Agora^TM - Service delivery platform for Subscription based businesses

The world over, companies are looking to move away from traditional ways of doing business to subscription based models.  Independent Software Vendors are providing their Software in the Services model. A new breed of Managed Service Providers are looking to provide On-demand IT and Infra Mgmt services remotely from the cloud, challenging their more traditional rivals. Enterprises are moving to a centralized shared IT Services delivered from a Cloud. The promise of steady revenue streams and access to new markets of consumers as well as small and medium sized businesses is making subscription based offerings a must for all businesses.

It's not all rosy though. Building a successful online subscription business involves making sure a number of things work for you. Metering usage, processing payments, monitoring service performance - the list is long and complex. HCL's proprietary solution AGORA^TM is the only one of its kind in the market - plug in your products and services and it provides the complete range of functions you will need to start delivering your products in the subscription based business model.

Meter and Price the usage of consumed Service

Do you bill by the hour? The week? Or by number of transactions?

What if you want to switch between different billing units? Do you reconfigure your entire system?

Metering and Pricing

• Automate Usage Data collection and Collation for pricing
• Convert Usage into any required units
• Minimize revenue leakage and Quickly monetize by choosing amongst several pre-set and customizable pricing models based on:
• Usage
• Transactions
• One-time, Recurring/Rental # of devices managed or User using the Service
• Configurable rate cards and Trials

Bill the consumed Service, accept and process payments

Are your customers spread across the world?

Do they like paying online?

What do you do if someone signs up in the middle of the month?

What if your customer's credit card reaches its limit?

How do you handle tax?

Billing & Payment processing

• Bill your customers in any Currency
• Accurately tax by setting up the global tax rules
• Accept payments via payment gateways and possess capability of processing multiple payment methods
• Launch Packages and Offers in your consumer market
• Incorporate prorate, discounts and delinquency charges in your bill
• Customizable Invoice generation and Bill presentment

Manage Customer on-boarding process & entire subscription portfolio

How will you sign on customers and support them?

How will you ensure data security when you have multiple companies using the same service?

How will you market new services to old customers?

Tenant and Subscription Management

• Entire Customer lifecycle management functions such as:
• Zero touch customer on-boarding
• Instantly create Services Marketplace and quickly launch service plans either directly or through partners
• Integrated Customer Support
• Automated and manual notifications
• Customer specific usage reporting and analysis
• Completely address security and compliance concerns such as secure database access, single sign on etc
• Notify your customers automatically for various Customer related events
• Advertize new services across customers and quickly monetize the launch through effective Campaign Management

Provision the Service to the Customer and maintain Data Isolation

Does your application require code changes to support Multi-tenancy?

Have you given thought to scaling up to match a growing customer base?

Service Provisioning

• Create Multi-instance using XEN Virtualization
• SOA based Multi-Tenant architecture to support Automatic/ Manual Tenant Provisioning in the chosen Application Instance
• No Code Change required
• Load Balancing & Capacity Management
• Add and manage both hardware & software components alike

Enable distribution channel to market and sell the services through Partners

Will you be able to leverage partners to tap the market?

What if your partner can mix & match and sell your services?

How will your partner incentive systems be managed?

Channel/ Partner Enablement

• Enable and manage n-tier distribution channel
• Categorize and define your partner and reseller models such as:
• Customized Resource Model
• Fixed resource model
• Combination models
• You can choose to let your partner white label, co-brand or re-brand, value add or launch their own Services Marketplace
• Manage partner commissions effectively according to existing contracts
• Automated propagation of Notifications, Metering information to Partner and consolidated partner billing

Effectively manage Customers and its subscriptions by Customer Self Service Portal

Are support costs an inhibitor?

How will you ensure that your customers are legitimate?

What about managing customer who default on your terms?

Subscriber Management & Self-Service

• Customer Self Service Portal for self registration, subscribing to available service plans and offers and raise & track trouble tickets through integrated Customer Support
• Customer can assign, define and manage roles to his Users
• Fraud screening mechanism for black or white-listing Customers and managing fraud accounts
• Set up delinquency rules for managing Customers who default terms and conditions