Revenue Assurance Trends Post-Pandemic Era

You’ll likely not see these trends in any report. These trends are from my conversations with real people/businesses and our experiences in the subscription industry. 

Do you think we are already in the post-pandemic era? Well, we may or may not be there yet. However, I feel that the pandemic has significantly impacted several changing trends in the market. It surely did accelerate the subscription industry growth, and things are looking good.

Along with industry growth comes an increased number of subscribers, higher revenues and more complex offerings, and an increased likelihood of revenue leakage. Trust me—the last thing anyone wants after a pandemic is leaking revenue. Here are some trends that I see are happening in the area of revenue assurance.

Adoption of revenue assurance for subscriptions just as much as for telecom

The term ‘revenue assurance’ has been used in the Telecom industry for a very long time. This trend will start shifting and we will see several SaaS and subscription-based businesses using revenue assurance solutions as well. Almost all industries are adopting subscriptions as a business model, traditional and new-age alike – From manufacturing to AI-based products. The subscription revenues generated by these businesses are growing exponentially and so is the leakage. Why? Because these businesses were not born in the subscription era, and it takes time and experience to adjust to the dynamics of subscription business.

Our recent prospect list is an excellent example of this trend coming alive. We have a 40-year-old large manufacturing company that recently took the subscription plunge, yet experienced only short-lived happiness once they realized their additional revenues were being lost.

Billing, MIS systems, and revenue assurance systems will co-exist and not replace each other.

“I have a robust billing system and a MIS system. Why would I need another system for revenue assurance?”  I do get this question quite a lot—and I mean a lot, a lot—in almost every meeting. To this question I pose, “Can we use a billing system to run marketing campaigns?” And to that, the answer is no; they require two different systems for two different purposes. Similarly, revenue assurance and billing systems must co-exist for better controls on revenue leakage. Here is a short point of view on revenue assurance leakage areas, and you will see that a billing system is not going to solve all your revenue leakage problems.

We will start seeing greater realization and increased investment in the area of revenue assurance in the coming months. We also expect revenue assurance solutions to be implemented at the time of billing system implementations. The MIS system takes the feed from the revenue assurance solution and then can provide much deeper insights. This segues nicely into our next trend.

Proactive revenue assurance implementation

If any of you are experienced engineers like me, you would have noticed the way the testing function has changed over the years. Testing used to get the final product within a few days before the release, almost as an afterthought in earlier days. Slowly, testing was incorporated as a part of product design, and the whole story continued until it became a mainstream cog of product development.

Revenue assurance is following a similar trend. The revenue assurance solutions were implemented almost as an afterthought. I am seeing a pleasant trend of businesses thinking about revenue assurance controls and solutions at the time of subscription system implementation, business model conversations, and even strategy conversations. Any company that loves its revenues and customer experience will never leave revenue assurance as an afterthought.

What other trends are you seeing post-pandemic? Do let me know and I will be happy to add on to the list with due credits.