimum Viable Products (MVPs), which will guarantee that we are giving our clients what they are looking for and how they want it. Please refer to the table below to learn about the offerings:

Key Features

The following are some of the main features that can support your business in expanding and retaining customers for a longer period and ensure success.

1. Trial management is a way of offering a sample of your product/service for a limited time for free and then charging in the future if the subscription continues.
2. Recurring billing happens when a merchant automatically charges a customer for goods or services on a pre-arranged schedule.
3. Subscription cancellation is the process of cancelling a subscription and recurring billing at any given time.
4. Dunning management is a way of handling declined payments in a subscription, so the customer can act accordingly and initiate manual payment.
5. Churn management refers to identifying valuable customers and can be seen differently from various angles. Businesses can have their own way of calculating based on what is relevant to their organization – for some, the duration for which customer remains subscribed is important, while for others, the quantity or product bought is significant. Essentially, it is the number of subscribers who stop paying for a product/service in a period.
6. Invoicing is a way of generating the invoices and communicating the same to customers at every billing cycle in a timely manner.

How SMS benefits you and your business

Subscription management provides several advantages. Let’s understand a few.

1. Promotion and plans – Allows you to create and customize the best promotional plans to attract and retain users.
2. A seamless recurring payment environment – Allows users to save payment details for easy processing during the next billing cycle – some also allow auto-mandate that deducts the said amount at the end of the cycle automatically, with the user not having to fill in the details each time.
3. Analytics – Helps you to read user behavior and observe their buying patterns, user conversions etc., which helps suggest accurate products or services to customers in the future.
4. Churn reduction – Due to higher customer retention, there is an implicit increase in value and lesser churn in response.
5. Security – Choose wise in terms of security – a good subscription management focuses on security, and is PCI compliant for a globally safe payment environment.
6. Easy trials with real customers – SMS allows you to test and try new capabilities by providing the service bundle to selected users along with their subscription package and get their feedback easily.
7. E-Billing – SMS often works in an eco-friendly way by providing e-invoicing or e-billing to the customer, with everything going paperless today.

Emerging trends

QR Billing

While QR scan for payment was popular a few years ago,  nowadays, QR billing is coming to the forefront. This is where bills are generated digitally in the form of QR codes that can be printed, scanned, and shared. The code contains all necessary information along with the digital signature.

Auto Mandate or Direct Debit

This helps a customer renew their product or service cycle after every interval, without filling the payment details time and again. Once a customer subscribes and agrees for the payment information to be saved, it is securely within the system. An auto-mandate occurs at the end of every billing cycle and the appropriate amount is deducted automatically. However, this has its share of restrictions and regulations.

The Win-win

Subscriptions are essential for both consumers and producers. The trend is moving from continuously monitoring conversions and orders to offering a range of services that help businesses generate revenues while retaining new and existing customers.

Businesses needs to work on their quality of goods and services that can attract the customers and help retain them in the long run, given the strong focus on scalability, efficiency and customer success and satisfaction, to succeed in this business.

Hence, it is undoubtedly a win-win situation for everyone – where the quality of success is increased for businesses, while customers are satisfied by a range of flexible products and services that they can pause and resume as per their needs.

References:

1. https://www.chargebee.com/blog/3-essential-features-recurring-billing/
2. https://blog.aspiresys.com/digital/cloud/10-features-to-check-out-in-your-subscription-management-solution-part-1/
3. https://www.pabbly.com/best-subscription-management-software/