Welcome to The Margin, a newsletter designed to keep you on the leading edge of monetization.

In business, the difference between being ahead of the curve or slow to adapt is anything but marginal. The Margin aims to be the most useful, timely, and incisive ping that hits your inbox all week. It includes critical research and analyst insights to inform short and long-term decision making.

Here’s what you need to know:

Research spotlight | How can pricing & billing strategy improve retention?

  • Pricing is a powerful, if underutilized, strategic tool. An agile billing system can help maximize its potential, but that’s not all there is to it.
  • Though billing is often thought of as a back-office bore, it is a tangible aspect of a company’s brand. How much of a chore is it to deal with bills? The answer to this question has a direct impact on customer satisfaction.
  • If you need to better understand pricing, billing, metering, and payment methods in use today, this research note provides a comprehensive overview.
  • While introducing new price models is often done in response to rising costs or competitive threats, this research note explains how price changes can enhance retention.

On the horizon | Select emerging growth companies are getting funded. Why?

  • We speak with hundreds of technology buyers and sellers every year. (We’ll cover 50 leading agile billing providers in our upcoming series of 360 Ratings™ in Agile Billing.)
  • In the course of recent conversations, we’ve been encouraged to hear startups are still getting financed – despite what you may have read.
  • Stripe and OpenAI aren’t the only companies getting VC funding. Early-stage startups still have a chance – one start-up we spoke to just raised a $9Mil Series A.
  • More details in the next issue of The Margin. Stay tuned.

A story you can’t afford to miss | Zoholics 2023

  • Zoho – the $1 billion company no one knows about
  • The company upends conventional wisdom when it comes to business applications
  • Zoho demonstrates how global software demand truly is – as well as the centrality of the US market
  • While others are trying to go upmarket, Zoho introduced offerings for entrepreneurs forming new companies. Will Zoho’s iconoclastic approach continue to find success?

Tune into MGI | Webinar: The 13 Deadly Sins of Agile Monetization

Now let’s dive a bit deeper.

Research Spotlight

Three gears filled with the text Billing Strategy, Customer Satisfaction and Pricing Strategy

How Can Pricing & Billing Strategy Improve Retention?

Pricing can be a secret weapon. However, most businesses lack the preparation, knowledge, and agility to wield it successfully. Too many companies view pricing as an isolated business unit. They only raise or lower prices reactively, often in response to changing input costs.

Instead, imagine pricing as a gear that interlocks with billing and, in turn, customer satisfaction. As one gear turns, so do the others.

When dealing with pricing, companies are challenged by three significant factors: knowledge, agility, and strategy.

  • To boost your knowledge, read Pricing & Payment Flexibility: A Strategic Business Tool. This research note provides an overview of the major pricing & billing models for recurring revenue relationships and describes their typical use cases, benefits, and complications. It also details (woefully underutilized) metering attributes and common payment methods that can be combined with pricing strategy.
  • To boost your agility and strategy, read Developing a Pricing and Billing Strategy for Durable Competitive Advantage. This research note explores the relationship between pricing, billing, and retention. Adopting proactive, creative approaches to pricing can take the friction out of billing and power customer satisfaction.

Why it matters | Applied correctly, pricing differentiates a brand, accelerates growth, improves profitability, opens new markets, and reduces customer churn.

The bottom line | Rapid price experimentation is good – and must be done with the billing system in mind.

  • Creating new pricing models can open a world of better business results.
  • Ensuring durability and scalability of those results requires agile tools for finance, billing, and customer success.

A Story You Can't Afford to Miss

A man speaking at a Zoholics conference

Zoholics Austin 2023

  • Several hundred Zoho customers attended the Zoholics user conference in Austin last week
  • Founded in 1996, Zoho is approaching 100 million users and ~$1 billion in revenues (MGI estimates – Zoho is privately held)
  • What is behind the success of one of business software’s largest but least known companies?

Under the hood | Zoho proves that small companies with modest budgets should not be relegated to buying tired, old technology solutions. Zoho is best known for its CRM and Zoho One products.

  • It has an exceptionally broad range of offerings – from CRM and marketing to online collaboration to core financials and subscription billing.
  • While “fit and finish” may lag, the reach of overall functionality impresses nonetheless.

It has an effective freemium-to-paid online sales motion. Once viewed as lightweight, its current CRM product is capable, runs without requiring expensive admins, and yields a high value-to-cost equation. The Zoho One suite provides a lot of features (financials, inventory, expenses, billing, et al) to run a small-to-midsize operation.

  • Fortune 500 customers find Zoho apps attractive for single offices, small plants, and departmental use cases.
  • With its own AI (“Zia”) and a sharp focus on user privacy, Zoho shows what is possible when a software company commits to constant innovation.
  • It is investing in finance areas (like billing) that help customers differentiate their business.

With low sales and marketing expense, plus India-based R&D and support, Zoho sells profitably to small businesses – even though this segment is naturally prone to high churn. The US is its largest geographic market, but it also has a meaningful customer base in Europe, Africa, and Asia (especially in India, where its value prop has strong appeal).

Why you should care | Zoho is one of the most improbable success stories in application software.

  • It received no outside funding.
  • It sells almost entirely online.
  • Its customers are predominately “value-oriented” small-to-midsize companies – and large, established brands.
  • The company excels at bringing business applications and services to buyers across a wide range of verticals all over the world.
  • It delivers comparable functionality to its peers, but for a tenth of the cost.

The bottom line | As one of the few enterprise application vendors focused on selling to small and midsize companies globally, Zoho addresses an underserved segment of the market. Zoho’s value prop excels in today’s value-driven buying market.

So What Have I Missed?

So What Have I Missed?

The Topical 20 | Our most recent and relevant research that will help you keep your finger on the pulse of AMP disciplines.

1. Going Global With E-Commerce

2. Tech Trends: Mapping the Software Industry

3. Configure-Price-Quote (CPQ) TAM Forecast 2022–2026

4. The Future of CLM Is Data-1st

5. Declouding: Will Curiosity Inspire Action?

6. Dirty Data Kills!

7. Q2C Success: What Does It Take To Achieve Excellence?

8. 2024 Tech Budgets Preview — Webinar

9. Here Comes Usage! Adopting & Optimizing Consumption Business Models — Webinar

10. The Agile Billing Top 50 Webinar

11. The Agile Billing Top 50: A Buyer’s Guide

12. MGI Forecasts: Service-as-a-Business (SaaB) Software Global TAM Forecast 2022–2026

13. MGI Forecasts: Finance Automation for Services Organizations (FASO) Software Global TAM Forecast 2022–2026

14. Survival of the Fittest: Managing Extreme Economic Uncertainty

15. The Global Tech Market Is Bigger Than You Think

16. Is Software Still Eating the World?

17. Not a Typical Recession: Making Sense of the Global Economy

18. Use Case Note™: Opencell in Agile Billing

19. 360 Rating™: Icertis in CLM

20. The 13 Deadly Sins of Agile Monetization

and 32 other Use Case Notes!

The Evergreen Archives | Curated past research that is still pertinent today.

1. Quote-to-Cash Is Dead; Long Live Prospect-to-Disclosure

2. What Every CEO Needs to Know About Subscription Business

3. Evolution of MoR into Monetization as a Service

4. Mediation 2.0: Taking on the Data Challenge in Agile Billing

5. The Six Stages of CLM

6. Headless eCommerce Architecture: Is eCommerce Losing Its Head?

7. How to Scale Monetization Globally

8. Ten Digital Payment Trends Every CEO Must Understand

Tune in to MGI | Don’t forget to check out MGI’s latest podcast appearance on Monetize360’s Monetization Masters.

As a frequent speaker at industry events and speakers, MGI is always open to new opportunities to facilitate more valuable discourse in the monetization landscape.

Feel free to contact us via the button below to discuss your next speaking engagement.

That’s all for this issue of The Margin. If you’ve made it this far, we’ll certainly see you next time.

Warm Wishes, MGI Research

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