Many of us no longer rent movies. Instead, we have a Netflix account.

We don’t buy music; we listen to it on Spotify.

Rather than buying a car, those of us who live in the city might choose Zipcar when we need to go for a quick drive.

Today, certain sectors of the United States economy are shifting from being transaction-based to subscription-based. The customer who opens his or her wallet once to rent a movie from Redbox, for example, is not as valuable as the one who opens up his or her wallet every month to pay for access to a Netflix’s collection.

The same is true in the IT world. Today, many businesses are shedding their traditional technological infrastructure and instead signing up to receive that infrastructure through the cloud via a third-party vendor on a month-to-month basis. This kind of relationship is great for customers, as they no longer have to make capital investments in the technology nor have to worry about maintaining or housing it. And it’s great for providers, who get a recurring revenue stream in these customers.

Rather than viewing customers as single transactions, businesses are turning their focus toward creating and strengthening long-term mutually beneficial relationships with them. As businesses grow, however, excelling at subscriber management becomes increasingly difficult. You can’t direct all of your focus on billing and expect you’ll be able to grow your business at the same time.

With this in mind, many businesses are looking toward subscriber management systems for relief. Such systems offer greater operation control in a manner that’s scalable, so that as your customer base expands, you don’t have to worry about any difficulties that were previously associated with juggling more billing.

If you’re a business owner considering being on the forefront of today’s subscription-based economy, click here to read more about how you can leverage technology to help you excel.