This article will cover monetization trends and patterns for 2022, how they work, and forecasts. We’ll share the views we can expect in 2022 from the industry view, focused on our main product – Innovative Cloud Billing Software.
Let us mention that our views will be a little on the technical side intended for specialists. Don’t worry if you’re not one of them! Everybody interested in monetization is welcome to read this article. We’re sure you will find some helpful tips.
2021 in a nutshell
2021 was full of unpredictability and uncertainty. The worldwide spread of coronavirus has had an immediate and damaging effect on the world and the entire economy. But our business is still proving solid and flexible. Monetizing means innovative methods of creating income from new sources. In our case, that’s cloud monetization and billing in software that is future-ready. Being at the top as one of the leading companies providing this solution bears an obligation to share our thoughts and monetization trends for the upcoming year, right?
Let’s start with some basics!
Before we dive deep into “TOP 5 monetization trends”, let us first look at what is pushing this approach. Besides following the latest trends in monetization, it’s fundamental to look forward to potential patterns that will influence the market where we compete.
Understanding the challenges of digital transformation
Digital transformation means integrating technology into every part of a company’s workflow and communications to streamline operations and create a better user experience between customers and team members. However, every company’s transformation nowadays is different. The first and the primary step is understanding business goals. New revenue streams and monetization are just some of the ways that digital transformation can raise your bottom line.
Here are a few of the most significant benefits:
- Improving the Customer Experience (CX) Better: Digital tools make it easy for your customers to buy from you, get information, update accounts, and renew subscriptions. These processes can be convenient and customized based on industry, location, and customers preferences. This means more value for your customers without much higher costs for you, leading to repeat business, a strong reputation, and higher revenues over the long term.
- Helping Teams Work Together: Encouraging collaboration and communication across internal departments leads to more innovation and higher quality standards. A solid digital transformation framework helps teams keep track of and share information. The right digital tools can help speed up response times and give your teams the resources to find creative solutions to problems.
- Streamlining Processes and Prevent Errors: Having people sitting and manually copying information from one file into another is a recipe for mistakes. If you can get your customers and all internal departments using the same digitized system, you’ve cut down on your risk and saved everyone a lot of time. All teams will have the same information at hand, and processes like deliveries, product updates, and renewals can all be automated.
Rise of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
Recently, the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) has been booming. SaaS solutions are considered one of the fastest-growing segments in the IT industry. That’s why many companies (small and large) have moved over to this structure or beginning with it in the first place, and this trend will only increase.
So, what is the driving force that makes even the most significant players adopt SaaS? For example, our software solution offers various features to manage better any company’s finances, including invoicing and payroll. The innovative Software-as-a-service solution can save you time and money and help improve your company’s efficiency. SaaS will remain at the top of IT trends in 2022, so stay SaasSy! 😊
TREND 1: Everything in a Cloud
How do enterprises benefit from moving data to the cloud? We genuinely believe that cloud-based solutions are the best fit for any business in maintaining a competitive edge in a customer-focused and fluid market. Why? According to Statista, in 2019, the global cloud applications market had a value of 124.1 billion US dollars and is expected to reach 166.8 billion US dollars by 2024. The cloud applications software market is anticipated to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 6.1 per cent, which is enormous.
Besides, a public cloud model offers computing services over the internet. Public clouds are cost-effective. Among the many benefits of a public cloud is that no upfront investments must be made, leading to running costs for maintaining on-premise hardware and application infrastructure. Instead, the cloud service provider ensures proper management and maintenance of the system, and the customer only pays for services consumed.
The biggest companies that offer public cloud platforms to customers are AWS, Azure, and Google. Tridens’ cloud-based platform resides on a public cloud hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS).
TREND 2: Usage-based at the top of monetization trends
If you asked someone a few years ago to name examples of usage-based recurring billing, they would probably only be able to list utilities and telecommunications. Today, the usage-based billing model is adopted in several industries, including telecommunications, transportation, healthcare, and many more. This change happened alongside the rise of the cloud and software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions, setting the stage for where we are today.
SaaS businesses use usage-based billing models to charge for everything from megabytes (MB) to kilometers and leads to customers/subscribers. As we mentioned before SaaS businesses, it’s increasing in popularity. By the numbers, 45% of SaaS companies now have some form of usage-based pricing (UBP), up from 34% last year, according to new data from OpenView’s State of Usage-Based Pricing Report (source: link).
While some companies still offer software or applications per license, these are getting rarer. More vendors prefer to provide a subscription-based model since they are more versatile than the most traditional options. A good example is a subscription-based platform known everywhere – Netflix.
How to charge customers?
The advantage of usage-based billing is scalability and flexibility in pricing. Usually, there are several different ways to charge for usage, five usage-based billing pricing strategies. The list below is to help you determine which approach might work best for your business (more available: here).
- Per-unit
- Volume-based
- Overage
- Tiered
- Tiered with overage
Furthermore, businesses can also design their bundles in many ways:
- Per usage or consumption (flat rate, multi-tiered, rollover, or family plan)
- Subscriptions (monthly, quarterly, semi-monthly, annually, or custom)
- Per marketing (discounts, promotions, exemptions, and credits)
Usage-based recurring billing supports a natural evolution of this trend. Automated billing software makes usage-based billing simple. Thanks to customers’ preferences and technological advances, usage-based billing is rising. In fact, customers appreciate the low barrier to entry of smaller recurring payments over a large purchase to own a solution. Businesses can leverage a usage-based billing model with relative ease and increase revenue with the right automated billing solution.
TREND 3: Concept of API
Good API coverage on Monetization solutions helps businesses expand their models, develop integrations, increase innovation, and open new possibilities for companies, buyers, and partners. API support allows companies to integrate with Monetization solutions, increasing business capabilities and increasing growth without being dependent on the vendor’s upgrade cycle. Most monetization solutions offer an API; Tridens Monetization, for example, is developed with an API-First approach, offering full integration support with REST APIs.
About REST API
REST (Representational State Transfer) is designed to work with files, objects, media components on a particular hardware device. Web service is defined on REST principles and can be defined as a RESTful web service.
Why REST?
Due to scalability, the protocol stands out when compared to other APIs. The reason is due to the server and client separation. It’s simple to build and adapt with low use of resources. With REST, essential data covered in one request is not ending at this but also easier to shift the data from one server to another. It gives access to modifications to the database at any time.
TREND 4: All Services in one, all under one roof
Increase business efficiency by using one flexible and accurate software for billing, online charging, rating, invoicing, and collection regardless of customer, market, or service types, all under one roof. All services in one suitable platform can extend discounts or new prices ranging from simple to highly complex. Charging and billing prepaid, post-paid, and broadband services distinctly via a proper billing system is needed for any company.
What’s a proper convergent real-time billing system?
A convergent charging and billing system allows various service charges on a single invoice. Actually, they allow re-usability of products and bundles across all payment types – such as using the same plans for postpaid and prepaid if desired. As all services are charged via a single platform, you can save time and resources by combining all customer charges in a single invoice: you can bill bundles and multiple services (gas, electricity, water, etc.) simultaneously. The fully configurable and customizable billing solution helps track charges and meet higher efficiency financial needs.
A convergent charging system also stimulates customer trust by showing them divided service charges in only one invoice. Moreover, it enables your customer support team to provide better support as they have access to all customer-usage information in an orderly state. Apart from these two primary factors, there are also some other secrets of a convergent real-time billing system that can ensure business success.
TREND 5: Services outside the box
Businesses engaging in subscription monetization are increasingly making it more convenient for consumers to get the goods or services they need before they need them. Think of a ‘smart’ refrigerator that can order the veggies for you.
So, no matter what we’re offering, this question is being asked by businesses across the board: Is it possible to turn our product into something outside the box that people would buy?
Artificial intelligence (AI) analytics and predictions
Some studies predicted that 70% of new enterprise applications would be developed as cloud-native with an investment focus on intelligent technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI) systems.
AI technology has been a vast crucial point for a while now, but in 2022 we’ll see it pop up even more (we believe in our industry too). And no, not in a scary science fiction sort of way.
Are our monetization predictions coming true? What are such potentially billable items that seem left out from the billing? AI can surely unlock even better cash flow forecasting, matched with up-to-date billing focusing on analytics. Furthermore, AI is also helping more businesses make more intelligent decisions and insights into customers behavior and their needs.
Final Thoughts
We hope we have given you many valuable aspects of the monetization trends in the upcoming year. If you’re interested in this kind of content, please check our blog page, or follow our Linkedin where we post a bunch of information about our industry weekly.
Agile monetizations platforms are becoming a trend
The rise of monetization billing has led to a corresponding increase in the necessity of subscription billing software. Find out if our agile monetization platform can assist with your business growth. Contact us today and request a demo!
