SMART BILLING

Agenda

• Pricing & billing

• Pricing models & strategies

• Billing processes

• Case studies

• Wrap up

Who is David Werdiger?

• Telco & subscription billing & pricing“guru”

• Entrepreneur; ADHD opportunity “juggler”

• Blogger; writer; public speaker

• Founder & director: Billing Bureau, TBG, KISS Mobile

• Several not-for-profit directorships

Pricing Versus Billing

• Pricing & Billing are two sides of the same

coin – the coin is your revenue!

• Pricing is a marketing function – how

much to charge for a service

• Billing is an operational function – how to

extract that charge from your customers

• Which should drive which? Who is in

charge?

Pricing models & strategies

• Why bother?

• Freemium

• Subscription pricing

• Value-based pricing

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Pricing models – why bother?

Pricing Models - Freemium

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Freemium

• Time/usage-bound

• Feature limited

Why do it?

• Reciprocity: give before you ask

• Use the free service promote your real value. Is the free

version useful? Does it cost you anything to deliver?

• Will it automatically fill a sales pipeline for you? How well

does your service sell itself?

Pricing Models - subscriptionSubscription and usage based income

• Lowers the barrier to try product and therefore adopt it

• Cost recovery perspective: subscription component can facilitate

recovery of fixed vendor costs; usage component can facilitate

recovery of variable costs; but it doesn’t have to work that way!

• The most profit you will ever make is selling something that is

never used

• Usage based can often help you to price the value you deliver for

more costly subscribers and monetise added features

• One size doesn’t fit all

Pricing Models – value-based• Think like a customer

• What is the value they are receiving for the

price they pay? Do they correlate?

• What is the opportunity cost? TCO?

• Are you leaving money on the table?

• Using metrics of customer (perceived) value as

a pricing input

Pricing Models – summary• A sound pricing strategy can help you:

• Differentiate

• Extract more value

• Manage customer behaviour

• Attract different market segments

Pricing & Billing

Billing

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Billing Processes• More than just sending out bills!

• Account creation; credit checks, etc

• Provisioning the service and service attributes &

options

• Bill presentment and delivery

• Customer (self) service

• Payments facilitation: credit terms, reconciliation

• Called OSS/BSS but really part of the billing process

Cloud Billing Considerations• Billing is complex (in other breaking news,

gravity causes objects to fall to the earth).

• Billing needs to be driven by price strategy

not the other way around.

• Scalability is everything

• Flexibility and adaptability; can it keep up

with the speed of market changes?

• Is billing a nightmare? A distraction? How

‘core’ is it?

Case Study: EatNowOnline service business, owner with a software

background with a specific niche opportunity.

Challenge:

• Not interested in building and managing a back

office.

Results:

• Automated billing, payments, reconciliations,

collection and commissions.

• Scalable platform for growth.

Case Study: 365ConnectProperty management and service business.

Challenge:

• Not billing every service. Some customers consuming

more time and cost than others but not reflected in the

price strategy.

Opportunity:

• Capture billing events through multiple interfaces to

ensure everything is billed.

• Facilitated price strategy for “care plans” to be

implemented.

Case Study: My Tiny AdMobile web sites

Challenge:

• Managing multiple and diverse channels, multi-currency, both

wholesale and retail

• Seeking a pathway to become an infrastructure and cloud

services aggregator

Results:

• Mobile portal for in-person sales

• Integrated service provisioning

• Wholesale billing with “UDR” feed as well as white label billing

The wrap• Think about pricing strategy and what it can

do for you

• Don’t let the billing cart lead the pricing

horse. Allow your marketing to be creative

and have fun!

• Consider end-to-end processes and look for

impediments to scalability

Shameless Plug• Billing Bureau have been doing this for over

15 years; first for telcos and now services

• We live and breathe it

• Experts in convergent billing and automation

and scalability of billing & related processes

• Cloud billing will only become more

complex; we have already done it all

Thank You!• Any questions?? All clear as mud?

• For more information, contact

• Ben Wortley; Sales and Marketing Director

03 8611 1111 / 0438 236 643; benw@billing.com.au

• David Werdiger; Chairman

0412 389 389; david@billing.com.au