subscription management

What is subscription management?

Subscription management is the process of overseeing and controlling all aspects of products and services sold repeatedly through a weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly subscription-based pricing model. Subscription management software is designed to ensure that the correct amount of money is charged to the right person the accurate number of times a year.

Overview of subscription management software

Subscription management software includes tools to automate subscription workflow and manage the entire lifecycle of an iterative purchase. Subscription management software suites in the cloud or on premises can be used to manage the entire subscription process.

In addition to simply storing customer information, the software is often integrated with a payment gateway, assisting with revenue cycle management (RCM) and enable businesses to add subscription pricing to their current product or service offerings. Typically, enterprise-level subscription management software for retail sales can be integrated with e-commerce platforms and catalog/inventory management software.

Benefits of subscription management software

Subscription management software can help companies garner better return on investment during marketing campaigns involving discounts, vouchers or free trials and can assist organizations in controlling fraud in their subscriptions.

This software can also help improve relationships with subscribers. When customers return to a company on a regular basis, the relationship becomes an extended conversation, rather than a simple transaction. In this relationship, customer retention is crucial.

When monthly recurring revenue (MRR) spurs growth, retention becomes one of the most-watched metrics in a business and subscription management comes into stronger focus.

Additionally, subscription-based pricing is beneficial to both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) companies. This model offers improved customer retention, higher lifetime value, predictable recurring revenue and a frictionless payment process. It also allows for price diversification.

Marketing is easier as customers already bought into the product and marketers do not need to spend extra resources to constantly recover users.