Subscription provisioning: why customers wait

A customer signs a contract for 50 seats on Friday. On Wednesday, their admin still can’t log in. When access arrives, it’s for 40 seats, because someone typed the number from an email. Support hears about it first. Finance hears about it at renewal, when the customer points out they paid for 50 all year.

Provisioning is stage four of order-to-cash. It turns a booked order into access to the product. It is the first stage the customer sees.

What is subscription provisioning?

Subscription provisioning gives a customer access to what they bought: the products, plans, seats, features and usage limits in their contract, from the contract start date to its end. Entitlement is the record of what each customer may use. Provisioning creates or changes that entitlement when a contract is signed, amended, renewed or ends.

Where it breaks

1. Entitlement is typed by hand. Someone reads the order and enters the seats and features in an admin screen. Each order is a chance to enter the wrong number.
2. Access starts on the wrong date. The contract starts on the first of the month. Access is granted the day the contract is signed, or a week after the start date, when someone reaches the queue. Billing follows the contract, so billing and access disagree from day one.
3. Nobody tells the customer’s admin. Access exists, but the named contact has no invitation, so nobody at the customer can use it.
4. Mid-term changes create a second subscription. An upgrade adds 20 seats as a new subscription instead of changing the existing one. The customer now has two end dates and two renewals.
5. The product is edited directly. Support raises a limit to unblock a customer. The change never reaches billing, and the customer keeps the higher limit for years.
6. Expiry cuts access during a renewal. The end date passes while the renewal is still in signature, and the customer loses access in the middle of a commercial conversation.

What it costs

Late access delays the customer’s first use of the product. A customer who waits a week for seats they paid for starts the relationship with a support ticket.

Drift costs money in both directions. Too little access produces credits and disputed invoices. Too much gives away product that was never billed. Neither shows up in a report until someone compares the contract with the product, which usually happens at renewal.

What to fix first

1. Derive entitlement from the contract. Compute seats, features, limits and term from the contract lines. Nobody types them.
2. Schedule activation for the contract start date. Grant access on the date billing starts, not at signature.
3. Invite the named admin on day one. Send the invitation when access is granted, to the contact named on the order.
4. Apply amendments to the existing subscription. Prorate to the current end date. One customer has one subscription.
5. Reconcile every night. Compare what was sold with what is live in the product. Send every difference, in either direction, to an owner.
6. Warn before expiry, and leave suspension to a person. Keep access while a renewal is open. Never suspend automatically for non-payment.

The guide to building subscription and entitlement provisioning has the prompts for each step. The closed-won to onboarding handoff covers what the onboarding team receives.

Where provisioning fits

Provisioning depends on a clean order. If quote to order booked the wrong products, provisioning grants the wrong access.

Provisioning also has to agree with billing, because the invoice and the entitlement come from the same contract. When they drift, the account team finds out from the customer. Billing to CRM integration covers what that team can see. For all eight stages, see the order-to-cash process.