Deciphering Online Billing Platforms

The opportunity to serve more than 195 million online adults with goods, content, and services has drawn businesses to the Internet. Building an online product is relatively easy; monetizing it has proven to be the difficult part. Many online businesses tackle monetization on their own with homegrown billing systems that often lack the foresight and functionality to deal with rapidly changing business conditions. To meet this need, a new category of vendor called online billing service providers has entered the fray, providing platforms that can handle billing, as well as provide data to support sales and marketing. Before committing to one of these vendors, online business managers need to understand that the vendor landscape is still taking shape, and there are many pitfalls. As such, Forrester recommends having a solid game plan of what you want to achieve with your billing system sketched out before engaging with one of these vendors.