Ask Aria Billie There are many moments in the lifecycle of an enterprise that can prompt a billing system upgrade: a change in business model, a corporate transaction, the end of life for a product or service, or the desire to lower the cost to bill clients and accounts.
In today’s AI-dominated environment, however, any enterprise still operating an outdated, on-premises, legacy billing system needs to consider migrating to a modern and sophisticated platform now, even if none of the aforementioned conditions exist. Here’s why:
- The shift to consumption pricing is gaining speed: As enterprises continue to unveil new AI products and services, many are turning to consumption pricing models to better align costs with value. Older billing systems are simply not equipped to handle complex usage-based models, nor are they able to sell entitlements and allowances, convert tokens into conversations, or manage the many other functions that are required when monetizing AI products and services.
- Billing connects the tech stack: Unlike their predecessors, modern billing platforms can capture the critical data that customer care, fulfillment, and finance teams need to operate. As a result, billing has become the connective tissue linking CRM, CPQ, self-care and other systems within the technology stack. Older and incapable billing systems, therefore, prevent businesses from reaping maximum value from back-office technology investments.
- Elevating customer experiences: No longer relegated behind the scenes, billing is now part of the customer experience. Customers want to access billing and usage activity, make changes to their plans, and resolve invoice queries with minimal stress and without having to engage customer service. Advanced billing systems make this possible.
- New levels of commercial agility: Businesses that need months or longer to commercialize a product with the right monetization strategy will be at a distinct competitive disadvantage. Today’s enhanced billing systems allow enterprises to anticipate demand, optimize pricing models, and commercialize new products and services with speed, embedded intelligence, and agility.
- Navigating voluminous data flows: Security and privacy are critical when data is involved. With AI agents capturing and sharing copious amounts of data in today’s AI environment, the need to guard against fraud, comply with privacy requirements, and minimize revenue leakage is more important than ever. A modern billing solution enables enterprises to more effectively manage and govern data usage in an AI-driven ecosystem.
- From cost center to growth catalyst: AI-enabled billing systems transform billing into a strategic tool for revenue growth. By monitoring usage activity, billing systems can detect anomalies, preempt bill shock, and minimize the number of costly incoming customer care inquiries. Insights surfaced from billing data can inform the creation of deeply personalized offerings and enable sales and customer care teams to proactively suggest alternative pricing plans that might keep a customer from churning. All of this can be achieved without the need to add employees, enabling enterprises to recoup billing system investments by a substantial margin.
Billing modernization no longer means business disruption
Some enterprises may have considered embarking on a billing transformation but have chosen not to proceed due to concerns around disrupting the business, the costs involved, or the time it would take to implement a new system and transition away from the existing one. However, the days of massive integration projects led by large, expensive teams of systems integrators that take months or longer to execute are behind us.
In this new interconnected AI world, implementation and configuration times are dramatically reduced. AI agents, APIs, and adapters are among the variety of tools that can seamlessly integrate a cloud billing platform into the back-office technology ecosystem at the pace of the enterprise’s choosing.
This means that new products and services can go live in a matter of days or even hours. Using AI data tools, consumption pricing plans can be created and optimized based on expected usage patterns. Pre-determined triggers can alert providers to changes in behavior or unusual activity, prompting proactive engagement and enabling enterprises to quickly reap the benefits of their billing investment.
AI success depends on a modern, integrated AI-ready billing platform
AI promises to dramatically reduce costs and accelerate revenue growth. But it isn’t possible without an AI-ready billing system that is designed to interoperate with the many platforms in the ecosystem that rely on billing data to support customers.
Aria’s AI-ready cloud billing platform is designed for enterprises eager to monetize AI products and services and to leverage AI to enhance customer experiences and optimize billing and back-office operations across the ecosystem. With pre-existing integrations with Salesforce and ServiceNow, along with Aria Data Connect and Aria Billie Connect™, Aria enables enterprises to access, deploy, and migrate customers to a modern and powerful AI-enabled billing platform quickly, easily, and with minimal disruption.
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