2023 Vendor and Product Assessment
Subscription Management
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 traditional one-time ownership. Add to this an increasing desire for customers to purchase when, how and where they want, whether via digital commerce, self-service portals by and by voice and text and the landscape looks very different from even just five years ago.
Subscriptions themselves are not new. Newspapers and magazines were early in this process many decades ago, while Netflix started out mailing DVDs paid for via a flat monthly fee. Now, subscriptions are regularly used to pay for any number of products or services over a duration established by the provider. Digital products and services such as software as a service (SaaS) and mobile applications were at the forefront of the adoption of subscription pricing. HBO, Netflix, Spotify and iTunes are examples of subscriptions in the business to consumer (B2C) market.