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How Automated Billing Solution Can Help Business Growth?

This article explains how implementing an automated billing solution can lead to improved business growth by increasing efficiency, reducing costs, and improving customer satisfaction.

By Keira Manifold

November 14th, 2022

How Automated Billing Solution Can Help Business Growth?

In this era of automation and digital workflow, an automated billing solution is a necessity for your business growth. All the big businesses operating are fully automated. Not even the billing process of every operation of the business should be automated.

Let’s give you a glimpse- According to the latest report by Statista, some of the 100 largest companies in the world are- Apple (United States), Microsoft (United States), Amazon (United States), etc. And these all have adopted automated billing systems a long time ago. The success behind them is that they have automated all their operations. 

Understanding Automation System

Let’s start with an example. When you are shopping on Amazon- once you add your products to the cart there are different steps you have to complete during checkout that include selecting the payment method, completing the transaction securely, getting the invoice with a single order ID, and other purchase details involved in this process. All these steps include multiple complex stages such as processing the payment-related data securely, generating the invoice based on the purchase and other user details, taking necessary action for payment failure, etc all these procedures can be done by an automated billing system. This implies each and every step is automated and streamlined which otherwise would be too tiresome and error-prone to accomplish manually.

Simply put, billing automation is the process of executing and managing various billing cycles and billing-related activities automatically.

Importance of Billing Automation for Business Growth

There are multiple ways automation can help boost the revenues of business:

1. Offering New Monetization and business models

Offering multiple pricing or monetization models and business models is an essential part of boosting the revenues of your business. And if you have an automated billing system it can handle such changes in your current business model easily. You don’t have to install some new software for that it will support all the business models. For example, if you are launching an OTT platform and you are looking to target some group of the audience if you want to offer any bundle offer or packages or any discounted rates for some specific target groups you can simply integrate and add the new pricing model into your existing one.

Automating Revenue Management

Billing automation lets you create and manage rules to standardize revenue recognition which plays a vital role in your business growth. This also helps you manage multiple billing models at the same time such as purchase or usage-based billing, subscription-based billing, bundle services, pay-per-view, and others. Furthermore, it simplifies the audit trail, regulatory compliance, tax configuration, service fees, etc. which are pivotal for scaling up or globalizing your business smoothly!

3. Eliminate Repetitive Tasks

With a myriad of billing systems and tools available in the market, you don’t need to engage your time and money in the repetitive tasks associated with billing such as manually processing transactions, collecting related data, making invoices, keeping track of user billing cycles, etc. This not only slows down your business growth but the time and money associated with such repetitive tasks keep getting multiplied when you upgrade your billing models or add new plans.

4. Smooth Cash Flow

Do you know, that automated billing speeds up the billing process by more than 60%? The result is- a fast and smooth flow of cash in your business. The more automated and advanced your billing system is, the faster and smoother will be the payment collection and getting paid. Without automation, your staff will spend hours entering and checking figures, generating bills, keeping track of missed or delayed payments, and the list goes on. And even after all the investment behind additional personnel and resources, you can’t assure 0 errors! So, billing automation is the way out if you want to increase your ROI and grow your business. Furthermore, it ensures that you don’t miss any payments, and can automatically take action for delayed payments or other payment-related issues.

A recent study by Fundbox revealed that nearly 70% of the companies receiving late payments, experience cash flow problems. And this often comes in the way of business growth.

5. Centralized Data

The billing of your business involves various components and unlimited data including confidential and sensitive information related to your customers, their payment methods, and many more. You may end up needing multiple tools and applications to store, manage, and handle all such data securely and efficiently. This will not only cost you money but additional overhead. A comprehensive billing system can easily replace all such tools and lets you have a single place for managing all the centralized data in a hassle-free way! Such data include customer lifetime value, recurring revenue, average revenue per customer, etc. These are often the key metrics to assess your business growth and let you adapt strategies accordingly.

6. Business Insights

In order to grow your business, you must get insights into how your business is doing. And no doubt that you’re billing-related activities are a reflection of that. Opting for a quality recurring billing system will give you the perks of getting analytics and insights on your monthly revenue, customer lifecycle values, subscription churn or acquisition, purchased subscription plans, customer billing cycles, and others. This will help you in planning for your business growth.

7. Multiple Options for Audience

Targeting larger audiences is a preliminary step to expand your business. But is your billing system ready to support that? A sound automated billing system will offer you-

which will aid in your business globalization.

The Impact of COVID-19

The outbreak of the pandemic has changed the business landscape since 2020, making business leaders reassess and remodel their business plans, pricing systems, and strategic approaches. While most businesses have adopted automated tools more than ever, the competition to sustain and grow is getting fiercer which tends to remain in the post-pandemic years as well. Billing is one of the key components of a business that is getting automated more than ever to cater to business needs.