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A subscription journey starts with identifying and prioritizing the business's main assets—the users.

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Guide #01

Omnichannel strategy made simple

Subscription Commerce

Person working on laptop illustrating omnichannel subscription commerce strategy — Challenges & Solutions Guide 1
Introduction — growing subscription businesses through self-service and reseller channels for long-term customer relationships and dynamic monetization

Subscription businesses thrive on long-term customer relationships and dynamic monetization possibilities.

 

With self-service and reseller channels, businesses gain more touchpoints for engagement, creating more opportunities for growth.

To enable these commerce avenues, companies usually decide to:

Option ABuild their solutions on top of the billing platform, and try to connect these applications with their CRM, ERP, and marketing tools.

Option B

Purchase a commerce solution and try integrating it with the existing billing or financial systems within the organization.

However, both solutions present ongoing challenges. Billing systems and subscription platforms, originally built for repeat invoicing, often struggle to adapt to the ever-evolving digital landscape.

While expanding budgets and teams can address these issues by building customized solutions, significant effort and high costs are continuously required for businesses to reach their goals. This complexity not only strains teams but also affects the overall competitiveness of the business.

Read on about the five most common subscription commerce  challenges and our solutions 

Challenge 01: Flexibility — lack of flexibility and functionality for subscription models and self-service options in the customer journey

A lack of flexibility and functionality for subscription models

 

How come businesses don’t offer self-service options in the customer journey?

The challenge
Legacy billing platforms can sometimes slow down growth channel initiatives. They often require custom development to meet modern needs, such as customer self-service and reseller onboarding. Originally designed for basic invoicing, these systems may require businesses to adjust their product and pricing structures to align with the platform. If not, inefficiencies and added complexity can affect both the sales process and customer experience.

The impact

Target icon representing impact
Impact #1
Increased cost of sale


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Impact #2
Limited options to sell in ways that align with the market and customer needs
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Impact #3
Poor usability leads to operational inefficiency and manual errors


The keylight solution
A modern architecture designed for today’s business needs, offering flexibility and adaptability. Self-service offerings and guided selling journeys can be quickly configured and deployed across all channels within a few hours. keylight’s comprehensive frontend applications are pre-integrated with the headless backend system, using unified logic to help teams implement new commercial strategies with minimal resources.

Challenge 02: Lifecycle — limited understanding of subscriber lifecycle and converting trial customers to paying customers

A limited understanding of subscriber lifecycle

 

How do you convert trial customers to paying customers with your commerce solution?

The challenge
Traditional platforms are typically designed for one-off product sales and transactional processes. In contrast, modern customer relationships, especially in subscription models, are dynamic and involve numerous interactions over time. Accurately tracking actions and events throughout the contract lifecycle—such as differentiating between trial and paying customers or handling upgrades and downgrades—often requires a new architectural approach. More complex actions, like contract amendments, subscription pauses, or reactivations, add further layers of difficulty in ensuring visibility and effective customer management.


The impact

Target icon representing impact
Impact #1
Lost opportunities from insufficient customer understanding

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Impact #2
Operational inefficiency due to manual contract management for subscriptions
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Impact #3
Lack of data for timely customer engagement and churn prevention


The keylight solution
An event-driven architecture and data model are natively designed for users to effortlessly purchase, sell, and manage subscriptions. With commerce logic pre-integrated into the billing engine, businesses can automate processes throughout the customer journey, track the most relevant metrics, and compile analytics on fully configurable dashboards within keylight. These insights provide a clear view of customer subscription activities, helping to drive engagement and prevent churn.

Challenge 03: Launch Time — long lead times, high project risks, and lack of innovation in implementing channel promotions with subscription systems

Long lead times, high  project risks, and a lack of innovation

 

How long does it take to implement a channel promotion with your subscription systems?

The challenge
Rolling out new commercial strategies for customer or reseller segments often involves a considerable upfront investment of time and resources. The complexity is heightened by potential system integration challenges from decoupled systems and dependencies in legacy platforms, as well as the uncertainty of the strategy’s outcome. These factors can slow a business’s ability to adapt quickly to market shifts and evolving customer needs.

 

The impact

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Impact #1
Lost competitive edge
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Impact #2
A lack of scalability
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Impact #3
Frustrated users
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Impact #4
Limited capacity for innovation 


The keylight solution
keylight offers a powerful end-to-end business engine that streamlines everything from commerce, subscription management, and billing to analytics, with fully configurable logic for any if/then commercial scenario, including automated price selection and channel-specific promotions. Built on a MACH-based architecture, it eliminates the need for complex integrations and backend custom development, allowing new ideas and incentives to enhance commerce experiences across channels, accounts, and entities to be rolled out in just a few hours.

Subscription Success Cycle

A holistic view of subscription business processes and system requirements


A mindset shift  Don‘t only try to sell products and services, but create experiences and relationships.

Iterative approach  The complexity of the model requires iterative thinking and development.

Data Use  good and structured data to optimize customer journey and pricing models.

Subscription commerce lifecycle wheel showing Launch, Acquire, Engage, Experiment, Understand, and Expand phases centered on user experience, automation, and predictive analytics
Challenge 04: User Experience — poor user experience across channels, countries, and brands in subscription commerce growth

Poor user experience across channels/ countries/brands

 

Will the growth pain eventually stop when your business reaches its maturity level?

The challenge
One of the ongoing challenges with traditional billing platforms is that usability issues can persist as a subscription business grows. As businesses expand into new markets, these complexities increase. Success often introduces the need for localized product catalogs and customer journeys, adaptations in billing and payment processes for local requirements, and more sophisticated automation for currency conversions and accounting. IT departments are tasked with balancing new solutions while maintaining existing systems, effectively managing integrations, maintenance, and evolving business needs.

The impact

impact6
Impact #1
Lost time and missed opportunities
impact6
Impact #2
Lost business focus in technical debt
impact6
Impact #3
Poor frontend and backend usability resulting from fragmented solutions
impact6
Impact #4
Rising operational costs from increased staffing needs


The keylight solution
A future-proof and flexible subscription system for all international business needs. keylight’s native commerce capabilities support multiple languages and currencies, seamlessly integrated with backend processes like multi-currency billing and automating journal entries for foreign exchange losses and gains. Account hierarchies, sales organization structures, and market regulations are smoothly implemented across new channels and brands through centralized or local administration.

Challenge 05: Extensibility — lack of extensibility and high-maintenance integrations in subscription commerce systems

A lack of extensibility and high-maintenance integrations

 

“You can integrate any system but only at those specific events”.

Does this statement sound familiar?

The challenge
Projects to build or connect commerce channels with billing systems often face budget overruns and long implementation times. Legacy subscription management and billing platforms were designed with early business needs in mind and limit the expansion of modern subscription businesses. Consequently, internal teams may face difficulties with prolonged projects and have reduced capacity to be creative, improve customer experience and boost business revenue.

 

The impact

Target icon representing impact
Impact #1
High costs for building core functionalities in subscription platforms
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Impact #2
Limited access to data due to complex integrations

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Impact #3
Insolvent projects due to depleted resources
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Impact #4
Compromised business vision


The keylight solution
A truly user-centric business system empowers non-technical teams to configure comprehensive processes, including commerce channels, while enabling engineering teams to customize and integrate tools to maintain brand consistency. With keylight’s unmatched technical flexibility, businesses can seamlessly combine “buy and build” strategies to meet unique requirements, stand out from competitors, and remain agile at all times.

The Subscription Trinity

Once businesses have shifted to a user-centric mindset,
an ecosystem that facilitates change and innovation takes shape.

Subscription Trinity diagram showing user experience, automation, and predictive analytics connected through applications to a uniform user-centric model
keylight Resolution — solving omnichannel subscription commerce challenges through user experience, pre-built solutions, and modern architecture

Resolution #1

Prioritize user
experience

Beyond your unique product offering, standing out requires speed, personalization, and seamless user interactions throughout the commerce experience.

Resolution #2

Buy 95% and
build 5%

Leverage comprehensive, easy-to-use pre-built solutions as building blocks to quickly and cost-effectively create new revenue channels. This positions your business to capture more revenue and market share from day one.

Resolution #3

Implement modern architecture

Drawing on extensive experience with legacy systems, keylight addresses challenges through robust system connectivity and data integration. It’s designed to help businesses scale effortlessly in any direction.

Customer Self-Service

Maximize subscription customer lifetime value

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keylight guide on maximizing subscription customer lifetime value through customer self-service — 5 Challenges & Solutions Guide 2