Feature Guide Elastic Path Subscriptions (toll-free within North America) (outside North America)

Transcription

1 Feature Guide Elastic Path Subscriptions (toll-free within North America) (outside North America)

2 The industry s most complete subscription and billing solution Elastic Path Subscriptions is the industry s leading cloud-based solution for billing and subscription management, allowing you to create and grow predictable revenue streams for all recurring revenue models. Unlike other commerce platforms, Subscriptions is the only solution that manages the entire subscriber lifecycle everything from plan composition to billing, activation, customer care, and analytics. Our cloud-based solution helps your business: Quickly create recurring revenue streams Manage the entire subscription lifecycle Increase customer touches while reducing support costs Perform intelligent market segmentation Manage the complex process of channel billing Respond quickly to changing buyer preferences Enterprises using Subscriptions are more competitive, have more visibility into their customer base, more control over how they manage their business, and have the ability to quickly adapt to changing market conditions. And because it s SaaS, Subscriptions shortens the time to bring new products to market and lowers your overall total-cost-of-ownership. Combined with the native monetization capability of Elastic Path Commerce Engine, Subscriptions is the best way to unleash the power of recurring revenue. Elastic Path Subscriptions Feature Guide 2

3 Complete Subscriber Lifecycle Manage all of your subscriber relationships Subscriptions was built to support business needs ranging from the simple to the complex. It brings the front and back office together to help our customers effectively manage the complete subscriber lifecycle, including: Recurring products Invoicing and payments Powerful channel billing Customer care Channel management Dynamic service management Actionable analytics API integration Built by billing experts, Subscriptions started where traditional billing systems have focused, on the back-end systems of invoicing and payments and service management. This provides our customers with vast service plan, pricing and integration options. With recurring revenue, front office processes must be connected to back office activities. For example, managing products and pricing is essential to optimize revenue growth. Gaining visibility across the quote to cash process supports customer care activities, providing a seamless customer experience from day one. And, effectively managing all key touchpoints enhances customer retention while lowering costs. Leveraging the power and flexibility of Subscriptions within your existing ecosystem of both front- and backend tools and applications is essential for success. To that end, we have developed the largest library of APIs to provide the ultimate range of integration options. Additionally, we have pre-built integrations with core systems such as Salesforce.com and leading tax engines. Elastic Path Subscriptions Feature Guide 3

4 Recurring Products Subscription and Usage-based Selling Whether you have a single product or hundreds, offer a subscription or subscription plus usage model, or charge for tiered usage pricing, Elastic Path Subscriptions offers a flexible and easily configurable catalog with robust pricing and discounting capabilities. It s easy to create new subscription products with all types of price plans, or modify existing plans. You have the option to define all of your products and services and use the platform s automated management of pricing, discounts, promotions, and coupons needed to grow your business. Subscriptions gives you the additional flexibility to offer any product in multiple currencies without product SKU explosion. Plus, we automatically manage any plan inclusions and exclusions on individual accounts, eliminating the need for manual input, easing customer support and simplifying catalog management. Products Capabilities: Recurring plans and one-time-purchases Subscription and subscription plus usage models Automated application of multiple rate schedules per plan Multiple rate structures and custom rates by account Any combination of one-time, subscription and usage-based charges as well as virtual goods and currencies Automated management of plan and service inclusions/exclusions for individual plans Easy modification of plan changes in-flight such as transitioning customers from freemium offerings to paid plans Flexible payment terms, including monthly, quarterly and annual Offer adoption incentives, such as 30-day free trial, without building out new plans Account hierarchies, supplemental fields and parent/child relationships Billing for future charges or billing in arrears based on usage Proration by usage, partial months or any time period Multiple language and multiple currency support Plan pricing for existing customers while introducing new plan pricing for future customers. Elastic Path Subscriptions Feature Guide 4

5 Invoicing and Payments Complex billing scenarios made easy Calculating the bill for reoccurring products and services can be complex due to the need to take into account the subscribed-to plan, current usage, mid-cycle upgrades and downgrades, promotions, payments, and more. Getting it right is essential to your success. Our invoicing and payments engine makes recurring billing easy, automatically cross-checking entitlements information with customer charges, calculates the total bill, applies taxes, generates invoices and fully supports the payments and collections process. For payment gateways, we offer built-in support for industry-leading processors including First Data, PayPal, RBS WorldPay, and Moneris. Subscriptions is fully PCI DSS compliant which, when coupled with our SaaS delivery, greatly reduces the time required for companies to certify their billing systems for compliance. Invoicing and Payments Capabilities: Calculate bills based on activity for a particular time period, including real-time usage rating, usage thresholding, pre-paid options and usage pooling and accumulation Apply partial payments to current balance, past balance or late payment charges Apply full and partial refunds, write-offs, credits and voids Deliver proration capabilities including mid-cycle activity, upgrades and downgrades Pick and choose how to track, rate and calculate usage accumulated across time, in real-time or at time of invoice Automate discount management to combine multiple discount rules Easily incorporate add-on or one-time charges, such as activation fees, to any subscription, at any time Automatically calculate taxes based on product type and customer location, with address verification Record payments, issue service credits and reprint invoices Automate billing and statement delivery; statements presented for payment in either SMTP or XML Support multiple languages and currencies Support date internationalization and multiple time zones Accept various payment modes such as credit card, ACH, direct debit, PayPal or any external or non-electronic pay methods defined using net terms Process real-time payments through integration with online payment gateways and processors Elastic Path Subscriptions Feature Guide 5

6 Powerful Channel Billing Maximize recurring revenue across all partner channels Elastic Path offers the industry s only solution to manage the complex process of channel billing. With legacy billing systems, rolling out subscription services for the VAR or ISV channel has traditionally been an extremely complex process, requiring a unique plan to be created for every partner/plan combination. No more. Through Unified Channel Billing, Elastic Path eliminates the need for manual intervention, automatically implementing plan changes as needed, with updates cascading through all channels and captured in associated reports. Unified Channel Billing automation extends all the way through your partner network up and down each channel with the entire billing process seamlessly managed, controlled, reported, and monitored. Whether you have a group of five resellers or a global network of 5,000, each entity in the chain is armed with the power to engage as needed with customers to drive more subscription business. Channel Billing Capabilities: Manage all channel operations off of a single billing system Easily establish and automate billing and reporting processes up and down each channel Ensure that plan, pricing and product updates cascade through all channels Allow partners to brand end-customer communications and invoice directly Roll out a variety of pricing structures, including flat-fee, usage-based and activation Allow channel partners to determine retail pricing for their end users Gain visibility into pertinent activities across each channel Elastic Path Subscriptions Feature Guide 6

7 Customer Care Powerful tools for your CSRs Maximizing your customers satisfaction makes good business sense. Subscriptions include powerful tools for your customer service representatives (CSRs), giving them the ability to provide outstanding problem resolution support. Elastic Path Subscriptions automates communication with your customers based on different events, such as a payment received, a failed payment or an expiring credit card. This reduces the handling time of customer issues, and provides a consistent and repeatable process for managing aspects of your customer service strategy. Subscriptions enable our customers to provide outstanding customer support, thereby increasing customer loyalty and maximizing customer lifetime value to your business. Customer Care Capabilities: A CSR portal to investigate and resolve customer issues Self-service tools to allow customers to manage their account information Automated communication for many common events across the subscriber lifecycle Record payments, issue service credits and reprint invoices Configurable dunning solution that is customizable for each customer Automated communication with customizable templates Rich audit log allows you to see customers past history Elastic Path Subscriptions Feature Guide 7

8 Channel Management Plans and pricing for different touchpoints Sales channels come in many shapes from direct, to the web, to the traditional retail environment. So what s the most efficient and effective approach for each option? Channel management is your specific approach to create formalized programs for selling and servicing customers within a specific segment, and it can have a dramatic impact on your bottom line. Subscriptions capabilities fully support any channel management approach by providing tools to allow companies to group customers, plans, prices and their associated activities into buckets that are meaningful to your enterprise. This approach allows our customers to focus plans and pricing on a particular segment of the market, maximizing revenue for each channel. Channel Capabilities: Segment customers into logical groupings for treatment in a common way Direct customers to a particular payment processing service Create a mutually exclusive plan for a specific customer, enabling branding, billing options and currency exclusive to that customer Group related plans to a unique promotion code and associate those plans to a unique set of customers Group related plans to easily administer as a family Pre-define an unlimited number of price lists across any currency for a given product, allowing single products to be used for different channels Support template-driven communications to allow targeted communications by channel Elastic Path Subscriptions Feature Guide 8

9 Dynamic Service Management Put your processes on autopilot Core to Subscriptions is Dynamic Service Management technology (DSM), an event engine that fully automates key processes throughout the subscriber lifecycle including dunning, entitlement management and event notifications. Now, enterprises can monetize the entire subscriber lifecycle while reducing manual actions and slashing errors as your subscription products evolve. At the core of DSM is the event notification engine, which automates notifications and alerts, passing that information to external systems. More than 100 event notifications come preconfigured, with the flexibility to add unique alerts to support your specific company events. Event Notification Capabilities: Notifications are proactively pushed to external systems in near real-time Outbound posts take a variety of forms such as XML, name value pair and SMTP, which can easily be consumed by the receiving systems Can target multiple receiving systems for any individual notification Event notifications are grouped into Account Events (account created, account plan changed), Order Events (order created, order paid), Financial Transaction Events (payment posted, invoice paid) and Notification Events (credit card expiration sent to account holder, dunning message created) Service Activation and Entitlements Capabilities: Support for complex service bundles Flexibility to handle any notification to any service in real-time Libraries of pre-built notifications Dunning Capabilities: Unlimited dunning configurations to prevent revenue leakage Automated outreach based on pre-determined timelines Pre-defined and customizable templates Flexible treatments for different payment types or customer status Customized notifications for expired credit cards, denied payments, etc. Elastic Path Subscriptions Feature Guide 9

10 Actionable Analytics Tame your big data With Elastic Path Cortex, your subscription products can be embedded in any digital touchpoint. To provide performance insight into those touchpoints, our Subscriptions analytics engine features a rich dashboard that goes beyond the standard reports of other commerce systems, summarizing your key metrics so you can optimize business results. Subscriptions provide a complete library of 70 reports spanning financial information, customer information, usage and other areas. Beyond the standard reports, we also provide a dashboard that summarizes your company s key metrics to provide visibility into your subscription business. Analytics Capabilities: Subscriber conversion reports Subscriber churn reports Receivables aging Dashboard of important metrics 70 standard reports available at the touch of a button Ad hoc reporting capabilities for unique business requirements Automated scheduling of reports in a variety of formats Delivery of reports in a variety of methods, including , FTP and SCP Rich audit log Elastic Path Subscriptions Feature Guide 10

11 API Integration Integrates easily with your ecosystem Subscriptions leverages the systems you have in place through a comprehensive integration layer, allowing you to which means you need a way to integrate easily and effectively with your ecosystem of applications. Our web services APIs are available in SOAP or REST and enable you to share data, keep systems in sync and enable services. Our API Live tool enables you to test APIs before you go live, providing a quick, clear understanding of connectivity with key systems to accelerate deployment. Pre-built Connectors Elastic Path provides APIs to integrate the subscription billing and management solution with key enterprise applications including: Payment Gateways Subscriptions also directly support a wide range of payment gateways and processors. These packaged integrations decrease deployment time, reduce risk, and improve operational reliability. Elastic Path Subscriptions is PCI Level 1 certified, and allows you to migrate your entire customer base from one processor to another in real time to control costs. You can simultaneously use multiple payment platforms to provide more choice for your customers while taking advantage of services that minimize your incremental costs. Elastic Path Subscriptions Feature Guide 11

12 Elastic Path is more than just Subscriptions Subscriptions works seamlessly with other Elastic Path products to help your business deliver and monetize the ultimate customer experience. Elastic Path Commerce Engine is a software platform that brings advanced monetization features like bundling, personalized pricing, and omnichannel promotions to every digital experience, from lightweight apps to Internet Retailer Top 500 websites. With features designed to boost engagement, conversion, and customer lifetime value plus a modern architecture built on the world s leading open source technologies Commerce Engine is the best choice for companies seeking to monetize digital touchpoints in unique, compelling, and profitable ways. Elastic Path Cortex is the world s first enterprise-grade hypermedia API engine. It s a software mediation layer that unifies resources from Commerce Engine, CMS, and CRM platforms into one API. This interface delivers the combined power of all your applications to websites, apps, and other touchpoints for the ultimate customer buying experience. It s a revolutionary approach so effective that new digital experiences go live in weeks, not months. Questions? Elastic Path builds ecommerce software that powers the next generation of digital experience. We help businesses maximize revenue from their goods, services, and content with solutions that empower companies to create outstanding customer experiences that drive engagement and conversion. Elastic Path technology brings this functionality to multiple touchpoints websites, apps, APIs, and more while generating a single view of the customer. Market leaders, including Google, Pearson, Symantec, Time Inc., and Virgin use Elastic Path to drive billions of dollars in digital commerce annually. Please contact us for more information: sales@elasticpath.com or call (800) Read the technical documentation for Commerce Engine: Collaborate with Elastic Path developers and customers in the Grep Developer Community: grep.elasticpath.com Copyright 2013 Elastic Path Software Inc. All rights reserved. Elastic Path, the Elastic Path logo, and Commerce Engine are trademarks or registered trademarks of Elastic Path Software Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.