With the Right Solution, CSPs Can Launch, Scale, and Optimize IoT Subscription Solutions
For communications services providers (CSPs) that want to improve their subscription commerce offerings for Internet of Things (IoT) products and services, a robust solution that acts as an integration layer between your existing commerce stack and new functionalities is essential.
But how do you determine which capabilities are most important for your needs?
Given the complexity of B2B subscription commerce it’s hard to know where to begin. First there’s the sheer range of IoT products and services that CSPs can deliver with a recurring business model, including connectivity, hardware, software as a service (SaaS) solutions, and professional services. Then there are must-haves, like robust usage-based billing and the ability to bundle solutions from multiple providers, not to mention the importance of integrating and automating all of the behind-the-scenes functions.
Understanding what to look for in a subscription commerce solution is the first step in providing a seamless customer experience and improving operational efficiency. Without the right capabilities in place, your offering won’t deliver the IoT experience that your competitors are capable of offering. In the long run, that means fewer customers, less revenue, and an IoT practice that isn’t competitive with the options available from other CSPs.
Successful subscription commerce requires a technology solution to connect and streamline your commerce stack and manage the end-to-end customer journey.
Your solution should provide robust capabilities to power a seamless experience for customers, partners, and the employees who manage the backend. In particular, essential capabilities include comprehensive workflows that connect shipping, inventory, and fulfillment systems, a single storefront, and subscription lifecycle management.
So how do you know which capabilities are most important for your particular go to market strategy? While every situation is different, this guide can help you understand which areas will be most essential for you and why.
Common Denominators
Depending on where your company is currently positioned in its subscription commerce journey, the use cases for your solution will vary, but they commonly include:
- Launching a referral marketplace
- Selling or scaling subscription services
- Automating reseller management
- Launching and/or monetizing a digital ecosystem
- Selling and managing services on connected devices
Your business may start with one well-developed and highly supported use case before expanding to others as you experience incremental growth. Alternatively, you could decide to meet the minimum requirements for multiple use cases right from your initial launch and then expand your capabilities within each sector over time.
Think About the Customer Experience
B2B subscription commerce means focusing on the customer lifecycle and managing ongoing relationships. To sustain and grow recurring revenue, you’ll need to meet customer expectations for a frictionless experience with finding, buying, and managing IoT offerings. That takes far more than just a recurring billing solution.
It’s important to use a robust digital marketplace that showcases and monetizes your offerings while providing an intuitive experience for customers. These features must be a core component of your subscription commerce solution. Keep in mind that your customers should be able to easily manage and provision core products and add-on services themselves.
As you think about your customers’ needs and decide which use cases you want to launch first or expand into, keep these key capabilities in mind:
Customer Experience Platform (CXP)
Allow customers to purchase a complete solution in a single transaction or cart, and make sure that they’re able to use tools that help them monitor their usage.
Comprehensive Workflows
Provide customers with a smoothly integrated experience, including seamless connections for shipping, inventory, and fulfillment systems.
Single Storefront
Make it easy for customers to find and buy the perfect solutions and for you to manage and monetize your offerings. Customers should benefit from an integrated shopping experience, whether they’re buying your products or third-party solutions.
Subscription Lifecycle Management
Offer customers a simple way to manage subscriptions and devices, and give your business stakeholders the dashboards they need to make informed decisions.
To determine whether you already have these capabilities or if you will need to acquire them for your current subscription commerce strategy—or as you scale your IoT offerings in the future—start by asking:
- How will customers discover your solutions?
- Will you want to segment your audience and personalize the experience and offerings for different customers based on their business size, geography, or other factors?
- Are you satisfied with the appearance and branding of your marketplace, or do you want to customize it further?
- What types of content will you provide to support the buyer’s decision (e.g., reviews, frequently asked questions, or other guidance)?
- How can buyers manage their orders and subscriptions?
- How will customers provision, deploy, and manage their digital purchases?
- What capabilities will you need for configuring products on the marketplace?
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Automate the Workflow
Automating back-office functions is a key driver for reducing costs related to the execution and management of IoT subscription commerce offerings. Replacing manual processes in sales, fulfillment, and billing with streamlined, efficient operations allows your business to deliver a more satisfying customer experience while ensuring your team can focus their energy on scaling the IoT practice.
Workflow automation requires a robust billing engine and seamless integration with internal and external systems. To automate and expand your subscription commerce strategy, many of the following capabilities will be essential:
Payments
Manage payments and integrate with payment gateways as well as your own internal systems.
Billing and Invoicing
Simplify complex billing and streamline back-office invoice processing, especially for complicated metered pricing models.
Provisioning and Fulfillment
Automatically provision subscriptions on demand, assign seats or licenses, start and stop billing, cancel or add licenses, and upgrade or downgrade subscriptions.
Pricing and Editions
Support a broad range of pricing models, contract terms, usage-based billing, bundling, free trials, discounts, and promotions.
Reports and Dashboards
Get a full view of invoicing, payments, customers, prospects, billing, reconciliation, and more.
Security and Compliance
Give your customers secure access to their subscription services and meet relevant regulatory mandates.
APIs, Webhooks, and Integrations
Connect to other internal and third-party systems and functionalities to extend your capabilities and improve operations.
Your subscription commerce solution should smoothly integrate with third-party applications used by your partners as well as those in your existing technology stack. To better understand your company’s requirements around automating back-office processes for subscription commerce, explore these questions:
- How do you price your subscriptions?
- Do you need to support usage-based pricing models?
- Do you support free trials, discounts, and promotions?
- How do you track invoices, payments, revenue, and other high-priority business performance metrics?
- How do users activate and manage their subscriptions?
- What in-house and external systems will you need to connect with your subscription commerce solution to automate the process of provisioning digital services?
- What payment gateways do you use?
- What other connections and integrations will be important for optimizing your operations?
Launch, Scale, and Optimize
As you consider which capabilities you’ll need to prioritize in your subscription commerce solution, keep this in mind: It’s never too late to improve your offering. Many CSPs have launched IoT subscription commerce solutions before perfectly ironing out specific challenges. This isn’t a problem.
This strategy may have allowed your company to go to market quickly - effectively staking out a claim for the CSP before it was too late to break in. Software vendors have a term for this approach: minimum viable product (MVP). The important thing is to continue striving after the MVP gains some traction.
We call this best practice “Launch, Scale, Optimize.”
The idea is to start with the most critical requirements first, then expand and optimize incrementally as your revenue—and your success—grows. Think of the initial launch as the starting point for your journey.
If you’ve already launched your IoT offering, you may be looking for opportunities to further automate workflows so you can lower costs, drive revenue, and scale up. If you have yet to enter the IoT marketplace, you may be looking for an out-of-the-box solution that can help you bring the offering to market quickly. These factors will influence what you need from a subscription commerce solution.
Key Takeaway:
Rely on the experts
Everyone’s journey is specific to their use case, company, product portfolio, and customers, which means that every business will need to weigh different requirements as they strategize, launch, scale, or optimize their offerings.
That’s why it pays to engage with a subscription commerce expert early in the process. Expertise and guidance are invaluable in helping you determine the best approach for your business so you can avoid common missteps.
With more than a decade of working with clients around the world, AppDirect can help you uncover the critical requirements your company needs for subscription commerce while accelerating your journey to success.