Savvy Web retailers and service providers are looking for ways to jump on the recurring revenue bandwagon. Last month, it was even considered the number one New Year's resolution for small businesses.
Where there is a business objective, there are technology companies waiting to help, especially when it comes to managing customer billing and payments, as these tasks can be quite resource-intensive. Subscription billing software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions help automate the customer billing and payments process. Popular solutions include Avangate, Chargify, Fusebill and Authorize.net.
Aria Systems is also built for companies with recurring revenue and subscription models. Companies like Pitney Bowes, Audi, Advanced Auto Parts and others have turned to cloud-based Aria Systems to manage their subscriptions. Nordic-based Falk Group is one of the most recent brands to count on Aria Systems. It's Assistance division now works with the Aria platform to enable agile product management, real-time entitlement, and billing and dunning with salesforce.com, CRM, SAP ERP and external service delivery partners.
Consumers, however, would expect a subscription-type model from a company providing roadside assistance, but other product types, that are not traditionally subscription-based, are benefitting from this model as well, including (most notably) Birchbox (a monthly supply of personalized beauty samples), Blue Apron (a supply of fresh ingredients and corresponding recipes) and others (a long list of examples can be seen here).