Billing Challenges

Sankar
9 February 2022
Uncategorised

Billing Application Challenges on Sales and Marketing – Benefits of Efficient Automated Invoicing System 

Billing application practices and processes affect your customers and business. It operates from the backend office and is protected by finance. Making changes in an invoicing system is very hard for the marketing department.

Billing application practices and processes affect your customers and business. It operates from the backend office and is protected by finance. Making changes in an invoicing system is very hard for the marketing department.

Common challenges sales and marketing teams experience in invoicing practices and systems are given below. The OneBusiness project management tool will help users to easily handle the billing challenges.

Marketing concepts like price testing and promotions are hard to practice and so impact on introducing a new product also gets affected. The reality is that product promotion must never effect bill practices.

Customer’s loyalty to your product needs to be rewarded but invoicing processes does not allow sales & marketing to access this information. The full and frequent availability of this data is crucial to evaluate per customer profitability and make effective business decisions.

Flat pricing is often used because it is straightforward. Short-term plans never get changed quickly, so you offer consumers the same service but at different prices. This pricing means either you are charging too much for consumers or not making enough. Customers realise this soon and become unhappy. The sales and marketing team trigger frustration and everything tears apart rapidly.

Communication with customers regarding their experience is managed by the IT department [by default]. Customer experience familiarity is crucial for subscription-based companies. The marketing team needs to create and analyse better communication with consumers, to enhance their experience and retain them for long.

Timesheet management system, which does not allow sales to check the customer’s bill status then it, becomes an obstacle hard to manoeuvre. The customer may persist to use your services, especially when they are no longer paying.

For example, their credit card is expired. Your sales are sending reminders, but payment is doubtful if there is no outcome for non-payment.  This means sales cannot manage things like up-selling, renewals, add-ons, etc. These aspects could establish a significant portion of a customer base.

Solutions 

Invoicing system and processes are frustrating and can hinder sales and marketing. However, use a budget app to automate and resolve such hindrances. Opt for a billing system with abilities like –

  • Link account status with invoice standing. You can block the account or restrict features of customers, who don’t pay or are not up-to-date.
  • Allowing for pricing usage & volume-based packages – automation of ongoing or one-time discounts, free trials, and coupons.
  • Features to make price testing and changing easy to put into practice, observe and report.
  • Access to customers communication tools for the marketing team to improve customer experience.
  • Access to real-time metrics, analytics and other data to everyone.

Invoicing processes and systems need to empower the staff, so they can work towards attaining goals and not obstruct them. Make sure to invest in an efficient project management system.

Benefits of the efficient automated invoicing system

  • Handles subscription invoicing effectively
  • Supports usage-based invoicing for the Internet of Things [IoT]
  • Automated billing reduces administration overhead costs.
  • The margin for errors gets reduced in comparison to manual invoice process
  • Saves staff time, which can be invested in profitable business areas
  • Connecting all the software and system helps to save time and effort spent in handling administration, individual processes and complex systems
  • Creates transparency because every activity from generating lead to collecting payment is accessible rapidly making it easy for answering customer queries.

These are some ways an automated invoicing system helps to enhance business efficiency, which allows improving cash flow and cuts administration cost.