It is probably safe to say that 2020 has thrown us a few curveballs due to Covid-19. Businesses had to adapt in a very short time, and now at the end of the year, we can see clear trends in this shaken-up economy. Many changes are here to stay, and we meet a lot of prospects who are struggling to keep up with the new world in their core systems.

Here are the 10 trends you should take into consideration for 2021:

future businessman

1 The Subscription and Pay-Per-Use Breakthrough Is Here

The subscription economy is here to stay, but we also see clients demand the flexibility of pay-per-use models. For more info, have a look at this blog. 

2 The Data-Driven Billing Infrastructure Is Needed To Stay Ahead

Billing is no longer a silo in 2021, as more and more data is derived from different and external systems. In this blog, we explain why your billing system will need a solid API structure to cope with this.

3 Billing Across Company Borders: The Billing Of An Entire Ecosystem

More and more companies serve as aggregators for services and products that are delivered by others. How do you support these business models? Here is the answer from a billing perspective.

4 Servitization Will Become More Important For Manufacturing And Leasing Companies

The change from product to service will be accelerated, because clients learned that flexibility was key in 2020. The need for flexibility also drives pay-per-use financing/leasing for assets. As such, your billing system will have to be able to adapt more service billing functionality. We wrote a blog about this earlier this year.

5 The Lovely Bill, The User Experience To Increase Client Satisfaction

Being able to present a clear, undisputed bill dramatically reduces the payment time and increases the cash flow. Can you give the client a direct insight into the billing items charged on the invoice, and thus avoid irritation and delays? 

6 Billing Will Become A Strategic Advantage For New Business Propositions

As companies quickly implement new business propositions, it has become clear that often the billing system is the obstacle to change. An agile pricing and billing system can help if you struggle with one of these 5 problems.

7 Manual Work And Excel Will Need To Be Reduced

With the increased complexity and volume, the old workaround with Excel sheets or manual lookups and inputs will no longer be sustainable. Especially now that agile billing systems can easily replace this and create a first-time-right experience.

8 Billing Should Be A Core Part Of The ERP Implementation

From the design phase, ERP will need to answer to the demanding new requirements of agile businesses. But as ERP is often not able to meet this in their standard billing module, system integrators are actively looking for agile billing systems to deliver on those requirements. They look beyond the traditional suite to find this needed flexibility to complement CRM and ERP systems.

9 Payment Integration Will Become A Key Aspect Of Billing

In 2020, B2B payment has caught up with the fast changes in the B2C payment world. Billing in 2021 will demand payment integration to make it as easy as possible for clients to pay their bill, or to match a bill with earlier payment (installments). 

10 Intelligent Rules, Machine Learning, And AI in Billing Are Starting to Mature

How are we doing against predicted usage? Are our monetization predictions coming true? What are such potentially billable items that seem left out from the billing?

BI and AI can unlock even better cash flow forecasting, matched with up-to-date billing data. We'll love to talk more about this with you. 

Take Us To The Test!

If you feel your pricing and billing needs will outgrow your current billing solution, or if you are just curious to learn how Good Sign does things differently, feel free to take us to the test! We will gladly take on your challenge and prove to you it can be done, and that the new world is entering faster than you might think.

Test us:

billing challenge draw

 

Good Sign

We help our customers solve existing pain points in monetizing service contracts and managing subscriptions and pay-per-use services. We help companies freely grow scalable services.

Feel free to contact us and let’s have a chat on how we can support your company.

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