From Taco Subscriptions to Cable Bills, Businesses Turn to Revenue Management Pros

BillingPlatform came out of the gate as a platform promising to solve the billing problem no matter the model — usage-based, subscription-based, one-time-only or anything else companies could imagine.

As the company has grown, it has set its sights on enterprises and integrated revenue recognition, collections, payments and configure, price, quote (CPQ) capabilities.

“So, we’ve really built out a robust set of features and capabilities, which is why we’ve really embraced the concept of a ‘revenue management platform’ — you know, how do we take the data that sits in your CRM [customer relationship management] and flow it seamlessly all the way through to your general ledger,” Dennis Wall, CEO of BillingPlatform, told PYMNTS.

Integrating With a Variety of Systems

For now, BillingPlatform focuses on software-as-a-service (SaaS), communications, Internet of Things (IoT) companies and FinTechs. It saw nearly 100% growth year over year in 2021 and it is seeking to partner with companies searching for new subscription services and other models, Wall said.

“Every industry, every vertical, every company is looking to develop more interesting monetization models of how they derive value from their customers,” said Wall. “And then you take a look at the financial market and obviously, some sort of recurring revenue relationship holds a lot more value to investors than one-time exchanges.”

For companies contending with piecemeal, homegrown solutions and oversized legacy enterprise resource planning programs, a platform model makes sense, he said.

“Bringing in a more flexible, cloud-based configuration versus customization type of solution that can easily integrate with a variety of both upstream and downstream systems is very desirable,” Wall said.

Accounting for an Infinite Number of Variables

Beyond that, subscription models that were once simple have evolved and now often include overage, usage components, add-ons and bundles.

“Everybody’s billing, and all of them are doing it at great pain,” Wall said.

Some companies have technology shortcomings, some have a lot of manual intervention in their processes, some are growing through mergers and acquisitions and must integrate the different billing systems, and some face challenges with revenue recognition and are doing a lot of the processes manually.

“So, if you’re now capturing all your billing information in one place — you’re automating the flow of that and applying rules to that data that enables you to recognize that revenue in a seamless fashion — you’re really starting to create some meaningful efficiency as well as meaningful insight into the business,” Wall said.