How Subscription Billing Solution Can Lower Azure Billing Complexities

Subscription Billing Solution

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated digital transformation at a pace we have never witnessed before. For businesses, going digital was no longer a choice but a necessity for survival in most cases. At the forefront of the change to a digital economy was cloud computing, as the pandemic accelerated a need for digital services to be available without disruption across borders. CSPs needs robust subscription billing solution to improve overall performance of their business.

Gartner expects worldwide public cloud spending to grow a record 18.4% in 2021 to reach around USD 304.9 billion, which is over USD 47 billion more than the figures of 2020.

One of the biggest players in the cloud market in recent years has been Microsoft with its Azure range of cloud offerings. From being shadowed in its initial days, Microsoft has truly transformed its cloud offering into the most competent digital platform that modern enterprises can rely on to build their technology stack. The pandemic year saw Microsoft’s commercial cloud revenue of USD 59.5 billion, eclipse that of AWS and Google Cloud combined, which is a testimony to the benefits it has to offer for customers. This growth potential is certainly slated for repeating glory in the coming years as the wave of digital transformation set off by the pandemic doesn’t look waning by any means. This exciting growth prospect for Azure is a goldmine for Microsoft’s Cloud Solution Providers (CSP) who are most often the front face of selling Microsoft’s cloud offerings to enterprise customers.

But then comes the key challenge for CSPs in empowering their customers to leverage Azure at its best – offering them a seamless billing experience. Cloud-based subscription models of pricing are not everyone’s cup of tea. They differ considerably from traditional pricing models with a wide array of interlaced conditions and agreements that work together to create the final bill sent to a customer for their usage. To solve this billing fiasco, CSPs need a modern subscription billing solution that can handle in-depth nuances of Azure billing.

Let us have a closer look at the complexities and challenges faced by CSP’s in billing customers for Azure usage and how a modern subscription billing solution can help them mitigate these challenges:

Enable Simplified Billing

From a customer’s standpoint, there would be different departments within their business that leverage a diverse range of cloud services from Azure cloud and for different volumes and rates. This generates truckloads of data points that need to transition into a transparent billing and invoicing process. Making the billing experience complex and congested with data doesn’t work well for long with customers, especially for those who consider Azure as just an IT enabler for their business.

However, by leveraging modern subscription billing platforms like Work 365, CSPs can help generate seamless and transparent billing experiences. They encompass all data points and offer clearly articulated break-ups according to the type of service, department-wise, volume-wise, or any level of granular filtration that a customer requires.

Not only this, but Microsoft Partners can also have their billing platform generate CSV format invoices that can be used to infer actionable insights for end customers through analysis.

Handle Customization Requests

Microsoft builds and maintains Azure as one of the most flexible cloud platforms that enterprises can customize on a near unlimited scale and configurations. However, for CSPs, this opens a huge challenge when their billing and invoicing process needs to accommodate customized requirements that deviate from normal patterns of billing.

This is where modern cloud-based subscription billing platforms can bring in a huge advantage. CSPs can utilize them to create customized invoices and bills for every customer accommodating the configurations they have leveraged.

Empower Self-Service

Enterprise customers require transparent visibility into their consumption of cloud services on one hand and at the same time need to be empowered to manage most of their pricing and billing exercises on their own through self-service.

CSPs can offer this flexibility of self-service billing and invoice management by customers directly by leveraging modern subscription billing platforms. It also eliminates delays that a customer might have encountered if they opted for a manual request and fulfillment order of operations for their billing requirements.

Reduce Revenue Leakage with Efficiency

By leveraging modern subscription billing platforms, CSPs can accurately gauge usage data from Azure and offer validated invoices that are free from errors. Manual modes of operations often result in duplicate entries and subsequent corrections which may occur after a revenue leakage had occurred. Automated billing platforms allow CSPs to be compliant to the highest standards of operational efficiency for collections, and ultimately guarantee risk-free experiences for customers.

Azure has a wide scope of application in modern-day enterprise technology. To capitalize on this huge market opportunity, CSPs can rely on modern subscription billing platforms like Work 365 to ensure transparent reporting, frictionless customer interactions, improve collections and eliminate leakages in revenue.

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