Common Business Flows on Subscriptions

Offering Subscription packages

A subscription package reflects your company's marketing offering that allows your customers to subscribe to, for a fixed set of services and for a fixed price. In CRM.COM you have the option to either set up and sell packages to your customers with fixed services and price, or provide them with a list of services (a-la-carte services) from which customers can select and subscribed to.

Packages are set up by setting the classification of ‘Subscription types’ to 'Package'.

Providing subscriptions or subscription services free of charge

Subscription services that are provided for free cannot be disconnected due to outstanding or insufficient funds. A free service can be converted to a paying service and start being billed as from the next billing period.

A service is defined as free through the billing term scheme configuration ('Free Subscription').

Discounting subscriptions

There are two ways to offer discounts on subscriptions:

1. Through price plans, based on purchased quantity or subscription conditions (such as billing frequency, binding period or account classification).
2. Through additive discounts, which are applied to a subscription based on subscription or account conditions, or selected by the agents creating the subscription by using the Provide Ad Hoc Discount action.

Using subscriptions for multiple units

A subscription can be used by a single unit (home) or concurrently by multi-units (cafes, restaurants and sports bars). CRM.COM makes it possible to bill a subscription based on the concurrent use of services, using a rate agreed upon between the customer and service provider.

A subscription is enabled for concurrent usage and the number of concurrent units is defined, through the billing term scheme, when the subscription is created.

The following formula is used to calculate the total subscription rate for billing purposes:

Total Subscription Rate = Subscription Rate * Concurrent Usage Rate Percentage * Concurrent Usage  
(E.g., $1000/month = $50/month * 20% * 100 rooms)

Communicating subscriptions 

Subscriptions details can be communicated to customers by using the Communication action available from the Actions menu on the Data Entry page. You can use tags related to subscriptions (text that is automatically replaced by values specific to selected records) when creating communications. Tags are available for selection by typing '#'. Refer to the Communications manual for a complete list of subscriptions tags.

Approving subscriptions

Subscriptions can be configured to require approval from a specific user before they are further processed. This is done by setting up Approval Definitions and triggering Workflow Rules.  For more information refer to Managing Approval Requests.

Automation on subscriptions

Subscription processes can be automated by using Workflows.  For example, you can use alerts to contact users or schedule activities, when a subscription of a specific type is created.  For more information refer to Workflows.