"If only we could monetise that facility, that function, that service", is a cry that is heard in businesses world-wide. Unless you can monetise a product or service AND provide transparency of service and comply with a whole host of regulations, e.g. Dodd-Frank, etc., they wither and die or never see the light of day. There are now specialist companies that provide the complex infrastructure for agreement-based billing commerce and compensation solutions that can convert these 'if only' opportunities into monetised services.

MetraTech, one of the leading providers of agreement-based billing solutions, have just launched Version 7, 'MetraNet Cloud', which includes:

• Cloud pricing models for on-demand, reserved, usage-based, location-based, free trials, promotions, bundling, or peak /off-peak pricing for any cloud service
• Channel/partner, hybrid clouds to rate usage across any computing model and create product bundles that include multiple resources
• Private cloud chargeback to bill IT departments implementing transfer pricing and departmental chargeback
• Configurable billing and settlement hierarchies
• Grouped commitments across corporate hierarchies
• Supplier compensation to manage profitable relationships with suppliers
• Channel compensation to manage channel behavior through creative compensation plans
• Multi-party settlement (retainer, residual, shared, settled) including multi-party agreements where a single transaction can involve three or more relationships
• Partner and departmental partitions to enable customers to share the power of MetraNet with business units or partners
• Customizable online bill with easy re-branding for partners and customers
• Dynamic scaling to easily and flexibly accommodate peak periods, including bursting from private to public clouds
• The ability to change product pricing quickly to respond to market demand and competition
• Sophisticated charging support including digital bundles, pay-per-use and bursting
• Individualized negotiation for enterprise agreements
• Improved auditability and data transparency with granular usage and resource allocation
• Virtual bundle support with partners and revenue sharing
• Customer billing and third-party payments and commissions support on one platform.

An important feature MetraNet is that well as providing the functionality for billing it can also carry out the compensation for suppliers as well, as the list of features and the figure below shows.

MetraNet metadata-driven component architecture

Source & Copyright©2013 - Metratech

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The agreement-based billing commerce and compensation solutions provide organisations with the tools to:

1. support tailored and fluid multi-party agreements for customers, partners and suppliers.
2. automate business processes and business models to address rapidly changing or complex business strategies.
3. create and securely collect revenue from customers and provide compensation to partners and suppliers
4. provide transparency and accuracy for all services to eliminate bill shock
5. determine which customers and products/services are profitable.

This is the new frontier in e-commerce: monetising services.