The platform economy is one of the most disruptive modern business models we see in the industry today.
According to a 2016 survey by Accenture, “81% of executives say platform-based business models will be core to their growth strategy within three years.”.
Traditional business models are focus on selling products or services directly to an end-user (or retailer, in some cases). With a platform economy, the value lies within the interconnection of different small businesses, entrepreneurs, consumers, and enterprises and their ability to network, share ideas, and sell products or services. These groups work in conjunction with each other to support the overall ecosystem. Businesses can derive value from this interconnection by:
- Leveraging the mass amounts of user data that can be derived from a strong, active platform ecosystem in the form of APIs
- Taking advantage of the inherent network effect that platforms provide, as the ecosystem generated by the platform is greater than the sum of its constituents.
Three major types of platforms exist within the platform economy:
Innovation Platforms
This platform type provides the technology framework that provides users the ability to customize the system for their individual needs. The Kansys Edge is an example of an innovation platform.
Transaction Platforms
These platforms are designed as digital matchmakers or meeting places for a network of people. This includes social media sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram, as well as virtual marketplaces such as eBay, AliExpress, and Amazon.
Integration Platforms
The integration platform combines the personalization aspects of the innovation platform with the network capabilities of the transaction platform. These include online application marketplaces such as the Google Play or Apple App Store.
Platform economies create a ton of value for the users of the economy, as well as the company behind the platform. With platforms, the rules of the traditional business model are rendered obsolete. Strategy becomes less focused on optimizing internal functions and more aimed at controlling and effectively facilitating external interactions to improve the overall value of the ecosystem.
Your billing system is incredibly important when dealing with platforms. These kinds of billing systems can help your business extract value out of platform economies.
Customizable
if your business model includes a variety of complexity variables including on-demand pricing or a similar unorthodox pricing method, you will want a system that addresses the immediacy and personalization of the platform with internal customizability. Your chosen solution should offer an API connectivity layer where interfaces can be configured and subsequent database artifacts automatically generated, giving you ample time and agility to pivot, while simultaneously making data-informed decisions.
Data Agnostic
Select a system that is agnostic to the data APIs introduce, making leveraging data a matter for business analysts to decide by configuration rather than coding. Contrary to popular belief, IoT, AI, and data analytics are not all standardized, so customization to process these feeds is prohibitive if coding is your only option.
Overall, you should invest in a system that places billing into the larger landscape of monetization, as platforms are complex, multi-layered ecosystems of user groups with different interests and end goals. At Kansys, we deal with disruption like this daily. No billing environment is too complex for our best-in-class automated software solution. We currently process over 4 billion network events per month and have extensive knowledge of multiple billing systems, taking pride in over 80 successful billing conversions.
Kansys recognizes the platform economy as one of the latest disruptive models facing our clients today and we are here to help.
Experience the Kansys Edge today.
