Leveraging Leading Subscription Commerce Platform for Selling Recurring Digital Services: AppDirect

Consumer behavior has changed in recent years as a result of technological development. Instead of regularly buying the same products, customers are increasingly relying on chargeable on-demand solutions. This is not only the case for physical products but for services, too. Logical conclusion: Retailers need to adapt to the needs of consumers in order to develop sustainable customer relationships. Here, new business models such as subscription-based are of increasing interest for online transactions. Subscription commerce enables us to get a better insight into the customer behavior with the way they purchase the products, use the products and their browsing behavior within the portal. As the consumer base is pre-defined, it is easier to understand consumer preferences and strategize accordingly.

AppDirect is one such company that offers a subscription commerce platform that removes the complexity of building a recurring business model. Sell any product, through any channel, on any device—as a service. The company’s platform efficiently powers all sales, direct or indirect, lowering customer acquisition costs, and uniquely unifies identity, data, mobile, and billing management for digital services to increase customer lifetime value. Its platform opens up endless opportunities for digital commerce innovation, giving businesses the freedom to grow. The company power millions of subscriptions worldwide for organizations like Jaguar Land Rover, Comcast, Sage, Keller Williams, ADP, and Deutsche Telekom.

Best-in-Class Subscription Commerce Services Offered

Software as a Service: AppDirect is the leading subscription commerce platform to sell in-demand software as a service (SaaS) products. AppDirect offers the largest portfolio of best-in-class SaaS solutions in the world. These products include software and services from nearly 300 industry-leading vendors, such as Microsoft, Google, IBM, Adobe, Zoom, Box, and more. With a wide selection of pre-integrated solutions, AppDirect can help technology merchants get to market fast and start driving revenue quickly.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): The AppDirect platform is purpose-built to sell, manage, and bill for IaaS from the industry’s leading providers—AWS, Azure, and GCP—with just a few clicks. Customers can compare IaaS solutions side-by-side in a customizable online marketplace, as well as bundle value-add services like migration, training, and maintenance. You can also bundle and sell fully integrated, complementary SaaS products from the AppDirect catalog—such as Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, and third-party add-ons from the AWS Marketplace, Microsoft Azure Marketplace, and GCP Marketplace—to meet all of your customers’ needs. Moreover, customers can buy extra capacity, balance their resources with a multi-cloud strategy, and manage all of their subscriptions, self-service, in the same digital hub.

Building a Software Ecosystem: To succeed in the digital economy, independent software vendors (ISVs) are driving innovation and revenue by creating developer ecosystems that give developers a clear path to monetization. To create successful software ecosystems, SaaS vendors must find a way to remove the technology and process barriers to ecosystem monetization. In practice, this means delivering a fully featured developer solution that can power multi-sided, omni-channel commerce across the ecosystem. The AppDirect platform is the only solution that provides tools for managing the third-party billing, management, and provisioning of software ecosystems. AppDirect is the only platform that provides all the tools SaaS vendors need to launch and support software ecosystems. With AppDirect, software companies can create an integration layer that connects their existing first-party solutions to the third-party commerce systems necessary for ecosystem monetization.

Leadership | AppDirect

Nicolas Desmarais is the Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer of AppDirect.  Before co-founding AppDirect, Nicolas worked at Bain & Company as a management consultant focused on media and business services. Nicolas holds a bachelor’s degree with a double major in economics and political science from Amherst College. In his spare time, Nicolas enjoys outdoor activities and traveling to new countries.

Daniel Saks is the President and Co-Chief Executive Officer of AppDirect. A sought-after expert in cloud and startup innovation, he was named to the 2015 Forbes 30 Under 30 Enterprise Technology list and has spoken at numerous industry conferences, including Web Summit, Collision, CeBIT, and more. Prior to AppDirect, Daniel worked in finance and investment banking, and has pursued other entrepreneurial projects. He holds degrees from McGill and Harvard universities.

“We're the only end-to-end commerce platform for both monetizing and managing digital customer relationships.”