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Business Strategy3 min read

5 signs you’ve outgrown your subscription platform

Introduction

It's understandable that when you first launch a subscription based product or service, you might not choose to invest in the gold standard of platforms if your existing tech stack will enable you to get started. 

However, at some point your business will reach a stage when it outgrows that platform and needs specialist capabilities that enable you to grow. Ideally you want to make that switch before your customers start experiencing the negative effects of a system that can't cope, or before the limitations stop you from pursuing new acquisition strategies.

ARROW RIGHT The question is, how do you know the time is right?

Here are five signs your business has outgrown
your subscription platform and you're ready for the next step.

 

Sign #01

You can't create new customer journeys

An essential part of a thriving subscription business is giving customers options that tailor the experience to them. That might mean creating a new cancellation flow, an upsell journey or targeting a specific customer segment. When you're at a point where you can't manage simple customer journey amendments without long and complex lead times filled with hard coding, it's time to upgrade your system.

 

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Sign #02

You're having problems with pricing, billing and accounting 

Processes can quickly become complicated in subscription businesses as your user base grows and you start selling into different segments. If you're having to manage subscription changes, like upgrades, downgrade, and co-terming, manually, then not only does it become expensive as your need for more staff members escalates but efficiency declines. This will have a negative impact on your bottom line, and it will be detrimental to customers if you bill them incorrectly, thereby increasing customer churn.

 

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Sign #03

You can't manage all your products

As your product catalog grows it becomes overwhelming to maintain. You need products to be easily accessible, understandable and usable for your sales team, but if you have hundreds of product variants with different pricing, discounts, add ons and dependencies, you're going to make mistakes manually. If you can’t grow your offering the way you want, it’s time to upgrade to a system with an elastic product catalog.

 

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Sign #04

You keep having to build custom integrations for new channels

Partnerships and third party sales channels can be a powerful way of expanding your sales strategy. You need to be able to communicate to your partner exactly how to sell your offering and make it easy to do. That's not a native feature in anything other than a dedicated subscription billing tool, which means you will need to build custom integrations and hard code the user journeys for sales reps and partners. As with all other customizations, the more you do, the more complicated and unwieldy it becomes, leading to costly errors and ineffective sales tools.

 

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Sign #05

You can't get accurate data reports

Understanding customer behaviors through accurate reporting is essential for the ongoing development of your business. However, too many customizations and integrations between systems makes it hard to collect a consistent data stream. If you can’t get accurate information to develop your product, service or customer experience—you’ve outgrown your system.

 

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Solution

About keylight

At keylight we've helped businesses across a variety of sectors to transform their subscription technology ecosystem.

"A common issue we see is that businesses get stuck when they reach a point of too much customization in different systems making it difficult to manage."

The longer the issue persists, the more costly it is to sustain growth, and the more their visionary ideas get put on hold. keylight's platform introduces flexibility, minimizes customizations, and removes limitations for you to scale. If these five points sound familiar to you, it might be time to review your subscription tech stack, and we can help you do that free of charge.

 

keylight Insights

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