10 features to check out in your subscription management solution

10 Features to Check Out in Your Subscription
Management Solution

What is a Subscription Management Solution?
 Manages the purchases of a
SaaS application – also called
as subscription
 Keeps track of the customers
and what they are using
 Manages the billing process
 Helps in communication with
customer
 Monitors payment status and
takes appropriate action
SaaS Life Cycle Management Solution

Why should SaaS ISVs Automate Their Subscription Process?
Volume Game
• SaaS is a volume game, and hence, the effort required for
managing subscription is only going to get higher and
higher.
Variations
Error Prone
• Managing subscriptions manually is highly prone to errors.
These errors can have a huge impact on the trust that
customers have on the service provider.
• There can be so many variations in the way an ISV can
charge the customers. Keeping track of all these variations
is a humongous task.

Variations in SaaS Business Model
Let’s look at few scenarios that can give you an idea on the variations you can
bring in your SaaS Subscription model

Variation #1
Tenant A – has subscribed to modules ‘X’, ‘Y’ and ‘Z’ at a monthly flat
cost of 100 USD, and will be paying it in a pre-paid model (i.e. the
payment will be made at the start of the month).

Variation #2
Tenant B – has subscribed to the same set of modules just like Tenant A, but will be
paying on a usage based model. It will be a monthly (base) flat cost of 25 USD plus 1
USD per transaction, which will be done through the SaaS system. For example, if this
tenant has done 53 transactions in a given month, then they will be paying 25 + 53 = 78
USD on a post-paid model.

Variation #3
Tenant C - has subscribed to modules ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘X’ at a monthly flat cost of 125 USD, but will
be on SaaS trial mode for the first 30 days. So, the first 30 days of usage by this customer
should not be considered for SaaS invoicing (or rather for applying cost). Your SaaS solution
should be able to differentiate between a paying customers, non-paying customers, paying
customers currently on trial mode and non-paying customers on trial mode.

Variation #4
Reseller A – this SaaS reseller has access to all modules. However, as an ISV you may want to control what
modules can be available for which resellers. This is required when your solution serves multiple domains,
and hence you may have domain based resellers. For SaaS resellers, you will be billing 20% of the total
revenue accrued by that reseller in that month. In order to do that you should know the exact data on the
revenues that have come through the tenants boarded by this reseller.

Variation #5
Tenant D – has subscribed to only one module ‘C’ at a monthly flat cost of 125 USD, but will
be paying it in a post-paid model (i.e. the payment will be made at the end of the month). In
addition to this, there is a usage limitation that has to be applied for this tenant. For example,
this tenant can only perform 100 transactions per month, beyond that the system should
restrict the transactions.

Top 10 Key features

Top 10 Key Features
#1
#2
• Publish multiple editions of SaaS product
• Allows you to create a package by grouping the
modules available in your SaaS product.
• Helps ISVs price their modules individually, which will
benefit both ISVs and customers.
Package
Management
• One of the most complex features in subscription
management.
• ISV should be able to define multiple price plans for
the same package.
• For example, Document Management System -
Premium Package can have 3 pricing plans. Monthly
Plan at $40, Quarterly Plan at $100 and Yearly Plan at
$300.
Pricing Plan

Top 10 Key Features
#3
• Trials that can be used by potential customers to
evaluate the SaaS application.
• Allows ISV to create subscriptions with trial support.
• For example, I can create a Silver Package with trial
for 20 days. When a customer signs up to this
subscription they will get the first 20 days as free and
the billing will apply only from the 21st day.
• In some cases ISVs can also decide to offer a lighter
version as completely free forever. This scenario
should also be supported. However, the most
interesting feature is on the insights that
• ISVs can get increase conversion rate through Tenant
Analytics. Hot Trials (or leads) recording a high usage
of your system, which means they are in the happy
path
• Trials recording low usage of your system, which
means they are either not happy about what they
see or is stuck up with some road block.
Trial Analytics

Top 10 Key Features
#4
• Value based pricing models provides an attractive
pricing model for SMB segment.
• With Value based pricing model the customer gets
charged based on certain attributes that can reflect the
amount of usage by that customer.
• For example, in a SaaS based recruitment system
customer can be charged based on the number of
candidates ($X per candidate) recruited through the
system.
• Pricing plan can describe how this metered data should
be used for cost calculation.
• Slab based pricing and Fixed cost pricing are 2 common
ways used in the industry.
• For example, Fixed cost could be $25 for each person
recruited through the system. Whereas for the trading
system it could be 1% upto .5mn, 0.8% for >.5mn and
<1mn, 0.5% for >1mn, which is a slab based pricing.
Usage Based
Billing

Top 10 Key Features
#5
#6
• Tax and Discount components are vital in an invoice
and can change from customer to customer.
• ISVs can publish various discount codes, which can be
applied by the customers.
• Once the code is applied appropriate discount should
reflect in the invoices.
• In some cases Discount line items can also be used
for manual cost adjustments.
Tax/Discount
Support
• Billing engine of subscription management solution
should be able to automatically generate invoices
based on the subscription plan.
• ISVs should be able to set the date for monthly and
quarterly invoice generation.
• In case of metering, invoices should calculate the
exact amount based on the values set in the pricing
plan.
Invoices

Top 10 Key Features
#7
#8
• Billing can happen either on a pre-paid model or post paid
model.
• In a pre-paid model invoices are raised at the start date of
the subscription and the customer will be charged
immediately. Post paid models are the ones where the
invoice is raised after the subscription end date.
• ISVs can choose to operate on either of the models, or even
both.
Pre-Paid / Post
Paid Billing
• Support all major credit cards. Customers should be able to
enter the credit card details while sign-up or before the
billing date.
• In case if the subscription management solution is storing
the credit card details then it should carry PCI Compliance
certificate.
• Pay Pal could be another alternative to credit cards as many
companies have corporate pay pal accounts.
• When a credit card transaction fails it has to go through a
retry policy where the card might be tried for few more
times before concluding it as a permanent failure.
Credit Card /
Pay Pal
Support

Top 10 Key Features
#9
#10
• Customer should be able to find all the details
pertaining to their bills.
• Customer portal should provide them with details
about their current subscription, past invoices and
current charges.
• Allow customers to upgrade and downgrade their
subscriptions
Customer
Portal
• Notifications are those communications that go to
the customer all through their engagement with the
SaaS provider.
• Trial period expiration, Reminders, Credit card
reminder, invoice mail, payment reminder, payment
success/failure, usage alerts – are all examples of
notifications that can go out to customers.
Notifications

TechCello – Tested and Proven Framework
Starting your SaaS Business Model is almost same as the above example. You do
not want to focus on the basic engineering aspects and building blocks.
Moreover, it’s better to pick something that is tested and proven rather than
trying to reinvent.
TechCello offers an end to end SaaS Life Cycle Management Solution that can
help in designing, developing and managing the operations of your SaaS
product.
TechCello is tested and proven SaaS Framework, built exclusively to meet the
typical SaaS needs of your business and product.
TechCello offers more than 30+ modules covering all the basic engineering
blocks and operational modules.
Using TechCello you can simply focus on building your product functionalities,
and TechCello can take care of the rest.
Apart from saving significant amount of cost, your precious time can be well
spent on differentiating your product from competitors through unique product
features.

About TechCello
Techcello is a cloud-ready, SaaS Application
Development Framework
Can be used to,
Build new SaaS products
Convert single-tenant Apps to Multi-Tenant
Migrate on premise products to SaaS model
Cello framework is delivered as a set of libraries and
APIs that can be easily integrated to your product
Applications built using Cello can be deployed in
any cloud
Cello contains building blocks for developing,
monetizing and servicing your SaaS offering.

Contact Us
http://www.techcello.com
sales@techcello.com
@techcello

10 features to check out in your subscription management solution

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10 features to check out in your subscription management solution