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Renewal management and customer churn is a key performance area for every subscription business. However, not every subscription business manages this quite the same way. Depending on your market and your subscription (product or service), managing the renewal process and decreasing churn that efficiently could make or break your business model. The level of complexity in doing this efficiently (automatically “chaining” to the next contract versus manually) tends to depend on the product or service you’re offering on subscription, whether the charges are fixed (or variable) and the duration of the contract (short or long term). The objective is clear: Renew effortlessly with little or no manual human intervention Analyse your churn and execute appropriate actions to reduce each type When Dynamics 355 Finance is combined with Bluefort LISA, subscription businesses not only fully automate the financials for each customer (sale, purchase, recognise revenue), but also proactively manage the renewal and churn of each subscription through subscription chains. Let’s look at some industry examples:The consumer subscribes monthly to a box based on personalised preferences; as many of the items in the box change over the period of the subscription, it’s helpful to “chain” various bundles in a sequence for example “Summer line” and “Autumn line”. Based on the customer’s preferences, certain product variants are included in the subscription, whilst other items might be standard. Reasons for churn could include value for money, product quality or decline in payment (unable to recover lost revenue) etc. which can be remedied on business level and using revenue recovery processes.The B2B market can make SaaS particularly tricky to handle. Whilst contract duration might be longer, additional factors such as fluctuating user counts can make transaction processing tedious to deal with. With bundles and products changing over time, SaaS companies also find subscription-chaining helpful in migrating customers from one offering to the next. An important consideration for SaaS is the ability to adjust the subscription on line-level (for example user count) without affecting the rest of the subscription. Reasons for churn could include value for money or lack of customer support. A 365-degree view of the Customer through Customer-Insights and delivering exceptional Customer Service through D365 Customer Service completes the digital feedback loop.Business services or managed services has grown in popularity in recent years as a subscription. Whether you are providing technology-based service offerings, cleaning services, manufacturing or maintenance and repair, many businesses in these industries have packaged offerings that can be tailored to their client, but standard enough to fit their market. Many of these companies in the B2B space deal with fixed terms and manual renewal interventions; it’s important to be able to link the subscription chain correctly based on the next term for example: up-sell; same terms or new offering. Where managed services are included, poor customer service is often a key issue and involuntary churn is a big pain point. Customer-Insights and D365 Customer Service completes the digital feedback loop as well. Learning, Media and Health & Wellness have similar challenges to the Retail sector and rely on the ability to chain different subscription together based on uniqueness of products or services and customer preferences.When Dynamics 365 Finance is combined with Bluefort LISA, subscription businesses proactively manage the renewal and churn of each subscription through subscription chains. LISA has the flexibility to manage each subscription plan from the top-down and adjust intelligently on line-level. Whether your offering changes or you rely on new contract terms, subscription chains enable you to automate and drive the renewal process, reducing involuntary churn and driving customer service proactively. In order to ramp-up your subscription business, renewal automation will play a big role in how successful your module will continue to be. When you consider a technology road map for your subscription model, you need to focus on customer billing, the complexities of your subscription and the related financials with your business strategy in mind. Contact us here for a meaningful discussion about supportive technologies that drive subscription success. Click here below to open up my calendar and find the right date and time for us to have a chat.

The subscription economy is experiencing large growth in the retail space. This is due to its focus on customer centricity for products that can be continuously provided, resulting in convenience for customers. Next generation retailers, such as Birchbox, have managed to gain close to a million subscribers due to its easy and accessible offerings. Becoming a subscriber-based retailer is based on the following business capabilities:   1. Suitable product offering Your products must be based on usage- or period-based replacement cycles. In the SaaS industry usage models are key. Providing a pay as you use model with monthly pricing based on for example active users drive a subscription model. In retail, products that require replacement as they are consumed over a period are a must to have a subscription-based offering. In retail these are often based on product categories like food, cosmetics, health products, detergents, or toys.       2. Contract based instead of a one-time order-based offering When your customer signs up they engage under a contract with a duration, not on a one-time order. This means you require to capture duration, delivery commitment and payment per period. The contract usually drives a renewal approach to ensure the customer continues to use the products over time.   3. Customer centricity Customers buy subscription to ensure that they don’t need to think about buying the same thing over and over. Over time the subscription requires to understand the customer behaviour to ensure satisfaction. An example that illustrates customer centricity is to offer a “pause” option, when customer do not require to use the continues delivery or use of products as they might be away from home. So, let’s review the high-level business process of box subscriptions and how the payment element slots into the activities. The process encompasses various process activities. A key aspect for success is to provide customer self service and capabilities to ask questions and providing abilities to change aspects of the subscription process by means of eCommerce or portals. This generates a personal touch and improves loyalty. Check out LISA, fit for loyalty. As shown in the business process model above, the payment is captured as an eCommerce transaction, however accompanied by a delivery schedule that the customer has indicated when setting up the subscription. The customer is not only buying a product, but a delivery schedule service as well. The terms and conditions required you to reflect this to the customer. The payment is a subprocess itself in the overall business process and follows the below activities: Customer provides payment details Payment gateway validates payment details via payment processor Once approved payment is processer charges payment to customer Payment processer transfers payment to bank of the merchant or retailer This process is not different than the usual eCommerce checkout, but in the back-end administration much more is required to settle the payment against the subscription agreement and fulfilment. Let’s check it out. Once the payment clear in step 3 above, a notification is triggered sending a create event to the subscription business application, resulting into a subscription agreement that stores the billing line item and the delivery schedule of the products ordered. Then is automates the billing engine to create the invoice which in turn is send to the customer. The customer payment is recorded as well into a payment journal and settles the invoice so that no outstanding balance remains open in accounts receivable. Now the supply chain process fires up as indicated in the business process diagram above. The delivery schedule triggers timely pick, pack, and ship activities so that the goods are delivered to the customer as agreed in the subscription agreement the customer paid for. LISA delivers a convenient and functionally rich solution for streamlined subscription life cycle management. LISA leverages the standard Microsoft Dynamics 365 product and pricing functionality, working seamlessly into the framework of Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain to provide a tight integration with Sales, Projects and Purchasing.JTNDc3R5bGUlMjB0eXBlJTNEJTIydGV4dCUyRmNzcyUyMiUzRSUwQSUwOS5vdXRsb29rLTM2NS1pZnJhbWUlMjAlN0IlMEElMDklMDloZWlnaHQlM0ElMjAyMDAwcHglM0IlMEElMDklN0QlMEElMEElMDklNDBtZWRpYSUyMHNjcmVlbiUyMGFuZCUyMCUyOG1pbi13aWR0aCUzQTE1OTFweCUyOSUyMCU3QiUwQSUwOSUwOS5vdXRsb29rLTM2NS1pZnJhbWUlMjAlN0IlMEElMDklMDklMDloZWlnaHQlM0ElMjAxNTAwcHglM0IlMEElMDklMDklN0QlMEElMDklN0QlMEElM0MlMkZzdHlsZSUzRQ==[tabbed_section style="minimal_alt" alignment="center" spacing="default" tab_color="Accent-Color" cta_button_style="accent-color" icon_size="24"][tab icon_family="fontawesome" title="Contact Us" id="1633100221595-10" icon_fontawesome="fa fa-envelope-open-o" tab_id="1633100221596-5"][/tab][tab icon_family="fontawesome" title="Set Meeting" id="1633100221637-7" icon_fontawesome="fa fa-calendar" tab_id="1633100221638-10"]JTNDaWZyYW1lJTIwY2xhc3MlM0QlMjJvdXRsb29rLTM2NS1pZnJhbWUlMjIlMjBzcmMlM0QlMjJodHRwcyUzQSUyRiUyRm91dGxvb2sub2ZmaWNlMzY1LmNvbSUyRm93YSUyRmNhbGVuZGFyJTJGYmx1ZWZvcnQxJTQwYmx1ZWZvcnQuZXUlMkZib29raW5ncyUyRiUyMiUyMHdpZHRoJTNEJTIyMTAwJTI1JTIyJTIwc2Nyb2xsaW5nJTNEJTIyeWVzJTIyJTIwc3R5bGUlM0QlMjJib3JkZXIlM0EwJTIyJTNFJTNDJTJGaWZyYW1lJTNFClick the button below to open up my calendar and find the right date and time for us to have a chat.[/tab][/tabbed_section]

However, recurring deliveries and subscription payments or agreements are vastly different from one-off retail purchases. Here is how we at Bluefort are able to help retailers around the globe to master box subscription processes. Subscriptions are contracts with recurring deliveries, not orders. They renew periodically, which is why they contribute more to the value of your retail business than one-off sales. Renewal strategies and operational processes are critical to capture. In the subscription scenario, stellar customer experience is even more crucial in keeping your customers onboard. One way of ensuring this is to connect your eCommerce site with a contract management back end that drives the automation of your subscription lifecycle with confidence. Subscription control is all about timing your business processes. There are 4 layers of times: The renewal timeline (yearly or monthly), The billing timeline (weekly or monthly), The revenue recognition timeline (per financial period) and finally, The customer delivery timeline (every x days). These timelines need to be organised in concert to ensure high quality process execution. Your business applications in Finance, Supply Chain, Warehouse Management and in Accounts Receivable or Payment Management must be aligned with the above timeline-driven events. Failure to do so could result in disaster. As a retailer, your subscription focus should mostly be on which products can be sold in a recurring manner. But the financial process requires due attention as well. Recurring box subscription revenue must be compliant with IFRS 15 or ASC 606. This means that you need to link each subscription to a plan which recognises your revenue; every month for a yearly invoice, for example. You must also automate this process in order to reduce administrative burden on your finance team. When you focus on your sales performance, your data analytics and KPI’s will reflect that. But in the box subscription model, new KPI’s come to the surface. In fact, annualised recognised revenue (ARR) and annualised contract value (ACV) become critical to monitor, which would require new reporting models. A critical process is picking, packing and shipping in the outbound logistics value stream. In box subscription models the same business process is required, however there is one fundamental difference. The orders are generated from the box subscription contract. In the contract, the customer typically states when deliveries are expected. For example, if you sell wine in a box subscription model, a customer could order a box every month for one year. This means that in the contract, 12 delivery orders should be created automatically and shipped to the the customer’s delivery address. The source of these orders should be based on the delivery schedule that is linked to the box subscription contract. Once an order is created at the right time, it feeds into the pick, pack and ship process. No invoicing of these orders would be required, as the invoice and payment is related to the box subscription contract. JTNDc3R5bGUlMjB0eXBlJTNEJTIydGV4dCUyRmNzcyUyMiUzRSUwQSUwOS5vdXRsb29rLTM2NS1pZnJhbWUlMjAlN0IlMEElMDklMDloZWlnaHQlM0ElMjAyMDAwcHglM0IlMEElMDklN0QlMEElMEElMDklNDBtZWRpYSUyMHNjcmVlbiUyMGFuZCUyMCUyOG1pbi13aWR0aCUzQTE1OTFweCUyOSUyMCU3QiUwQSUwOSUwOS5vdXRsb29rLTM2NS1pZnJhbWUlMjAlN0IlMEElMDklMDklMDloZWlnaHQlM0ElMjAxNTAwcHglM0IlMEElMDklMDklN0QlMEElMDklN0QlMEElM0MlMkZzdHlsZSUzRQ==[tabbed_section style="minimal_alt" alignment="center" spacing="default" tab_color="Accent-Color" cta_button_style="accent-color" icon_size="24"][tab icon_family="fontawesome" title="Contact Us" id="1622639188740-5" icon_fontawesome="fa fa-envelope-open-o" tab_id="1622639188741-2"][/tab][tab icon_family="fontawesome" title="Set Meeting" id="1622639188764-3" icon_fontawesome="fa fa-calendar" tab_id="1622639188765-9"]JTNDaWZyYW1lJTIwY2xhc3MlM0QlMjJvdXRsb29rLTM2NS1pZnJhbWUlMjIlMjBzcmMlM0QlMjJodHRwcyUzQSUyRiUyRm91dGxvb2sub2ZmaWNlMzY1LmNvbSUyRm93YSUyRmNhbGVuZGFyJTJGYmx1ZWZvcnQxJTQwYmx1ZWZvcnQuZXUlMkZib29raW5ncyUyRiUyMiUyMHdpZHRoJTNEJTIyMTAwJTI1JTIyJTIwc2Nyb2xsaW5nJTNEJTIyeWVzJTIyJTIwc3R5bGUlM0QlMjJib3JkZXIlM0EwJTIyJTNFJTNDJTJGaWZyYW1lJTNFClick the button below to open up my calendar and find the right date and time for us to have a chat.[/tab][/tabbed_section]

Healthcare has become a complex industry to manage in an ERP; medical money-trails are managed differently between countries and the continuous changes in patient care as new innovations and products are developed. An emerging business-model is to provide healthcare subscription models for patients or company employees. Rather than requesting refunds from healthcare insurance companies or healthcare providers, a subscription model can cover the required needs a patient might have. The rise of e-commerce and home-delivery has accelerated as a spinoff from Covid-19, fuelling an increased need for an easy-to-use and simplified healthcare model. Patients are often in need of various medicals equipment or medicines. Many needs are recurring for example asthma patients requiring inhalers or other daily chronic medicines. Chronic healthcare often require recurring prescriptions, but acute conditions or “once-off” transactions are also plentiful. Many countries provide healthcare insurances based on a recurring pattern. Healthcare providers specialising in services or products are in need of business models that support recurring events and patterns of delivery and payments. The benefits of a subscription-based model for healthcare providers include: Reduce caseload of healthcare workers; Improve patient ease-of-use for self-medicating; Reduce administrative processes and consequent costs; Improve consistency in healthcare services and deliveries; Improve quality and safety of care services. In this article we’ll explore how a subscription model can drive efficient business processes in the healthcare industry. Managing recurring transactional events in Healthcare business processes Healthcare transactional events involve capturing the patient information, related healthcare insurance provider, healthcare professionals and the provisioning of services and products. Let’s zoom into the recurring events: The patient requires periodic delivery of products based on a prescription, healthcare plan or therapy, covered by a subscription plan; Healthcare providers offer subscription plans to their patients, such as insurance plans, concierge services or treatment plans. The above events can be driven by both patient and healthcare provider in a digital fashion, using portals and eCommerce capabilities. At the same time, it is important to capture the eco-system that surrounds the healthcare provider and the patient, since it is not the same as a customer-supplier relationship. The eco-system often represents multiple parties that support the patient. An example is show below. Apart from the people in the view above, there is a B2B2C relationship where healthcare providers support medical companies who provide care service or products to patients. The eco-system plays an important role in order for the patient to consume the prescriptions, services or goods. A simple process flow illustrates this example: This process is often manual and paper based, making it time consuming. Automating this process will clearly drive many benefits. How can this be achieved practically? Automating the process of providing a recurring prescription need to pass though several events in the eco-system. There are three main components to the transactions: Capturing the prescription and related subscription: diagnose-to-prescribe; Processing the (periodic) payment events: prescription-to-pay; Processing the continues provisioning of services and goods: deliver-and-receive. Diagnose-to-prescribe In this process the healthcare professional receives a patient during a visit. A diagnosis is made and treatment is established. The practitioner approves the prescription for the patient. The prescription carries the period of treatment and the provided services or medicine, as well as the recurrence cycle. In data terms, the practitioner issues a prescription order. Once the prescription details are captured for the patient, the core data elements are now in place, which are: The period or term of the prescription (for example 6 months or a year) The products or medicine required and their delivery cycles/refills The approval of the appropriate right authority At this point the data is captured during the patient journey, supported by the eco-system explained earlier. In Microsoft Dynamics 365 this process is supported by the Healthcare Accelerator or using best-in-class partner solutions, such as Mazik’s healthcare solution. When the prescription is written, the transaction really resembles an order on an eCommerce website. The reordering, with approval should be a movement of data between the eco-system and then to the provider to be able to fulfil the prescribed treatment. Prescription-to-pay Now we have defined the prescription details, the order moves to payment (or in eCommerce terms, checkout). The bill is put forward for payment. Payment could be split between the patient and a health insurance company. In the digital setup this is managed via payment gateway and interfaces between financial and health insurance institutes and the healthcare provider. When the payment is received the prescription is now in a state where it can be delivered. In architecture setup, the prescription moves from the front-end applications to the back end for fulfilment. The subscription and prescription details are mapped towards Bluefort’s Subscription Management App for Microsoft Dynamics 365 as shown below: Fulfilment is based on payment received. The captured prescriptions details need to translate to back-office data, generating the following details: Customer record for the patient (if not yet created) Subscription plan covering the period or terms of the recurring prescription Product or services that are part of the prescription The cycle of delivery of products and services Payment data via payment gateway and/or health insurance coverage In an optimal setup, the above data is pushed from a patient portal or eCommerce site into the back-end subscription or prescription data for processing fulfilment. Once all data is validated, pushing confirmation to the patient and health care provider (or other eco-system relations) by email summarising the details above to complete the digital feedback loop of this process. Deliver-and-receive Now the fulfilment process starts. The subscription and prescription details drive the operational execution of delivery and services to the patient. Based on the type of prescription two aspects are required to be delivered: the actual products or medicine and accompanying services, such as a therapy visit. This process is based on the captured details of the subscription and prescription and the related cycles. Let’s review a practical example. John needs to recover from a wound and has an approved prescription that consist of the following products and services forming part of the treatment plan for 3 months. Pain relief medicine to be supplied weekly in a bottle of 14 tablets each Weekly nurse services to clean and dress the wound Skin-close cream, supplied every 2 weeks The patient has been offered a 3-monthly plan, paid monthly for treatment. The payment for the first month has been made and the subscription and prescription details are in place. From a digital point of view the following steps drive the process: Based on the captured details, a business application should create an inventory forecast for the pain relief medication (to drive inventory replenishment), based on the cycle. This drives the purchase process via MRP processes; The business application should create the deliveries, for example every 2 weeks in advance, based on the schedule below: The delivery orders trigger the pick, pack and ship activities to send the product to the patient. The nurse should be scheduled to make a patient visit every week. To optimise the process, the two events could also be combined, so that the nurse delivers the products during the visit. The nurse should be scheduled accordingly. In healthcare, prescription provide treatment to resolve the medical condition. The uptake of the plan can be different for each patient. Therefore, the subscription model and prescription plan and cycle might deviate along the way. This drives the requirement to provide subscription as a flexible mechanism, that can be changed during the term or treatment period. It could be stopped, since the patient might have healed or might need to be prolonged. It can also be that a treatment must be abandoned and replaced with a new prescription and treatment plan. Let’s follow the example above and walk trough a change. In the same schedule, the red lines are now cancelled as the treatment was successful, faster than planned. In this case the deliveries and nurse visits must be abandoned, and the last month’s payment can be dropped as well. If this would occur in the middle of a month, the proportionate value should be billed, during the close out of the subscription in week 9.   In general healthcare business processes can benefit from subscription models in other ways too. There are various models that create a much less bureaucratic event flow in healthcare when subscription models are applied. Looking at practical examples, various countries offer subscription models, such as concierge medicine. This type of model allows patient to enrol into a medical subscription plan, providing them services and product entitlements that are part of the subscription. This eliminates billing by each item or service and creates a customer and health care provider process. From a healthcare perspective, the billing simplification is driving efficiency and also provides scale - managing more patient and healthcare workers by eliminating unnecessary payment and financial processes. Illustrated in the below example:   When the patient has prescriptions or orders products and services outside the entitlements, a charge is billed. Alternatively, the patient could be encouraged to move to the next plan, which could cover the required entitlements. Supporting healthcare business processes is quite specific due to the nature of the eco system, patient medical records, the required approvals for prescriptions as well as the fulfilment of treatments and bringing it all together in a unified application architecture. The key business applications of an end-to-end solution should contain the following applications: Patient information portal or application used by patient, nurses and other related carers on behalf of the patient; eCommerce application layer used by patient, nurses and other related carers on behalf of the patient; Practitioner portal or application used by the healthcare professional authorised to create and approve regulated prescriptions; Service planning application to schedule medical visits to patients; Healthcare business application linked to the above applications to provide fulfilment of product deliveries, manage inventory and financial processes. Ready to scale up your subscription business? Contact us and take the next step here to gain the competitive edge with an automated subscription management solution.   JTNDc3R5bGUlMjB0eXBlJTNEJTIydGV4dCUyRmNzcyUyMiUzRSUwQSUwOS5vdXRsb29rLTM2NS1pZnJhbWUlMjAlN0IlMEElMDklMDloZWlnaHQlM0ElMjAyMDAwcHglM0IlMEElMDklN0QlMEElMEElMDklNDBtZWRpYSUyMHNjcmVlbiUyMGFuZCUyMCUyOG1pbi13aWR0aCUzQTE1OTFweCUyOSUyMCU3QiUwQSUwOSUwOS5vdXRsb29rLTM2NS1pZnJhbWUlMjAlN0IlMEElMDklMDklMDloZWlnaHQlM0ElMjAxNTAwcHglM0IlMEElMDklMDklN0QlMEElMDklN0QlMEElM0MlMkZzdHlsZSUzRQ==[tabbed_section style="minimal_alt" alignment="center" spacing="default" tab_color="Accent-Color" cta_button_style="accent-color" icon_size="24"][tab icon_family="fontawesome" title="Contact Us" id="1618844810309-1" icon_fontawesome="fa fa-envelope-open-o" tab_id="1618844810310-4"][/tab][tab icon_family="fontawesome" title="Set Meeting" id="1618844810353-2" icon_fontawesome="fa fa-calendar" tab_id="1618844810355-3"]JTNDaWZyYW1lJTIwY2xhc3MlM0QlMjJvdXRsb29rLTM2NS1pZnJhbWUlMjIlMjBzcmMlM0QlMjJodHRwcyUzQSUyRiUyRm91dGxvb2sub2ZmaWNlMzY1LmNvbSUyRm93YSUyRmNhbGVuZGFyJTJGYmx1ZWZvcnQxJTQwYmx1ZWZvcnQuZXUlMkZib29raW5ncyUyRiUyMiUyMHdpZHRoJTNEJTIyMTAwJTI1JTIyJTIwc2Nyb2xsaW5nJTNEJTIyeWVzJTIyJTIwc3R5bGUlM0QlMjJib3JkZXIlM0EwJTIyJTNFJTNDJTJGaWZyYW1lJTNFClick the button below to open up my calendar and find the right date and time for us to have a chat.[/tab][/tabbed_section]

As the subscription model for many companies become a standard way of doing business, customer experience is a key aspect to keep in mind. In many ways, customer experience is about control for your customer to define the way how they consume your products and services. As a customer, you want to be able to extract the value of a subscription you pay for, on your terms. When you order your whiskey or wine as part of your box subscription, or when you are a patient needing recurring medication or therapy, customers want to be in control. Since the late 90’s, eCommerce has risen steadily to fulfil customer needs. I can login to my provider of services and indicate what I want to buy and when I want to buy it. In today’s subscription economy, eCommerce or B2B customer portals add to that customer experience. If you want to pause your subscription for a while due to an upcoming vacation, this is our expectation as a customer. As customer experience and control is key, how can subscription providers use technology to drive it for their own operational management? The solution lies in implementing a layer of business logic that has a single purpose: providing a great customer experience and ensuring loyalty and appreciation of your products and services provided through a subscription model. In this subscription insight Bluefort will illustrate what subscription providers can achieve by building a real-world roadmap to get the customer onboard and reduce churn. Customer obsession and the world of business application and technology. As a subscription provider, the journey start with mapping out how you want to engage with your customers and then build an operation and data analytics model around it. A roadmap starts with a strong definition of your subscriptions. Subscription providers need to clearly state what their offering will provide to customers. It is all about the customer value. Place yourself in your customer’s shoes: Define your subscription products, licenses sand services that are easy to understand; Build your understanding of their expectations and offer it to them. It might seem like two simple steps, but do you really understand your customers, and can you align their needs to a back-end operational business process to serve them? It doesn’t matter if you are a B2B or B2C subscription outfit, or if you sell software, products, or services. Your business is about delivering a recurring offer for the long term, ensuring your customer loves your offering: Managing your subscription master data Being able to define your subscription offering into clear and understandable master data is crucial. As a subscription provider you must be able to define the following data elements: Definition of a subscription product - to define a product means to setup a clear identification of the subscription product. It requires a name, description, variants, and a definition how the subscription is consumed or bundled. See an example below: Clear pricing model reflecting the value of the subscription product - customers need to understand your subscription pricing and the value they will receive in return. Being transparent is key. Customers must be able to calculate and understand pricing easily, unless your model is more intricate. Try tiered models, like Gold, Silver and Bronze plans with attached pricing and entitlements. Provide choice to your customers. When your sales team offers a price or when customer review pricing online, simplicity is key. Terms and conditions of the subscription product - subscription are about defining the value the customer will receive, often called entitlements and when they can consume these entitlements. Definition terms and conditions is important. Can your customer with an annual subscription cancel on month 6? What if they upgrade to a new plan or offering? What happens to the payment and the changes to the subscription model? All possible real-life situation should be captured as terms and conditions and made crystal-clear during the signup process. Financial and compliance aspects - once the above are all defined, the financial ramifications and compliance aspects must be assessed. Can we deal with the right financial postings? Are we compliant with IFRS 15 or ASC 606? Once subscriptions are rolling with financials postings, VAT and Sales Tax, revenue recognition must also be defined and automated. Operational and supply terms and conditions - once finance and sales are set, we need to deliver our performance obligations. This operational aspect is critical for the customer experience. Your ability as a subscription provider to slam-dunk services delivery, ship your product or provide licenses must connect to the customer experience at the moment of signup. Failure to do so leads to increased churn and decreases customer satisfaction. How can you as a subscription provider create a great customer experience? The roadmap to delight your customer is not as difficult as it seems. Start with a fully automated subscription-based business application. As Bluefort we ship a fully fledged Microsoft Dynamics 365 based solution called LISA (License and Subscription Application). It brings together your financial processes and your subscription automation. The LISA business application combines all the business administration aspects for a subscription provider together. It is a modern system of records application for subscription management. Capture your subscription agreement with ease. We connect to modern sales application, like Salesforce CPQ or Dynamics 365 Sales for B2B subscription sales. If you have partners selling your subscriptions, build great portals for them using Microsoft Power Portals. When you give full control to your customer, use eCommerce applications such as Magento or Sana Commerce. You can also utilise the full potential of Dynamics 365 and deploy its Commerce platform and use Site Builder to provide next generation customer engagement. Connect your B2C eCommerce site, your partner portal, app, or CRM application with LISA and let subscriptions flow into your back-end automatically. Using the power of customer experiences with these applications and technologies, will set you apart from your competitors. At Bluefort, we can integrate your subscription automation with your front-end experience with pre-built integration protocols and using Microsoft Power Automate to inform your customer about any new or changed updates to their subscriptions. Capture any updates and notify your customer automatically via email or other communication manners: Reduce manual actions and reimagine the customer interaction! Ready to scale up your subscription business? Contact us and take the next step here to gain the competitive edge with a modern subscription management solution. 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Moving your business towards a recurring revenue model can be challenging when you consider your existing customer base as well as new customers you will entering into agreements with. If you’ve traditionally sold your products or services outright, it can be difficult to navigate the pitfalls of trading ownership for experience. Managing various subscription types can be daunting: How do we transition our existing customers to a new subscription type? How do we manage various subscription types from a financial perspective without overburdening our finance team? How can we ensure accuracy? To navigate these complexities, we explore 3 key financial areas that can streamline the process between outright ownership and subscription success. There are so many subscription types to consider and you might have several that you need to manage: it could be based on per-unit or consumption. It could be software subscriptions or linked to a physical asset or product. It could include the provision of a service linked to mileage or hours used from equipment or facilities, provided by project resources or locations. It’s imperative that the underlying billing technology can support your subscription types. It also needs to provide the flexibility to handle a change in approach should you decide to adapt your subscription offerings over time as your business evolves. This is where many businesses get stuck. Typical recurring technologies can’t take “legacy” customers into account where the provision of goods or services on your existing customers aren’t aligned with your new offerings. For this reason, it’s important in your selection that existing customers’ perpetual agreements can be translated to a subscription type. A good example includes the historic purchase of software licenses. Many companies traditionally offered software as a once-off upfront purchase with a recurring annual fee. To streamline this process of transition, you need to align this annual fee with an end-date in order to transition your customer to your new offering (with the ability to pro-rate if you’re working with a fixed start date on the new agreement). The subscription technology should be able to support this alignment of your existing customer base to prevent errors and manual intervention which can hamper your revenue efforts. Billing periods is often a topic which causes many headaches. Depending on our offerings there could be a combination of calendar periods and rolling periods. Whilst calendar periods are generally easy to manage some per-unit subscription or consumption-based subscription types could require rolling periods. As the core concept of subscription models are rooted in the notion of “it never ends”, it can be really hard for businesses to transition their existing customers easily from an existing billing period (pro-rated) to a new billing period or billing period type based on the new agreement. In order to ramp-up your subscription business, adequately planning your subscription road map provides you with the blueprint you need to define key factors that will play a large role in your success as a subscription-based business. When you consider a technology road map for your subscription model, you need to focus on customer billing, the complexities of your subscription and the related financials with your business strategy in mind. Contact us here for a meaningful discussion about supportive technologies that drive subscription success. JTNDc3R5bGUlMjB0eXBlJTNEJTIydGV4dCUyRmNzcyUyMiUzRSUwQSUwOS5vdXRsb29rLTM2NS1pZnJhbWUlMjAlN0IlMEElMDklMDloZWlnaHQlM0ElMjAyMDAwcHglM0IlMEElMDklN0QlMEElMEElMDklNDBtZWRpYSUyMHNjcmVlbiUyMGFuZCUyMCUyOG1pbi13aWR0aCUzQTE1OTFweCUyOSUyMCU3QiUwQSUwOSUwOS5vdXRsb29rLTM2NS1pZnJhbWUlMjAlN0IlMEElMDklMDklMDloZWlnaHQlM0ElMjAxNTAwcHglM0IlMEElMDklMDklN0QlMEElMDklN0QlMEElM0MlMkZzdHlsZSUzRQ==[tabbed_section style="minimal_alt" alignment="center" spacing="default" tab_color="Accent-Color" cta_button_style="accent-color" icon_size="24"][tab icon_family="fontawesome" title="Contact Us" id="1618584569280-4" icon_fontawesome="fa fa-envelope-open-o" tab_id="1618584569286-10"][/tab][tab icon_family="fontawesome" title="Set Meeting" id="1618584569390-9" icon_fontawesome="fa fa-calendar" tab_id="1618584569392-5"]JTNDaWZyYW1lJTIwY2xhc3MlM0QlMjJvdXRsb29rLTM2NS1pZnJhbWUlMjIlMjBzcmMlM0QlMjJodHRwcyUzQSUyRiUyRm91dGxvb2sub2ZmaWNlMzY1LmNvbSUyRm93YSUyRmNhbGVuZGFyJTJGYmx1ZWZvcnQxJTQwYmx1ZWZvcnQuZXUlMkZib29raW5ncyUyRiUyMiUyMHdpZHRoJTNEJTIyMTAwJTI1JTIyJTIwc2Nyb2xsaW5nJTNEJTIyeWVzJTIyJTIwc3R5bGUlM0QlMjJib3JkZXIlM0EwJTIyJTNFJTNDJTJGaWZyYW1lJTNFClick the button below to open up my calendar and find the right date and time for us to have a chat.[/tab][/tabbed_section]

Many businesses that operate on a subscription model (like SaaS providers or companies providing business services on subscription or box subscription retailers), choose to allow partners to resell their offering. With many brands this is the normal operating mode, like in the Microsoft channel where most sales and customer services are partner-network driven. In a partner channel, resellers of a subscription from the provider get commissions and incentives to resell or bundle up the subscription with their own services to customers. If your business is using sales channels, such as resellers, brokers, partners, VARs, dealers, agents or consultancy firms, tracking of all sales of licenses and subscriptions against the channel becomes a critical business requirement, including the calculation of commission or royalties. If you’re needing to automate the process of selling trough a partner channel and capturing commission in a highly automated and efficient fashion, then read more about how Bluefort’s Licensing and Subscription App for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance, Commerce and Supply Chain management deals with this requirement. You can also download our Partner Guide here. If you’ve got partners, building your channel is a core activity for you. The driver for a healthy relationship between your business and your partner channel is to generate successful end-customer relations and revenue. That revenue will create subscription-based commissions for partners and will give you more market reach to end customers. However, maintaining a solid flow of events in the business administration of your business does have a myriad of activities to deal with. Let’s have a look at the flow of information. You sign-up new partners with a partner plans providing commission; Your partner drives a sales cycle for your license or subscriptions to an end-customer; Your partner closes a new deal and re-sells your licenses or subscription; Your partner upsells additional licenses and subscriptions; You change your license and subscription plans on renewal (indexing or price changes) and need to inform your partners and end-customers; Your partner has an end-customer that stops using the licenses or subscriptions. At first glance these activities look straightforward and manageable, and they are if you have a handful of partners. But if you engage with a partner channel across the globe, with different currencies and plans or agreements, your finance and administration team might have a very different view on matters!   The automation starts with the mapping of the partner journey as well as the end-customer journey into your own finance team’s journey to manage the transactional interaction. Let’s follow the recruit-to-sell and quote-to-cash cycle to explain the different steps.   The process of onboarding partners starts with a joined view on opportunities and results into an agreement between the subscription provider and the partner reselling the subscriptions. To reflect the agreement most subscription providers, offer partner programs or plans. Each plan has tiers in terms of sales volume and revenue generated, resulting into commission pay-outs on a periodic basis. To automate the commission calculation, the basis of the calculation must be determined. Best practice is to keep things simple. With our applications in conjunctions with Dynamics 365 Finance, we offer the following practices for recording agreements: Create partners as suppliers and indirect customers in Dynamics 365 Finance Setup incentive schemes to capture a percentage of all revenue invoiced based on the partner plan or schema Setup tiers for commission, like over 100K revenue high percentage of commission reflecting e.g. bronze, silver and gold partnership tiers Connect all sales agreements to the partner (see below) In this manner, all sales will be driven towards automatic calculation of the partner commission plan which each invoice produced for the subscription sales. The calculated commission can be made payable to the partner by generating a proposed commission claim using the broker management standard functionality that links up with Bluefort’s License and Subscription Application. Now your partner commission calculations and payments are automated! At this point we have the partner program and commission payment process optimised. Let’s focus on managing partner pipeline in Microsoft Dynamics 365. First, we can use Bluefort’s add-in for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales to capture subscription sales opportunities and quotations. Alternatively, we can use the opportunity and quotation features in Microsoft Dynamics 356 Supply Chain Management. The required fields to enter a subscription are added to the sales quotation. Each quotation and opportunity are linked to the partner selling it, making it easy to track partner pipelines with a team of partner managers that support the channel. When the sales pursuit comes to a close, you can enter the subscription plan into the license and subscription cockpit, including all required data and information, such as: The term of the agreement; The renewal conditions; The revenue and cost recognition tied to this agreement; Any pre-payments or deposits; Subscription products (linked to the product information management module in Supply Chain management) Commercial price and discounts as per agreement; When the details are entered in the License and Subscription App, the subscription can be made effective so that automatic billing and other actions can be automated. It is also possible to get the subscription from Microsoft Dynamics 365 eCommerce, from Sana or from Magento eCommerce sites, so that your B2B or B2C customer can actually create their own subscription orders that are pushed into the Licence and Subscription App in Microsoft Dynamics 365. This enables you to establish a modern subscription self-service capability for your customer and provide them with ways to self-manage their subscriptions. Kindly note that this does require some custom configuration to reflect your eCommerce sites using one of the above options. Once the subscription is activated and invoiced using the automated action framework, the following automation can be triggered: Create and send customer invoice via PDF and email; Create partner commission transaction and send email to partner; Create all required revenue transactions in accordance to compliance; One of the aspects that makes licence and subscription administration complex is continued changes. Partners can receive add-on orders or increases in subscription volumes and quantities. Changes on subscription plans or agreements require updates to the agreement and adding new products from a specific date. The updates to licenses or subscriptions can be triggered ideally from a partner portal or end user portal or eCommerce site, promoting self-service. The result is an up to date subscription, reflecting changed and new licenses, entitlements, and deliveries that the end customer is entitled to based on the updated subscription. The change management mechanism to reflect partner driven changes is based on re-opening the subscription and create all required changes (add new subscription lines or change volume or quantities) and activating the subscription for automation processing. In turn, this adds on to the partners commission based on the partner commission model. Based on policy changes in line with terms and conditions partner will need to be informed about any new index changes for impacting their end customers. At the same time, it is key to provide partners with details about upcoming renewals of current licenses and subscriptions. Bluefort’s License and Subscription App relates to Microsoft Power Automate so that any license or subscription changes are immediately triggering email notification to partners. This automation drives strong automated notification management to your partners and relays upcoming changes instantly. In turn, partners can inform their end-customers. Ready to scale up your subscription business? Contact us and take the next step here to gain the competitive edge with a modern subscription management solution. 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