Here at Tensoft, we just happen to have many of the same business system needs as our customers, including a need for complex billing support. That’s understandable since Tensoft is a software company, as are many of our customers. And, in addition to developing and selling our software, we provide cloud, implementation and support services to our customers. As result we have a variety of complex billing needs that are solved by our own product: Tensoft Customer Billing Management (CBM). So, we began using Tensoft CBM internally to handle these needs, and have created a short video customer story to document the success of this “eating-your-own-dogfood” project!
Like most of our customers, our complex billing needs were poorly handled by our financial and accounting system, so much of what we needed had to be handled manually, For example, when we invoiced, we had to look up each customer’s agreement for the terms that applied to them. Now, with Tensoft CBM, all that has been automated and integrated with our financial and accounting system, so invoicing has become much easier and more accurate, so there’s no chance of revenue leakage.
Watch the entire case-study video below or read the transcript.
A CBM Customer Story: Tensoft from Tensoft, Inc. on Vimeo.
Video Transcript:
Bob Scarborough, President and CEO:
Tensoft provides enterprise software solutions for the technology industry, we have a few different markets that we approach but we are really looking for things related to software subscription, software services, software training, or software platforms and things along the lines of software delivery to help businesses execute better in the technology industry.
William White, CTO and Co-founder:
Tensoft selected the CBM software as our primary billing solution as it provides complex billing support for our customers. We provide services, we provide cloud based software hosting as well as enterprise software solutions to our customers, both on premise and in the cloud, as result we have a variety of billing needs.
Pam Connor, Office Operations:
Before we implemented CBM our financial system was very manual in that we invoiced each item and looked it up from the customers’ contract. This took some time to keep track of any revisions and now with CBM it integrates with our financial software and it makes invoicing so much easier.
Dan Berube, Controller:
We were trying to manage people who needed to be billed monthly, quarterly, and yearly- to do that in an Excel worksheet and track whose received what, changes to customer contacts, or changes to pricing was just something that was overly time consuming and it definitely resulted in some revenue leakage or delays in when we should have recognized that revenue. With CBM we were able to put those things in upfront, set those recurring dates, and reminders to ourselves to ensure that people get the right invoices at the right time for the right amount.
Bob Scarborough, President and CEO:
There have been several features that have been a huge benefit, but one of them is we get to capture the whole contract upfront, so now we have a concept of a backlog- where it’s not kept in a piece of paper, not kept in a spreadsheet, or kept in a drawer.
William White, CTO and Co-founder:
It really gives you a complete picture of your relationship with your customer. When you have a contract with a customer in the CBM software we can add all of the skews for services, software licenses, and other items that we deliver to that customer. It’s all in one place.
Pam Connor, Office Operations:
The contracts can be pretty complicated and there can be milestone billings and there can also be the scheduled quarterly subscription and customers can actually rent the software or they purchase the software. To keep track of all of that and any changes that might happen, CBM has taken care of that for us.
Maher Dabbagh, Intern:
It’s very easy to use. It’s pretty straight forward. It’s not overly complicated, because it doesn’t really need to be. It’s just straight forward which is the thing I like most about it.
Bob Scarborough, President and CEO:
One system that understands the ability to do our contract billings management, one system that manages our revenue, one system that manages our fair value, and one set of data that is integrated with our financial system to give us overall reporting. All that has been a huge help in terms of visibility: the ability to see, look at, and understand what direction we are going because of all the data is not in a spreadsheet, not in drawer, not on sticky. It is in the system that we can actually get the data and make it actionable.