To expand customer relationships in the Activity-to-Cash cycle, Cloud Billing should give companies the chance to create services dynamically. It should nurture customer relationships forged in the Order-to-Cash cycle by tracking and managing the different activities in which customers engage and the resources necessary to make those activities possible. The Activity-To-Cash™ cycle is where the relationship is expanded according to customers’ behaviors and preferences over time.
It is very effective in opening a relationship with the customer if an automated and seamless stream of processes takes place to manage Accounts, Orders, Activities and Entitlements, Billing & Invoicing, Payment Processing, Customer Care, and Collections.
The Order-To-Cash cycle is where a relationship with the customer is established. A Cloud Billing solution can drive growth by encouraging and monetizing activities if it can manage both the Order-to-Cash and Activity-to-Cash™ cycles.
#Complete anatomy billing download
For example, a content download is an “activity” as is the creation of a new object in a SaaS application, the scan of a QR code, or a coupon redemption. “Activities” can be virtually anything marketing dreams up and are things which can be measured and hence monetized. Companies like Apple, Skype, Google, Amazon, Car2Go, MailChimp demonstrate that when customers are engaged in more “activities” they are less likely to churn and more likely to try new activities that can generate revenue. The ability to build multiple, combined revenue streams for each customer is important for long term growth, diversification, and business sustainability. Solutions that cannot support this level of business integration can create problems like errors, broken processes, lost data, and customer frustration in the near term, thus offsetting any cost savings they might offer as a result of being less sophisticated. The ability to build data stores, processes, tools, functions, applications, interfaces and adapters is critical to business flexibility and scale. Integration with these core systems requires considerable expertise and knowledge. Social Networking (Twitter, Facebook, Chatter, g+).Accounting Systems(Netsuite, Intacct, corporate accounting).Enterprise/On-premise Systems (InstallShield, IBM, Sun, Oracle, SAP).CRM Systems (Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Salesforce).Sales Automation (SugarCRM, NetSuite, Salesforce).Cloud Billing solutions should be able to link readily into existing systems, processes, and applications, such as: This range of capabilities also points to the need for billing to interact and share data with a company’s key business processes. SOA API (SOAP/REST) Cloud Billing Architecture.Internet Of Things – Device and Service Management.There are a number of fundamental capabilities one should expect in a Cloud Billing solution, not only to capture revenue, but also to cultivate relationships that build ARPU and customer loyalty. An overly simplistic solution will mean trouble when it comes time to modify product or marketing strategies, or when growth requires billing to scale quickly.
Unless a business has a static business model where few changes are made to products and pricing, it is important to seek out more than simple invoicing and payment capabilities (readily available from companies like PayPal, Chargify or Zuora). There are many claims about ‘billing in the cloud’ and its benefits, but it is necessary for businesses to look under the hood to ensure a Cloud Billing Solution will deliver what they need. Though cost avoidance is often an initial driver, the desire to push business models to the next level using “billing” as a strategic asset for anticipating, recognizing and responding to the dynamics of people often becomes the real catalyst for adopting Cloud Billing. The cloud makes it possible for companies of all sizes to leverage sophisticated rating, charging and billing capabilities without multi-million-dollar price tags for licenses, integration and maintenance.
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