Having just completed the 2023 Ventana Research Value Index for Subscription Management, I want to share some of my observations about an important component of subscription management: Contract management.
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Topics:
Subscription Management,
Office of Revenue
Having just completed the 2023 Ventana Research Value Index for Subscription Management, I want to share some of my observations about how the market is evolving. The era of subscriptions has transformed the way businesses operate and consumers engage with services across every industry. Organizations are increasingly adopting a digital approach to selling goods and services, wherein customers have the option to purchase through periodic subscription pricing or based on consumption, rather than...
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Topics:
Subscription Management,
Office of Revenue
Conga is part of our Office of Revenue market coverage and I recently attended the 2023 Conga Connect conference held in Orlando during April of 2023. The conference was the public reveal of a new Conga, with significant announcements in three main areas. First was the overall positioning within a self-designated category of revenue life cycle management. Secondly was the first public revealing of a new Conga platform. And finally, announcements of new partnerships were headlined by a...
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Topics:
Subscription Management,
revenue management,
Office of Revenue
I have been involved with customer relationship management for over 15 years, and although that is not as long as the category has been around, it does coincide with an era where companies and commentators are calling into question the application’s effectiveness. To counter this perception, both CRM vendors and complementary third-party “add-ons” have developed new functionality that aims to improve the “R” in CRM, especially as it relates to sales engagement. But much of this additional...
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Topics:
sales engagement,
revenue management,
Office of Revenue
Configure, price and quote (CPQ) software has been traditionally viewed as a specialist outpost of software, almost exclusively B2B and predominately used in manufacturing or specialty chemicals or other industries where there were large variants of similar products that required careful configuration, pricing and ultimately generating a quote that could be forwarded to a prospective customer for consideration. But in recent years, this has changed, both in the number of vendors offering CPQ...
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Topics:
revenue management,
Office of Revenue
Those of us who have worked in or alongside sales teams have observed that many sales fundamentals have changed over the years. Yet, in many ways, they have not. One essential that has not changed is sales enablement. How do you onboard salespeople and quickly bring them up to speed? Or, how do you introduce new products and services so the sales team is conversant and knowledgeable about them? In years past, this would have happened at the head office or a regional office, with videos and...
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Topics:
sales engagement,
Office of Revenue
The idea of partnerships in business is most definitely not new. Wholesaling through distributors and retailers is centuries old. For some industries, their entire model is selling and servicing through partners. Think auto parts, and the auto part stores visible in most neighborhoods. But what is new is that partnerships are moving beyond this reseller model towards product partnerships, where a seller’s products and services are supplemented by other vendors’ offerings from adjacent and...
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Topics:
Subscription Management,
partner management,
Office of Revenue
The topic of revenue operations has been extensively covered recently, not least by vendors extolling the virtues of their particular offering. But as with much of the software industry, vendors often see the market through the lens of their current product capabilities rather than what is necessarily needed. With the rise of the mixed-revenue model that includes subscription and usage pricing as well as one-time sales, combined with the growth in self-service commerce, the result is more teams...
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Topics:
revenue management,
Revenue Performance Management,
Office of Revenue
Much has been written in recent years on the emergence of subscription management as a new revenue model that both vendors and buyers are embracing as the future. The benefits speak to the value of a predictable revenue stream for the vendor, but more importantly, the advantages to the customer who needs a lower initial outlay, predetermined expense over the lifetime of usage and the ability to cancel or suspend on demand.
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Topics:
Subscription Management,
revenue management,
Office of Revenue
I have written about vendor efforts to use artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced analytics in their applications targeted at sales and revenue teams to improve focus and prioritize activities, both for pipeline management as well as individual opportunities. Since then, vendors have continued to innovate, and there have been more releases showcasing efforts to aid sales and revenue. And with this continuing innovation, we believe that by 2026, two-thirds of revenue leaders will begin...
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Topics:
sales engagement,
AI & Machine Learning,
revenue management,
Office of Revenue