Agora

Agora - 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 (ISVs) are providing their software in the services model. A new breed of Managed Service Providers is looking to provide on-demand IT and Infrastructure management services remotely from the cloud, challenging their more traditional rivals. Enterprises are moving to centralized shared IT services delivered from the cloud. The promise of steady revenue streams and access to new markets of consumers and small and medium sized businesses is making subscription based offerings a must for all businesses.

It is not all rosy though. Building a successful online subscription business involves making sure that a number of things work for customers. Metering usage, processing payments, monitoring service performance - the list is long and complex.

HCL's proprietary solution AGORA is the only one of its kind in the market that provides complete metering, billing and monitoring solutions for software provided as a service. The unique advantage of Agora is that customers can plug in their products and services and immediately start delivering products on subscription.

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

Agora - Service Delivery Platform for Subscription Based Businesses

Search this section

Services +

Share this page

Contact Us

Enter your login details