Lifecycle Manager

 

The Nue Lifecycle Manager empowers Sales Reps and Customer Success Managers to effectively manage the customers' revenue lifecycle . With an intuitive, eCommerce-like user experience, the platform provides sales reps and customer success managers with a range of tools to optimize the revenue lifecycle operations.

 

Some of the key features of the Nue Lifecycle Manager include:

• Upselling and cross-selling: The platform allows reps to easily make changes to customers' existing subscriptions, assets, and entitlements, thus following through and executing the upsells and cross-sell opportunities.  

• Bundle reconfiguration: With the ability to reconfigure bundles, reps can create customized packages that meet customers' specific needs, ultimately increasing sales and customer satisfaction.

• Invoicing and payments: The platform provides easy-to-use invoicing interfaces that allow reps to generate, view, and manage invoices, while also facilitating payments and tracking payment history.

• Analytics and reporting: The platform enables reps to track key metrics such as ARR, CMRR, TCV, ACV, and generates subscription revenue stream in real-time, thus helping to identify oportunities and risks with the business.  

This article outlines some of the key features and concepts of the Lifecycle Manager.  Let's dive in!

 

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Order Activation 

A customer's lifecycle starts after you close-won the first opportunity of this customer. 

 

After you close-won the first opportunity, its primary quote will be generated into an order, and the order will be activated automatically.  Optionally, you can finalize a (primary or non-primary) quote into an order, and activate the order.  

 

When the order is activated, each line item of the order (that is not a Summary Line or a Split Line) will be provisioned into a subscription, an asset or an entitlement.  

 

 

By default, as shown in the above picture, when an order is activated, 

• If the Product Category is ‘Physical Goods’, an asset is created;

• If the Product Category is ‘Recurring Services’, a subscription is created;

• if the Product Category is ‘Professional Services’ or ‘Customer Support’, an entitlement is created.

Admin users can also create custom mapping between a product category and an activation object (Asset, Subscription and Entitlement).  

• To create custom mappings, you can navigate to Nue → Settings → Product Categories

After the order is activated, you can navigate to the Lifecycle Manager to manage customers' revenue lifecycle.  

• Login to Salesforce and navigate to Accounts.  Click to open an account.
• Click 'Manage Customer Lifecycle' to enter the Lifecycle Manager.

 

Customer Revenue Lifecycle

In the Lifecycle Manager, users can see the general information of the customer account, its children accounts, its orders, subscriptions, assets, entitlements, invoices, credit memos and credits.  

 

Admin users can customize the information being displayed in the Lifecycle Manager, including the tabs, the field layouts of each tab, etc.

• To customize the tabs being displayed, navigate to Nue → Settings → Customer Lifecycle Tabs

 

In each Lifecycle Manager tab, there is a filter and search bar, alongside with default filters.  You can use the default filters to quickly filter for the records you need, e.g., Active Orders, Canceled Orders, Subscriptions up for Renewal.  You can also create and save your own custom filters.  You can use the sorting criteria to sort and organize the records.

 

Everything starts with orders in the Lifecycle Manager.  In an active order, you can view the order details by clicking on Details button in the order card, or click on '...' to access more actions, including Change order, View invoices, View assets, View entitlements, View usage, View credits, etc.

Make Changes to Subscriptions, Assets and Entitlements

If you click on "Change Order" action, you will be directed to the Subscriptions tab and see a list of subscriptions created by this particular order.  

 

In Nue, we do not use "Amendments" to refer to the changes to a subscription contract.  This is because Nue unifies the processes to make changes to subscriptions, physical assets and entitlements.  So we use Change Order to refer to all changes.  The Change Order process is not to make changes directly to an order.  Instead, it is marking changes to the subscriptions, assets and service entitlements provisioned from one or more previous orders.  These changes, once captured into a "change order" and activated, can be used to create new versions of the subscriptions, assets and entitlements.

Change Cart

When you shop in an eCommerce site as a consumer, if you want to make changes to a subscription, you will add the changes to a shopping cart, and checkout from the shopping cart into an order.  Once the order is invoiced and paid, you can see your subscription getting updated, or new items purchased.  

 

Nue shares the same experience - making changes in an enterprise application doesn't have to be cumbersome.  We introduced Change Cart, which can be used to capture the changes to the subscriptions, assets and entitlements that the customer owns.  Sales Reps and Customer Success Managers can add the change requests - including add/reduce quantity, renew subscriptions, cancel subscriptions, etc. - to the change cart.  When the changes are ready to be committed, users can checkout the change requests placed in the Change Cart into a new quote or order, or add to an existing quote or order.  

Change Order Process

The following diagram illustrates the entire Change Order process. 

 

 

Essentially, with Nue, making changes to customers' subscriptions, assets and entitlements is not only unified, but is also easy and intuitive.  It takes the following steps: 

• Navigate to the Lifecycle Manager by clicking on 'Manage Customer Lifecycle' button on the Account details page. 
• Find your subscriptions, assets or entitlements to make changes for.  
• Click the action buttons (e.g., Renew, Update Quantity, etc.) and click 'Confirm' in the action popup.  This adds the change requests to the Change Cart.
• When you are ready, checkout the Change Cart into a new quote, a new order, an existing quote or an existing order.
  • If you checkout into a new order, in the Create Quote page, you can select an existing opportunity or create a new opportunity to associate to the quote.
• Nue merges all changes into the (change) quote or order, calculates the prices, prorates the subscription terms, and generates delta metrics.  You can see all the Change Lines as well as the Summary Lines in the Line Editor.  You can make further changes and add additional discounts if necessary.
• Once you close-won the (change) opportunity, or activate the (change) order, Nue applies the changes to the subscriptions, assets or entitlements, and creates new versions for them.  You can view the new versions in the Lifecycle Manager. 
  • All the change histories are preseved.  You can click 'Change History' to view the details of each change.
• Nue Billing Accelerator will receive the changes immediately and the changes will be considered in the billing operations for the customer.

Change Types

In the Lifecycle Manager, users can make the following types of changes: 

Update Quantity

Users can add or reduce quantity to a Subscription, Asset or Entitlement that takes effective on a specific day (default to Today).

Update Term

Users can add or reduce subscription term to a subscription, co-term to an existing subscription, or a specific date.

Renew

Users can renew a subscription by a specific renewal term, and at the same time, add or reduce quantity upon renewal.  

Reconfigure

Users can reconfigure an existing bundle subscription, including adding or removing add-on products.

Cancel

Users can cancel a subscription. 

 

All these changes can be made to a bundle subscription that contains children subscriptions, assets and entitlements.  When a change is made to a bundle subscription, it is also propagated to its children subscriptions.  We'll cover the bundle subscription use cases in later sections.

 

The above changes can be made directly from a Subscription Card, an Entitlement Card or an Asset Card in the Lifecycle Manager.  Admin users can configure to show or hide any of these changes.  For example, you may not need to show 'Reconfigure' action in the Subscription Card.  

• To configure the available change types, navigate to Nue → Settings → Subscriptions → Change Types

In addition to these changes, users can also cross-sell products, or bulk co-term more than one existing subscriptions of a customer.   

Add Changes to Cart

 After understanding how you make changes in the Lifecycle Manager, you can try to make a few changes.  For example, 

• Navigate to Subscriptions, in one of the Subscriptions card, click Renew.  Click Confirm.
• Navigate to Entitlements, in one of the Entitlements card, click Update Quantity.  Specify the quantity and date.  Click Confirm.
• Navigate to Assets, in one of the Assets card, click Update Quantity.  Specify the quantity and date.  Click Confirm.

Now you can click on Change Cart, and see the changes being added to the change cart. 

 

The screenshot below shows that change requests are grouped into one or more Change Sets in the change cart, according to Price Book, Currency, and Customer.  You can mouse over each change request to edit the change set.  

 

 

A Sales Rep or a Customer Success Manager typically manages more than one customers.  Users can add change requests to multiple customers to the Change Cart.  In the Lifecycle Manager of a specific customer, the change sets of other customers are folded.  Users can click on 'Change Sets for Other Customers' to see change requests for other customers.  

Multiple Changes

Similar to a shopping cart, you can add multiple change requests, to more than one subscriptions to the change cart. Nue validates the change requests to make sure they are not conflicting with each other.

 

For example, for a subscription SUB-001209 that starts on 05/01/2023 and ends on 04/30/2024.  A user adds a change request to renew the subscription for 12 months, and add 10 units on 01/01/2025.  These are valid change requests, because if they are checked out together into a quote or an order, the new subscription end date will be 04/30/2025, so it's perfectly fine to add 10 units on 01/01/2025 - it is within the subscription term.

 

However, if the user adds a change request to add 10 units on 05/01/2025, she will receive the following error message in the Change Cart: 

 

 

In general, we validate the change requests based on the following business rules: 

 

Business Rule	Description
Cannot add multiple changes of the same change type	Though multiple changes can be added to the change cart for the same subscription, one change type may be added only once.
May only add one of the following changes: Cancel Subscription Renew Subscription Update Term Co-Term	Renew, Update Term and Cancellation both are related to the term change. In order to simplify the processing of the change cart, we'll only allow one of the term changes for one particular subscription in the cart. (However, a user can make different term changes to different subscriptions).
Changes for the same subscription are stacked and validated together	When multiple change types are added to the change cart, they are stacked together. For example, if a Sales Rep add: Update Quantity: Add 50 Unites Renew for 12 months In this case, Nue validates if the effective date of the Update Quantity request is before the new subscription end date after the renewal.
Renew and Cancel requests cannot be added for the same subscription	When a user adds a Renew Subscription request to the change cart, followed by a Cancellation request, she can only keep either Renewal or Cancellation request, but not both.
Change requests of add-on subscriptions and Reconfigure request of the bundle subscription cannot co-exist	When a user adds a ‘Reconfigure’ request of a bundle subscription into a change cart, if the system detects that there already exist any change requests for any of its add-on subscriptions, assets or entitlement in the change cart, she will be asked to only keep either Reconfigure request, or any of the change requests for the add-ons.

Checkout

When you are ready to commit the changes in the Change Cart, you can checkout the Change Cart.  As mentioned earlier, there can be multiple change sets in the Change Cart, organized by Price Book, Currency and Customer.  You can only checkout one change set at a time.

 

You can check out a change set into a new quote, a new order, an existing quote or an existing order.  

 

 

Checkout into Existing Quote or Order

It is very useful to checkout changes to an existing quote or order.  For example, a customer success manager has created a renewal quote for her customer a few weeks ago.  But now the customer wants to also add 10 more units upon renewal.  She can then add 10 units into the Change Cart, and check out the changes into the renewal quote.  

 

Please note that: 

• If you choose to add to an existing quote, Nue allows you to choose from quotes that are not associated to a Closed (Closed Won, or Closed Lost) opportunity of the same customer.
• If you choose to add to an existing order, Nue allows you to choose from orders only in Draft status of the same customer.

If you choose to checkout into an existing quote or an existing order, Nue will merge the changes into the quote or order and calculate the prices.  You will be directed to the Line Editor and see all the changes.  

• Nue validates the change requests with the line items in the existing quote or order to make sure there are no conflicts before merging.  All the validations in the section "Multiple Changes" apply.  

Checkout into New Quote or Order

If you choose to checkout into a new quote or new order, you will be directed to the Create Quote or Create Order page.

 

Creating a "Change Quote" is similar to creating a regular quote, except that you will need to associate this quote with an opportunity.  In the "SELECT OPPORTUNITY ID" field, Nue allows you to search for an existing opportunity of the same customer that is not closed (i.e., status in Close Won or Close Lost) to associate to the quote.  Optionally, you can click 'Create Opportunity' to create a new (change) opportunity.

 

In an organization, typically the sales process for a new deal is different from the sales processes for renewal, expansion or cancellation.  Therefore, admin users may configure more than one Opportunity Record Types, each associating to a different sales process. 

 

If there are more than one opportunity record types configured, when you click on 'Create Opportunity', you have the option to choose the record type that is best suited for the changes (e.g., Expansion, Renewal), and click Confirm to fill up additional opportunity information. 

 

Admin users can configure the minimum fields required to create an opportunity for a specific record type.  Please refer to this page to learn about how to configure field layout in the Create Opportunity Popup.  At the minimum, you need the following fields: 

• Opportunity Name
• Stage
• Close Date

The Account information will be defaulted to that of the quote.

 

 

You can click Save and Next to navigate to the Line Editor.  In the Line Editor, you will find that Nue has merged all the change requests, and applied the changes to the subscriptions, assets and entitlements accordingly. 

 

If you don't need to make further changes (e.g., adding discounts), you can click Save and Exit and complete the change order process.  

 

 

LIne Items in Change Quote or Order

Now, let's look into the details of the line items in the Line Editor.

 

There are the following types of line items in the Line Editor of a change quote or order.  

• Summary Lines
  • Summary lines contain the latest information of a product line after the change is merged to the subscription, asset or entitlement.  It is essentially a preview of the new version of the subscription, asset or entitlement after the change quote or order is activated.
  • The summary lines are read-only.
• Subscriptions, Assets or Entitlements
  • These types of lines contain the current information of the subscription, asset or entitlement that the changes are applied to.
  • These types of lines are read-only.
• Ramp Lines
  • If a subscription contains ramp lines, e.g., resulted from a multi-year ramp pricing, then all the ramp lines are also displayed under the summary line.  This gives users information about how the subscription is ramped for both quantity and price. 
  • These types of lines are read-only
• Change Lines
  • The change lines represent the changes. 
  • In each change line, Nue calculates the changing by applying prorations (if there are term-based changes) and price tags according to a single change request.  
  • A change request generates at least one change line for data clarity and simplicify.  Nue never merges 2 or more change requests into one change line.
  • Change lines are editable.

In each change line, users can edit the following: 

• Inline edit the Net Sales Price, Discount %, and Discount Amount.  Nue recalculates the total price, total amount, etc. accordingly based on the subscription term and the quantity.  
• Click 'Edit' icon in the Action column to edit the change request.  

In the following example, the user can change the renewal term by clicking on the 'Edit' icon.  After the user clicks 'Confirm', the change line is recalculated instantly, and the Summary Line will also be refreshed with the latest changes merged.  

 

 

Use Case Example

Example: Smart Revenue has a 12-month subscription of 100 Platform Licenses, each license is $10.  The subscription used a ramp price tag to add 10% each year upon renewal.

 

A sales rep renews the subscription for another 12 months.  

 

 

As you can see in the above screenshot,

• The Subscription V1 (version 1) has a term of 12 months, and a total price of $1200. 
• The Change Line with change type Renew has a subscription term 12 months and Net Sales Price $11.00 because the ramp price tag is applied, thus it is 10% over the first year price.  The total price is $1320.
• The Summary Line shows the merged information after the change line is applied to the subscription V1.  It has a subscription term 24, and a total price $2520.

The user can inline edit the Net Sales Price to increase the price further to $11.5.  The total prices of the change line, the summary line, and the quote are all instantly recalculated based on the updated Net Sales Price.  

 

 

You can also change the discount % and the total price on the quote header.  The discounts are propagated to the change lines (and the change lines only).  The summary lines will be recalculated accordingly.

 

Activate Change Order

After the change quote or order is saved, as usual, you can send it for deal desk approval, generate an amendment order form using any Doc Gen tool, and get it signed by the customer.

 

After the quote or order is finalized, you can close-won the opportunity, or activate the order.  After the order is activated, the subscription, asset or entitlement will be versioned. 

 

Technically, this is what will happen: 

• The current subscription record (e.g. V1) is cloned into a new subscription record.  Its status is set to Expired.
• The current subscription record will be updated with the information of the summary line. Its version will be incremented (e.g. V2), and its status is set to Active. 
• The change line will be associated with the newer version of the subscription (e.g. V2), so that we know clearly that this newer subscription version is resulted from the change line.  
• A change history record will be created containing this change.  

The above applies to assets and entitlements as well.

 

Thereforce, in this object model, each change line leads to a newer version of the subscription having the same subscription number and subscription record ID.  This is critical for downstream finance processing - invoicing, payments, provisioning, etc. Overtime, the same subscription record will be associated with a series of change lines in the form of order products.  These order products contain the accurate change information - change in quantity, change in subscription term, change in ARR, change in CMRR, thus they can be used for revenue recognition, reporting, provisioning and fulfillments, etc.

 

Put it All Together

Further Reading

We provide more specific use cases of Lifecycle Manager in the following articles: 

• Upsell and Downsell
• Renew Subscriptions
• Co-term Subscriptions
• Cancel Subscriptions
• Cross-Sell