Service-to-Cash
The Service-to-Cash process commences once the order is been accepted by the customer. Companies want revenue so this process is critical. Yet many companies do this poorly. The inability to bill is a major factor driving down the rate of new service offerings. If you can’t bill for it, you can’t offer it. If the billing system is configured for subscription services, but can’t calculate and bill on quantities then you can’t offer extra equipment for the service, like an extra router or two, or extra access points in your house. In a similar vein, if you have no trouble billing for quantities but can’t offer per minute billing for a subscription, then you must bill for subscription quantities like one month, one year, or two years
Competitive Flexibility
If the billing system is configured for subscription services, but can’t calculate and bill on quantities then you can’t offer extra equipment for the service, like an extra router or two, or extra access points in your house. In a similar vein, if you have no trouble billing for quantities but can’t offer per minute billing for a subscription, then you must bill for subscription quantities like one month, one year, or two years.
Customer Satisfaction
Being able to offer real time billing is a substantial advantage over companies that can only offer quantities like one month subscriptions. Customers are happy if they can quit anytime. Service providers offering near real-time charging takes on risk for the customer, and they appreciate it. If they have to subscribe to a service for a year or three, how do they get out of it if they need to. A customer prefers lower risk by having real time subscriptions.
Scale
Mediation is critical to dealing with large volumes of data. If you offer quantities of subscriptions, e.g. one month service or one year service, then handling 10,000 customers is not difficult since only 10,000 subscriptions need to be processed per month. On the other hand, if you were offering near-time charging, can you handle this volume: minutes per month per customer is a lot of data