It’s high time to either get or optimize your subscription billing software if you have a Software-as-a-Service company to make sure you can work with efficiency, transparency and compliance. We tell you, why it’s worth the effort of looking for a (new) solution.
Your billing processes deserve automation #
Lucanet asked senior finance professionals about their biggest challenges and the answer was clear: it’s lack of automation. 43% see a lack of efficiency, too much manual effort and too little automation as their biggest challenge (source: Lucanet World).
Manual processes are not just impossible to scale; they also tend to come with other caveats that create critical issues:
- Bottlenecks
- Higher human error probabilities
- Lack of transparency for you and your customers*
- Lack of standardization
- A high potential to create data silos or “lose” data
- Finding and combining data for audits, reports, etc. requires a lot of time
*Only 20% of surveyed finance experts are confident in the accuracy of their data.
One of the key goals for any specialized software is to automate (complex) processes and a structured and standardized way to create more transparency.
Your data needs to be freed from its silos #
According to McKinsey (via Forbes), the average high-skill knowledge worker (managers, professionals) spends 19% of their workweek searching and gathering information. That’s a full day per work week.
Software, excel files and other processes that keep data isolated (as data silo) can create a whole range of issues that impact productivity, planning, and even security and compliance. Data silos hinder collaboration, keep crucial data from stakeholders and add manual workload for extracting, structuring and consolidating.
A fully integrated subscription billing software is usually built to connect to other systems to:
- centralize and synchronize data with plugins, integration or webhooks
- provide dashboards, reporting and analytics functions, so you don’t need data analysts to use your data
- ensure transparent customer data for your finance, sales and support
Your bookkeeping is in dire need of clean data transfers #
According to Lucanet, only 2% of surveyed Finance experts have a fully automated financial consolidation process. 28% still work fully manual. That puts a lot of pressure on employees and can cause plenty of issues.
Prevent your finance team from losing their minds over double-checking every bill with automation:
- Timely synchronization of all billing and payment information
- Proper proration and revenue recognition
- The right data formats, so numbers do not get twisted in the process
- Compliant data transfer and documentation
- Easy access to the subscription tool in case of issues
- Billing documentation that supports audits
Your subscriptions demand scalability #
As a SaaS, you want to grow your business. But due to the specific complexities that involve subscription plans and billing, scaling is highly reliable on clean processes and a billing platform that can manage growing numbers and plans without a hitch.
- Anything that requires manual work and only excel files is very likely to get out of hand the more customers you have.
- High traffic (e.g. during Black Friday) can easily cause downtime when the solution was not made to withstand increased processing.
- Even a simple subscription model will very likely require a lot of different plans due to discounts, free trials and different payment frequencies. You will require a subscription billing software that will stay on top of complex and diverse subscription plans.
Your devs need a break #
According to the BetterCloud State of SaaS-report from last year, the average IT employee is responsible for 108 employees. That is a 31% increase compared to last year.
Your IT needs to cater to more people’s requests and does not have time to build let alone maintain inhouse billing solutions. What they need (and want) is a subscription billing software that will make this easier.
- A solution that either combine different key functionalities (which reduces the number of installed apps and systems) or provide easy-to-use APIs for seamless connections.
- A user-friendly solution with a high adoption rate that automate and streamline processes instead of adding useless parallel work and data streams (or endless tickets because users have issues with the software).
- A function-cost ratio that makes sense. It’s not just about the price of the software. Automation, reduced manual efforts and an increase in overall compliance and security can save you a lot of money (and grief).
Your compliance can do with less uncertainty #
When creating or implementing new processes, compliance and data security need to be included from the beginning to avoid incidents and security risks.
42% of finance experts see managing regulations and ensuring compliance as their biggest challenge (source: Lucanet).
Automation, especially enabled via a professional billing software, usually increases compliance. A SaaS billing software, after all, is built to adhere to finance, billing and payment regulations. Depending on your markets, it is worth to research VAT options, billing formats, and other standards that depend on the country you’re doing business in. Make sure that your subscription billing software fits your market needs.
Your forecasting needs to be better than reading a horoscope #
In the Lucanet survey, 34% finance experts cited scenario planning and forecasting as big issues for their financial planning and analysis.
That’s because it still is very difficult to turn the existing customer and revenue data into reliable performance and predictive data. Often, this will require either inhouse data analysts or a specialized agency or software solution. Forecasting requires a lot of data, time and testing to get it right.
Many subscription management solutions already offer performance analytics (e.g. dashboards for MRR, ARR, churn, etc.,) but few have integrated predictive analytics features that support your forecasting across the entire subscription lifecycle.
When selecting a subscription billing software, think about what you really need to plan ahead and if the solution can offer this out-of-the-box or requires a more ambitious analytics project.
Your company might want to take a look at Frisbii #
Frisbii’s recurring billing platform manages your subscriptions and memberships, supports different subscription plans (discounts, free trials, vouchers, usage-based billing) and has its own acquirer-agnostic payment gateway for more control over your payment options.
Furthermore, Frisbii comes with performance and predictive analytics. Test out price increases in a risk-free environment or predict churn and CLV based on your own customer data.
Interested? Book a demo today and talk to our experts about your use cases, goals and challenges.
