Is your business going gangbusters selling its software-as-a-service offering to consumers and businesses, at home and abroad?
Recent years have seen the proliferation of applications that allow customers to pay as they go, often via a monthly subscription based on their usage level. Runaway success stories like Canva, Campaign Monitor and Culture Amp need no introduction but they’re not the only homegrown movers and shakers on the block. Scores of other entrepreneurs are following in their founders’ footsteps and, in 2022, the throwaway line, “there’s an app for that” has never been truer.
Scaling up is the chief challenge for most up-and-coming vendors in this space. It’s made even harder if you don’t have access to billing technology that enables you to monitor and manage your customers’ software usage and generate timely, accurate accounts.
Many fledgling SaaS vendors don’t. Rather, they rely on old-school technology, including spreadsheets, to manage the revenue cycle. This modus operandi can be time-consuming and inaccurate; the scale of the challenge only increases as the customer base proliferates.
Billing made simple
The solution isn’t to keep tinkering at the edges. Investing in automated billing software to help you run your SaaS business more effectively, is.
That means switching to a cloud-based revenue management platform that encompasses the revenue cycle from end to end and integrates seamlessly with the SAP or Microsoft Dynamics ERP solution you use to run your business.
This technology makes it possible to capture and consolidate your SaaS usage data, integrate it with systems that track and manage your customers, and analyse it to obtain insights that can be used to inform critical decisions around products and pricing.
Here are a few of the benefits that automating your revenue management process can provide.
Improved customer understanding
Meeting and exceeding customer expectations is the key to success in business and the SaaS sector is no exception. A premium revenue management platform will help you gain a deeper understanding of customer expectations, courtesy of the fact that it can be used to capture data about how, when, where and why your application is deployed. Use those insights to modify and optimise your offering and you’ll be well placed to surprise and delight your customers.
An optimum pricing model
Customer data can also help you determine whether or not your software offering is optimally priced. For many SaaS start-ups, working out how much to charge for their application is no easy matter. Analytics technology that allows you to explore the behaviour of individual customers and specific segments of your target market can help you work towards a pricing model that customers find compelling, and one which is sustainable and profitable in the long term.
Elevated customer experience
Timely, accurate invoices are the cornerstone of good customer relations. Errors and delays issuing the accounts can cause consumers and businesses to question your professionalism and, indeed, whether they should be dealing with your enterprise at all. Billing anomalies can also slow down cashflow; something most growing software businesses can ill afford. Adopt automated, consumption-based billing software and these won’t be issues you have to deal with. Instead, your operations team will be able to generate complex account hierarchies and consolidate and separate invoices with ease.
Setting your enterprise up for SaaS-cess
Transforming a SaaS start-up into a bona fide, big league software vendor is no easy undertaking. Companies that attempt to scale up without implementing rigorous programs and processes to support their growth can scupper their own chances, regardless of the quality of their offering. A strong revenue management strategy underpinned by technology that helps you to service your customer base efficiently will stand your enterprise in good stead, as it expands its market footprint.
