infoTECH Feature

June 28, 2016

The Cloud as Prime Path to SaaS Monetization Optimization

In the real-time, aka now’ economy, a few things have become inexorable trends.  They can be summarized with four words: Agility, Visibility, Control and Customization. Combined they add up to the ability of service providers, and increasingly enterprises, to offer cloud-based software as a service (SaaS (News - Alert)) as the next generation of value-added capabilities to customers and stakeholders alike as the world becomes more software and online-centric.

A brief look at each of those trends is useful.

 Agility:  Making use of an extensible, reliable, secure and high-performance platform to be able to respond in real-time or near real-time as quickly as possible.

Visibility:  Having full view of the entire customer journey. This means being easily able to see all of the tools, analytics, history of interactions and access expert systems and human resources required make faster and better decisions that enable more compelling outcomes.

Control:  Enabling responsible parties to ensure only those who need access are granted it, and that policies and rules can be applied for commercial as well as compliance reasons.

Customization:  The ease of being able to create new applications, services and business processes that can adapt to the specific needs of customers.  This can impact everything from feature design and packaging and particularly creating billing models that are optimized. 

The challenge comes with that last word “optimized.”  While there is no longer doubt about the value of SaaS, and the desirability of moving from perpetual licensing and entitlement management and all of the business processes that go with moving to a subscription-based business, realities are that not all clouds are the same, and every implementation of SaaS has its own customization and integration issues, particularly as companies transition more and more “mission critical” applications and services to the cloud. 

The goal of business of all types up and down the SaaS value chain is to leverage all that SaaS has to offer to best monetize software-centric value.  However, selecting the right platform and solutions provider that can get everyone, including customers, from here to there is non-trivial.

As I noted in a previous posting, it is complicated and there are a lot of moving parts—people and processes—that need to be taken into account. In addition, another inexorable trend that has become a priority consideration of any organization considering moving to SaaS, or even in the process of doing so, is making “E”verything simple. 

A good way to get educated on how best to optimize the monetization opportunities more to a subscription-based environment for next generation software-based services was the subject of the recent webinarMonetizing the NOW Economy: Cloud Billing for Enterprise Subscription Services

If you were unable to join myself and during the live presentation with Jean Lawrence, Product Marketing, Billing and Revenue Management Cloud Service, Oracle (News - Alert) and Brian Kracik, Senior Director, Product Marketing, Enterprise and Cloud Services and I delved into:

  • What’s driving subscription commerce and what capabilities are required for the NOW economy
  • Pathways, deployment models and considerations for cloud billing
  • How cloud billing can deliver new subscription services quickly and cost-effectively, provide real-time views of your customer base, and achieve financial compliance

In the previous posting on this insightful event, an illustration of Oracle’s Billing and Management Cloud Service, which is a comprehensive solution to the challenges above was included.  As further inducement to download the webinar, the below is amplification as to what is driving the NOW economy and why you need to be ready for what is coming. 

Source (News - Alert):   Oracle Communications, May 10, 2016 webinar, Monetizing the NOW Economy: Cloud Billing for Enterprise Subscription Services.  

To use a now cliché expression, the bottom line is the bottom line. SaaS not only is the future, but transitioning to a SaaS platform that produces optimal monetization is available today. And, the reason for consideration with some sense of urgency is so the transition to a platform that is future-ready can be effectuated, and opportunities can be quickly acted upon  whatever that future may hold.   




Edited by Stefania Viscusi
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