Cerillion Blog
The Cerillion Blog provides a regular feed of company news, industry insight and informed opinion, all delivered by a team of recognised experts from across the company
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Free trials: something for nothing, or trial and error?
With an overabundance of subscription offerings all vying for the attention of potential customers, businesses must ensure that their free trials, the gateway to their service for many, provide a rounded customer experience without misleading expectations. How can subscription businesses accomplish this – and leave them wanting more?
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Onboarding Made Easy with Cerillion Skyline
Now more than ever, it’s critical for subscription businesses to automate billing processes. How does Cerillion’s assisted implementation service ensure that a customer’s bespoke charging and billing platform is ready for launch in as little as three weeks? We break down the onboarding process from start to finish in simple terms.
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Multicloud and distributed cloud: An industry primer
With more and more enterprises turning to multiple cloud services, a move to distributed cloud set-ups becomes increasingly likely – perhaps even necessary. What are the differences between these two discrete cloud implementations, and what are the relative benefits and drawbacks of each approach? Cerillion Product Director Brian Coombs writes.
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The hard resell: dealers, distributors and Skyline
Large service providers are relying on smaller dealers and distributors to do the heavy lifting of product or service sales. How does a subscription billing system like Cerillion Skyline create a unified sales repository for these various resellers?
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The doctor will see you now: subscription health apps
With the world facing the biggest healthcare crisis this century, subscription telehealth services are being deployed at an unprecedented rate, using mobile apps to deliver medical care outside the surgery. What are the pros and cons of telehealth treatments – and who foots the bill?
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Zombie accounts and dark patterns: the ethics of billing inactive customers
With Netflix announcing their decision to close the accounts of inactive customers, should other subscription businesses reconsider how they deal with “zombie accounts” who pay their fees but don’t engage with a service? Is the decision a strictly moral choice, or is there a financial benefit behind it too?
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Subscription Trends 2020: the mid-year assessment
We cast our minds back to the beginning of the year, once again, and to the five predictions that Cerillion made for the biggest trends for the subscription industry in 2020; how have recent developments treated these expectations over half a year later?
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Smart Devices, Smarter Billing: Subscriptions in the IoT Age
Businesses across all industries are identifying new and increasingly innovative sources of revenue, thanks to the ever-growing opportunities presented by the Internet of Things (IoT). How can subscription businesses capitalise on the potential of embedded sensor-based technology?
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Generation Rent: why the future of subscriptions rests with the kids
Millennials and Generation Z account for a significant majority of users of subscription services. As their share of the public spend increases, how can businesses ensure their offerings meet the expectations of this diverse, difficult audience?
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Balance Management: Adding a new dimension to your subscription services
The latest release of Cerillion Skyline, our subscription billing platform, introduces powerful balance management features, extending the monetisation capabilities of your usage-based services with the addition of flexible unit and money-based allowances.
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Subscription management software: Buy or Build?
The goal of any major software project should be to solve a business problem or streamline a business process in the most cost-effective way. So, when deciding on mission-critical software for your business operations, what are the relative merits of building in-house versus buying an off-the-shelf solution?
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Coronavirus: A clean bill of health for the subscriptions industry?
As the coronavirus pandemic continues to bite into everyday lives, consumption habits have been massively upended by closures and social distancing measures. We’ve previously covered how the telecoms world is faring amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, but how are the many subscription services responding in this time of crisis, and what lessons are there in these cases?
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Nanobusiness: is your business ready?
Service providers are outdoing one another to make 5G and FTTP announcements. But where are the new revenues going to come from to pay for these investments? Many are turning their attention to the business market. But with more people working from home - either for environmental reasons or, latterly, for business continuity purposes during the global coronavirus crisis – and many others becoming entrepreneurs or juggling side gigs, the business market itself is changing. Guest blogger, Teresa Cottam, looks at these changes and offers some pointers as to how to position for the new opportunities being presented.
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Cerillion Product Forum 2020: Taking a bold step online
Last month, Cerillion was joined by clients from around the world for its latest product forum – the first to take place wholly online – setting out the roadmap for its software solutions for the next year. Adam Hughes reports back from the virtual meeting room.
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Cerillion Q&A: Delivering digital best practice from home
Cerillion is a couple of weeks into remote working, with every department striving to ensure that it’s business as usual. Adam Hughes spoke with Amit McCann, Delivery Director at Cerillion, to see what effect the coronavirus is having on the company’s projects.
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Coronavirus: how the telecoms world is answering the call
The global outbreak of novel coronavirus, or COVID-19, continues to dominate the news cycle, as it wreaks havoc on all aspects of life; the telecoms industry has been no different. With providers having their usual processes disrupted and users even more dependent on their communications services while in isolation, how is the industry responding to its greatest ever challenge?
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Read all about it… online: How newspapers are thriving on digital subscriptions
Once the standard-bearers of subscriptions, print newspaper revenues are increasingly under threat in an ever more competitive market of 24-hour and online news. With papers betting big on digital subscriptions to keep the presses running, what strategies are the biggest publications adopting to avoid becoming tomorrow’s fish and chip paper?
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How subscriptions are revolutionising the customer experience
Despite all the focus on the business dividends, it’s the consumer who is the ultimate beneficiary of the subscription billing model. While subscriptions have been around for decades, the unprecedented level of service control now offered has not. But beyond the mere convenience, what are the biggest benefits of subscriptions for customers?
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Automated billing: Five reasons why your sales team should care
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“Do I feel lucky?” Well do ya, punk? Why MoviePass’ subscription service failed
For all the success stories of the booming subscription industry, we cannot forget there are some high-profile failures of the model too. MoviePass, the cinema ticket subscription service, was once the stuff that dreams are made of; now it’s a business for ants. Adam Hughes performs the post-mortem on this now-bankrupt cinema subscription service to see what their mistakes could mean for other subscription businesses.
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Head in the clouds or back down to earth?
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Four hopes and expectations for MWC20
MWC Barcelona is coming up once again, with Cerillion demonstrating its full product suite alongside the latest industry developments, innovations and more. Brian Coombs, Cerillion Product Director, shares what he hopes to see around the exhibition and compares this with what he expects to be the reality.
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Top Five Subscription Business Trends for 2020
As we usher in a new decade for the subscription industry, there is no doubt that businesses in the space will find more ways to engage customers, create new revenue streams and innovate with unique approaches. Shashank Venkat looks into the trends that mark the beginnings of a period where the subscription model is poised to become the default for most businesses.
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OpenRAN gains further momentum with Vodafone, MTN push
Recently, Vodafone surprised the telecoms industry by announcing that it is thinking about shifting its entire European mobile sites to Open Radio Access Network (OpenRAN) technology. MTN has also announced a new partnership with Parallel Wireless to deploy 5,000 OpenRAN sites in Africa. Is this the spark OpenRAN needs to succeed?
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From microservices to hybrid services architectures
Microservices architecture has been hyped as the latest and greatest software model that will increase your flexibility, accelerate time-to-market and underpin your digital transformations. However, it’s not without its drawbacks. Brian Coombs, Product Director at Cerillion, explains why a pragmatic approach is required to ensure microservices are used where there are significant benefits to be gained, and not just for the sake of it.
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Celebrating 20 years of Cerillion
Following our 20th birthday on 4th October, we have been sharing our highlights of #TheCerillionYears on our social media channels. Here’s a special blog post that looks back on Cerillion’s most important milestones and the evolution of the industry over the past two decades.