What are the most important subscription management software features?

Winning with subscriptions means putting the customer at the center of everything that you do. The best subscription management software makes that easy with features such as deal and transaction management to help sales reps close deals fast and grow relationships. Then, billing and revenue management tools — with built-in automation — give finance the power to stay on top of payments.

Here are the key subscription management software features to look for:

Customers want B2B buying to feel as easy as ordering dog food online. That’s what self-service is all about. And as customers buy through self-service channels like your website, all the associated transactions — from the order to the bill — should be automatically generated on the back end. The self-service engine should also be able to support multiple pricing models.

Managing subscriptions is great, but first you’ve got to sell them. Subscription management software should offer deal management features that helps sales reps step in to rescue deals that are stalling and close them fast, with tools that let you apply discounts, for example, and automate approvals within guardrails.

You can’t grow what you don’t see. Subscription management should provide cross-team visibility into important customer data and key performance indicators (KPI). The best dashboard visuals take live data and turn them into at-a-glance views of customer behavior and company performance so you can go from insight to action within the same system.

Every subscription action has an equal finance reaction. That’s a lot of reactions. A self-service platform will be tightly integrated with the billing engine to help you speed up cash collection and improve the customer experience by leveraging up-to-date data from across the buying journey. Every transaction automatically generates consolidated invoices — no matter the charge type, sales order, or payment schedule — and applies the payment.

AI sounds fancy. Really, it’s just math that makes predictions — the next best offer to send, who’s prime for an upgrade, or who’s likely to become delinquent on payments. Self-service journeys can lean on AI like a freakishly smart co-worker to seize opportunities and mitigate risk.