The subscription business model has become the primary way of doing business in many consumer sectors and in the B2B SaaS world. Many industrial companies have also launched subscription business models to complement, augment, or diversify their product business portfolio. Companies like Toyota, ABB, Thales, Siemens, Scania, Schindler, Honeywell, Caterpillar, Schneider Electric, and many more have successfully done so. Others are just getting started. This book offers a practical roadmap for getting started, designing a new business model, pricing industrial subscriptions, and scaling them successfully. It's designed to be a cookbook of best practices, tips, stories, and case studies to accelerate time to value. The industrial world is unique and requires its own approach to subscription business models. Welcome to the Industrial Subscription Economy!
SHORTLISTED FOR THE CMI MANAGEMENT BOOK OF THE YEAR INNOVATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP AWARD Today's consumers prefer the advantages of access over the hassles of ownership. It's not just internet services like Netflix and Spotify; even industrial firms like GE and Caterpillar are reinventing themselves as solutions providers. Whether you sell software, clothes, insurance, or industrial machines, you need to master the transition to the subscription model. Adapting to the subscription economy takes more than just deciding to sell subscriptions instead of products. You'll have to reinvent your company from the inside out -- from your accounting to your entire IT architecture. No matter how large or small your company, Subscribed gives you a practical, step-by-step framework to rebuild your business around a customer-centric, recurring revenue model.In ten years, we'll be subscribing to everything: information technology, transportation, retail, healthcare, even housing. Informed by insights straight from the servers of Zuora, the world's largest subscription finance platform, Subscribed is the book that explains how this shift really works -- and how business leaders can prepare and prosper.
The lifeblood of your business is repeat customers. But customers can be fickle, markets shift, and competitors are ruthless. So how do you ensure a steady flow of repeat business? The secret—no matter what industry you’re in—is finding and keeping automatic customers. These days virtually anything you need can be purchased through a subscription, with more convenience than ever before. Far beyond Spotify, Netflix, and New York Times subscriptions, you can sign up for weekly or monthly supplies of everything from groceries (AmazonFresh) to cosmetics (Birchbox) to razor blades (Dollar Shave Club). According to John Warrillow, this emerging subscription economy offers huge opportunities to companies that know how to turn customers into subscribers. Automatic customers are the key to increasing cash flow, igniting growth, and boosting the value of your company. Consider Whatsapp, the internet-based messaging service that was purchased by Facebook for $19 billion. While other services bombarded users with invasive ads in order to fund a free messaging platform, Whatsapp offered a refreshingly private tool on a subscription platform, charging just $1 per year. Their business model enabled the kind of service that customers wanted and ensured automatic customers for years to come. As Warrillow shows, subscriptions aren’t limited to technology or media businesses. Companies in nearly any industry, from start-ups to the Fortune 500, from home contractors to florists, can build subscriptions into their business. Warrillow provides the essential blueprint for winning automatic customers with one of the nine subscription business models, including: • The Membership Website Model: Companies like The Wood Whisperer Guild, ContractorSelling, and DanceStudioOwner offer access to highly specialized, high quality information, recognizing that people will pay for good content. This model can work for any business with a tightly defined niche market and insider information. • The Simplifier Model: Companies like Mosquito Squad (pest control) and Hassle Free Homes (home maintenance) take a recurring task off your to-do list. Any business serving busy consumers can adopt this model not only to create a recurring revenue stream, but also to take advantage of the opportunity to cross-sell or bundle their services. • The Surprise Box Model: Companies like BarkBox (dog treats) and Standard Cocoa (craft chocolate) send their subscribers curated packages of goodies each month. If you can handle the logistics of shipping, giving customers joy in something new can translate to sales on your larger e-commerce site. This book also shows you how to master the psychology of selling subscriptions and how to reduce churn and provides a road map for the essential statistics you need to measure the health of your subscription business. Whether you want to transform your entire business into a recurring revenue engine or just pick up an extra 5 percent of sales growth, The Automatic Customer will be your secret weapon.
World-renowned economist Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, explains that we have an opportunity to shape the fourth industrial revolution, which will fundamentally alter how we live and work. Schwab argues that this revolution is different in scale, scope and complexity from any that have come before. Characterized by a range of new technologies that are fusing the physical, digital and biological worlds, the developments are affecting all disciplines, economies, industries and governments, and even challenging ideas about what it means to be human. Artificial intelligence is already all around us, from supercomputers, drones and virtual assistants to 3D printing, DNA sequencing, smart thermostats, wearable sensors and microchips smaller than a grain of sand. But this is just the beginning: nanomaterials 200 times stronger than steel and a million times thinner than a strand of hair and the first transplant of a 3D printed liver are already in development. Imagine “smart factories” in which global systems of manufacturing are coordinated virtually, or implantable mobile phones made of biosynthetic materials. The fourth industrial revolution, says Schwab, is more significant, and its ramifications more profound, than in any prior period of human history. He outlines the key technologies driving this revolution and discusses the major impacts expected on government, business, civil society and individuals. Schwab also offers bold ideas on how to harness these changes and shape a better future—one in which technology empowers people rather than replaces them; progress serves society rather than disrupts it; and in which innovators respect moral and ethical boundaries rather than cross them. We all have the opportunity to contribute to developing new frameworks that advance progress.
The "membership" business models of Netflix, Weight Watchers, and other industry giants revealed—and how you can use them to lead your company to the top of the food chain For decades, consumers and businesses have joined clubs, bought products and accessed services using a subscription model. But it has only been in recent years that the model has been transformed and perfected through massive changes in technology. The Membership Economy shows how nimble companies that focus on ongoing, formal relationships over one-time transactions are thriving. By renting, lending, or offering access instead of just "ownership," organizations can leapfrog industry leaders. In terms of strategic business models, this is one that allows for breakthrough growth. With great case studies from American Express, LinkedIn, CrossFit, SurveyMonkey, and more, this book will show you how to radically rethink how your organization can build loyalty, viral growth, and recurring revenue.
In recent years, digital business models have frequently been the subject of academic and practical discourse. The increasing interconnectivity across the entire supply chain, which is subsumed under the term Industry 4.0, can unlock even farther-reaching potentials for digital business models, affecting entire supply chains and ecosystems. This book examines the specific challenges and obstacles that supply chain and ecosystem management poses with regard to the development of digital business models. The top-quality contributions gathered here focus on the successful implementation of Industry 4.0 in digital business models for industrial organizations in a European context, making the book a valuable asset for researchers and practitioners alike.
This text seeks to raise the curtain on competitive pricing strategies and asserts that businesses often miss their best opportunity for providing consumers with what they want - an experience. It presents a strategy for companies to script and stage the experiences provided by their products.
The beating heart of any product or service business is returning clients. Don't let your hard-won customers vanish, taking their money with them. In Fighting Churn with Data you'll learn powerful data-driven techniques to maximize customer retention and minimize actions that cause them to stop engaging or unsubscribe altogether. Summary The beating heart of any product or service business is returning clients. Don't let your hard-won customers vanish, taking their money with them. In Fighting Churn with Data you'll learn powerful data-driven techniques to maximize customer retention and minimize actions that cause them to stop engaging or unsubscribe altogether. This hands-on guide is packed with techniques for converting raw data into measurable metrics, testing hypotheses, and presenting findings that are easily understandable to non-technical decision makers. Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications. About the technology Keeping customers active and engaged is essential for any business that relies on recurring revenue and repeat sales. Customer turnover—or “churn”—is costly, frustrating, and preventable. By applying the techniques in this book, you can identify the warning signs of churn and learn to catch customers before they leave. About the book Fighting Churn with Data teaches developers and data scientists proven techniques for stopping churn before it happens. Packed with real-world use cases and examples, this book teaches you to convert raw data into measurable behavior metrics, calculate customer lifetime value, and improve churn forecasting with demographic data. By following Zuora Chief Data Scientist Carl Gold’s methods, you’ll reap the benefits of high customer retention. What's inside Calculating churn metrics Identifying user behavior that predicts churn Using churn reduction tactics with customer segmentation Applying churn analysis techniques to other business areas Using AI for accurate churn forecasting About the reader For readers with basic data analysis skills, including Python and SQL. About the author Carl Gold (PhD) is the Chief Data Scientist at Zuora, Inc., the industry-leading subscription management platform. Table of Contents: PART 1 - BUILDING YOUR ARSENAL 1 The world of churn 2 Measuring churn 3 Measuring customers 4 Observing renewal and churn PART 2 - WAGING THE WAR 5 Understanding churn and behavior with metrics 6 Relationships between customer behaviors 7 Segmenting customers with advanced metrics PART 3 - SPECIAL WEAPONS AND TACTICS 8 Forecasting churn 9 Forecast accuracy and machine learning 10 Churn demographics and firmographics 11 Leading the fight against churn
Every business faces the existential threat of competitors producing cheaper copies. Even patent filings, market dominance and financial resources can't shield them from copycats. So what can we do -- and, what can we learn from companies that have endured and even prospered for centuries despite copycat competition? In a book of narrative history and practical strategy, IMD professor of management and innovation Howard Yu shows that succeeding in today's marketplace is no longer just a matter of mastering copycat tactics, companies also need to leap across knowledge disciplines, and to reimagine how a product is made or a service is delivered. This proven tactic can protect a company from being overtaken by new (and often foreign) copycat competitors. Using riveting case studies of successful leaps and tragic falls, Yu illustrates five principles to success that span a wide range of industries, countries, and eras. Learn about how P&G in the 19th century made the leap from handcrafted soaps and candles to mass production of its signature brand Ivory, leaped into the new fields of consumer psychology and advertising, then leaped again, at the risk of cannibalizing its core product, into synthetic detergents and won with Tide in 1946. Learn about how Novartis and other pharma pioneers stayed ahead by making leaps from chemistry to microbiology to genomics in drug discovery; and how forward-thinking companies, including China's largest social media app -- WeChat, Tokyo-based Internet service provider Recruit Holdings, and Illinois-headquartered John Deere are leaping ahead by leveraging the emergence of ubiquitous connectivity, the inexorable rise of intelligent machines, and the rising importance of managerial creativity. Outlasting competition is difficult; doing so over decades or a century is nearly impossible -- unless one leaps. Ultimately, Leap is a manifesto for how pioneering companies can endure and prosper in a world of constant change and inevitable copycats.
