New Research Reveals That Enterprises Find Success in Recurring Revenue Business Model but Big Gaps Remain

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Jan 29, 2015) - A new benchmark research study conducted by Ventana Research and sponsored by Aria Systems found that while overall satisfaction with recurring revenue businesses are high, only 33 percent of organizations are satisfied with the performance of the operations that support them. The study, "Ventana Research Recurring Revenue Benchmark," is the first of its kind to look at this growing area.

The results underscore the value enterprises place on recurring revenue systems for increasing the top line and improving customer engagement, but reveal that satisfaction with systems and processes declines the closer respondents are to their recurring revenue operations.

"Overall only one-third of organizations are satisfied with the systems they currently use to support recurring revenue," said Mark Smith, CEO and chief research officer, Ventana Research. "For most, their lack of satisfaction is due to functionality, flexibility and lack of integration capabilities. The challenge now is to overcome these bottlenecks to improve efficiency and deliver greater value to customers."

Overcoming system limitations appears to hold the greatest key to success. More than 60% of all respondents indicated that it was difficult to collect the information needed to manage recurring revenue and ensure that it is accurate, complete and current.

Yet, those with third-party dedicated billing systems were more satisfied with their recurring revenue operations, citing several benefits. More than half noted that they are able to create invoices in multiple formats, that billing required less effort, and that the system produced accurate data to support their recurring revenue operations.

One of the areas needing greatest improvement was customer engagement; with 55 percent of those surveyed citing difficulty in maintaining customer engagement. Better cross selling, upselling and customer retention were also called out as needed improvements. 

"If your enterprise is having difficulty maintaining customer engagement then customer satisfaction and revenues will suffer. As we've consistently seen, monetization success means navigating the complexity and scale of global billing processes to not only ensure proper handling of transactions but the care of each customer interaction throughout the lifetime of the customer engagement," said Jon Gettinger, SVP of Marketing, Aria Systems.

For more information and an executive summary of the findings: http://info.ariasystems.com/ventana-recurring-revenue-execsummary.html

About Aria Systems:

Proven by the world's most demanding enterprises, including AAA NCNU, Constant Contact, Falck, Hootsuite, Pitney Bowes, Telekom Denmark, and VMware, Aria provides an end-to-end active monetization platform for optimizing recurring revenue businesses and maximizing growth. With Aria, global brands accelerate their time-to-market with a wider variety of products and services, enhancing customer satisfaction, retention, and lifetime value.

To learn more about Aria go to www.ariasystems.com.

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