Customer-centric billing

Against the backdrop of the digital transformation, two developments can be identified: On the one hand, the customer and, in particular, his or her individual needs for products and services are increasingly becoming the focus of attention, as every product must demonstrate its benefits for the customer even more clearly than before.

This also means that billing aspects are geared even more closely to customer requirements. They thus also include, for example, the payment management of entire product and service packages and their combination, including the integration of partner billing.

On the other hand, the business model of many companies is gradually changing from product business to service business. This trend is particularly apparent in the case of digital products.

Trend reversal in the business world

A similar trend is also evident in the area of enterprise software: The age of classic fixed installations and monolithic IT landscapes has long since passed its zenith, including in accounting.

Broker and sharing platforms and, more generally, new software-as-a-service offerings from the cloud are in vogue. Here, too, the shift is from pure product business to services, the time and scope of which are generally freely scalable.

However, this also means that traditional providers must offer suitable pricing and billing models for their customers.

New conditions play a role, such as the number of users over a certain period of time, the scope and duration of the services used, and the amount of transactions made.

Win-win situation

This results in decisive advantages for the providers. For example, they can increase customer loyalty by offering subscriptions and freely scalable software packages.

This results in regular and long-term revenues, which ultimately also benefit the company's own competitiveness.

These flexible billing models also have decisive advantages for business customers: they generally benefit from lower investment costs (especially in terms of hardware and server capacity), faster maintenance and troubleshooting, and are always up to date with the latest releases.

And similar to the provider, the customer also enjoys greater transparency with regard to costs incurred and future costs.

But this trend is not only evident at the technological level. In addition to traditional services, such as a visit to the doctor or a restaurant, manufacturing companies are also increasingly opening up to the area of product-related services.

For example, construction machinery is rented out via leasing models, production machinery via sensor-based billing based on compressed air, revolutions or running time, customers obtain certain consulting services or can take part in training courses, and certain services and retrofitting of older machines are now also part of the service portfolio.

Identify customer preferences

Then there are other up-and-coming companies that would not have been conceivable without this trend toward service business, or that triggered it in the first place.

Platform providers like Lieferando are surfing at the top of the wave of digital transformation by placing their own service between the provider product and the customer.

To this end, they offer a platform on which the range of goods offered by various restaurants can be viewed. When a customer places an order, the Lieferando drivers deliver the ordered goods to the customer's door.

If the customer orders more frequently via the platform, he can use vouchers or bonus points. Another example is Outfittery: The online textile retailer evaluates customer preferences and uses them to create a personal digital profile.

This is then used to generate customer-specific outfits. If the selected clothing is not to the customer's liking, an uncomplicated exchange procedure is initiated and the relevant information is stored in the customer profile.

Broker models and platforms

Modern broker models are also increasingly relying on BRIM. For example, there is an international online platform that brings together developers and end customers.

The developers from different countries sell their apps to the end customers via the platform. In the background, BRIM coordinates that the invoices to the customers are created in the name of the developers and the invoices to the developers are created with the deduction of the commission.

Similarly, client payments are automatically transferred to developers, while the developer's respective commission is seamlessly fed to the broker model owner.

A very important aspect here is also the tax processing, since both residences, of the developer and the end customer, must always be taken into account.

If the customer or developer is based in the USA, tax processing via Jurisdiction Code and an external tax system such as Vertex is necessary.

In the future, more and more companies will bill their services according to combined service packages, pay-per-use models, or simply based on usage. And it is to be expected that many more billing methods will be added in the near future.

All possibilities should be supported and mapped in the best possible way with the help of powerful IT systems. The flexible universal solution BRIM is ideally suited for this and supports users in the long term.