SEO tools, software licenses, image and video editing programs, email marketing platforms… Practically all of the marketing tools already depends on the online subscriptions. And to manage their acquisition and renewal, a series of technological tools that greatly help to streamline and simplify these periodic payments.
The subscription-based business models have grown by more than 300% in recent yearsaccording to the marketing and advertising consultancy Scopen, and the b2B subscriptions are no exception. The boom in subscription economy is such that there is already a name for it: “subscronomics“.
The dilemma of subscription management: centralize or decentralize?
In organizations above a certain size it is complicated to centralize the entire process involved in managing purchases and subscriptionsbecause the manager would have to dedicate an enormous amount of time to the procedures of each purchase, renewal and payment for each of the marketing tools or actions.
Ideally, the best solution is decentralize payment managementgiving autonomy to the various teams and professionals to manage and make payments for the tools they use. However, the lack of control and visibility of expenditures may lead to an overlap of subscriptions, to the chaos in expense justification and VAT recovery or even to cases of internal fraud.
Therefore, the key is decentralizing expense management, but without the manager losing control. And this can only be achieved with the help of technological solutions designed for this purpose.
End-to-end management in subscriptions
Solutions for purchasing and subscription management organize the procurement flow, which includes expense request, authorization, payment and invoice accounting. In addition, they avoid the problems arising from sharing a single corporate card for business expenses (lack of control, inadequate use, etc.), as these solutions establish a pre-payment approval systemdepending on variables such as organizational structure or analytical concepts.
Oscar LlonchcRO of Inologyan enterprise software development company founded in 1986 with the solution Tickelia for business expense management, explains that in order to avoid sharing company cards, the most modern applications such as the one mentioned above “generate a single virtual card for the approved subscription with the exact amount. Once payment is made, the card is disabled as a cybersecurity measure and to avoid overcharging.” Automation also means being able to setting limits and restrictions usage limits and restrictions via alerts, as well as pause or cancel subscriptions with a single click.
“With the end-to-end management, managers gain greater control and visibility into the spending their team is making“Llonch adds, “ensuring that no undue or over-budget expenses are paid”.
The digitized management of purchases and subscriptions also automates invoice management, since all you have to do is drag the documents to the platform and the program reconciles the expenseand automatically accounts for them thanks to the integration with management or ERP software.
