Enterprise Billing

What is Enterprise Billing?

Enterprise billing is an advanced system designed to meet large-scale businesses’ complex (often nuanced) invoicing, subscription management, and payment processing requirements. It encompasses automated, integrated tools that facilitate accurate and efficient billing for numerous products and services across multiple channels.

Large-scale companies typically sell multi-tiered solutions with complex pricing models, which entail data and compliance challenges. Enterprise billing solutions offer the sophistication and scalability to manage high volumes of data and transactions with a single platform.

Synonyms

• Enterprise subscription billing
• Enterprise billing management
• Enterprise billing software
• SaaS billing
• Subscription-based enterprise billing

The Billing Challenges of Enterprise Companies

Compared to traditional billing, enterprise billing operations are more complicated. Given the intricate nature of their billing environments, enterprise companies frequently encounter several challenges, including:

• Inefficient billing processes. Manual billing processes and outdated systems can’t meet the multivariate demands of enterprise companies, leading to slow, inefficient billing cycles.
• Complicated organizational structure. Large enterprises often have multiple departments, divisions, and subsidiaries, each with its own billing requirements. This makes it challenging to manage and consolidate billing information across the organization.
• High transaction volumes. Due to their size and reach, enterprise companies usually process a high volume of transactions, compounding the complexity of their billing operations.
• Varied pricing models. Enterprises have deep product catalogs with varied pricing structures, which creates additional challenges in accurately calculating and managing invoices.
• Inaccurate billing. In complex billing processes, calculation errors can lead to incorrect invoices, potentially resulting in churn, customer dissatisfaction, or revenue leakage.
• Tax compliance issues. Navigating global tax regulations — such as filing multiple taxes, managing exemptions, and calculating VAT — further complicate the enterprise billing process.

Standard Billing Software vs. Enterprise Billing Software

The biggest difference between enterprise billing and legacy solutions is the sophistication of their architecture and features. Standard billing software supports single-purchase transactions, but it doesn’t give businesses the agility required to manage subscriptions, custom pricing structures, and multiple currencies.

Standard Billing Software

Traditional billing software manages single-purchase transactions and offers basic invoicing, payment processing, and financial reporting features. But it lacks the flexibility and advanced features needed to handle more complex billing scenarios.

Key limitations include:

• Limited support for ongoing subscription billing and recurring payments
• Only offers support for manual product configuration and basic pricing tiers
• Inability to manage custom pricing models or tiered pricing structures
• No multi-currency support or global tax compliance features
• Inefficient customer account management
• Difficult to scale and integrate with other systems
• Few (if any) custom automations and workflows

Enterprise Billing Software

Enterprise billing systems offer sophisticated architecture and robust features that enable businesses to manage tiered pricing, subscriptions, and modern billing challenges on autopilot.

Compared to a traditional billing solution, enterprise software also supports consumption-based billing, usage-based billing, dynamic billing, and other models that require continuous monitoring and data collection.

Enterprise Billing Software Features

At the enterprise level, billing functionality includes automated workflows, no-code customization, reusable rules and templates, analytics tools, and support for international operations. Here are some of the features that come with enterprise software:

• Advanced invoice and revenue management capabilities
• Subscription-based enterprise billing
• Audit trail and detailed financial reporting
• Compliance tools for global taxes, VAT, derogations, ASC 606, IFRS 15, SOC II, etc.
• Revenue recognition automation
• Flexible billing and payment options
• Integrations with other systems (e.g., ERP, CRM, bookkeeping, CPQ)
• Automated customer account management
• Contract renewal workflows
• Dunning management
• Website integration for self-service portals
• Region-specific campaigns in any language or currency
• Customer tracking for usage- and consumption-based models

Benefits of Enterprise Billing Software

Supports Complex Pricing Models

The primary benefit of enterprise billing software is its agility — it supports readily scales with the needs of any business and can be programmed to handle any type of billing functionality.

This includes:

• Configurable product bundles
• Microservices and multi-tiered pricing
• Payment plans that automatically adjust to customer usage
• Recurring billing for ongoing subscription services
• Changes and updates to subscription plans
• Customizable billing frequencies

Most importantly, enterprise billing engines manage these functions without the need for manual intervention. When it comes time to invoice a client or set up a new configuration, the platform does the math, creates the document, and sends it out automatically.

Increases Quote-to-Cash Efficiency

The quote-to-cash process includes the entire sequence of activities that begins with a customer inquiry and ends with payment. Companies need to streamline their billing operations for quote-to-cash efficiency as they scale.

Enterprise billing solutions automate routine tasks and consolidate multiple processes into one platform for more efficient quote-to-cash cycles.

Suppose a B2B manufacturer receives a purchase order for 500 units of its product. In a manual process, they would have to create the invoice and validate the order before processing payment.

With enterprise billing capabilities, up-to-the-minute product data from ERP, automated pricing calculations, and integrated payment processing are fully managed by the software.

Increases Customer Satisfaction

During the purchase and ordering processes, the message is clear: A frictionless sales experience doesn’t involve a human representative. According to NICE’s 2022 Digital-First Customer Experience Report, the vast majority (81%) of customers say they want more self-service options.

Automated billing, ordering, and account management with enterprise software helps companies put their buyers in the driver’s seat, saving time and resources, while promoting customer satisfaction.

Offers Advanced Analytics

As businesses gain more insight into their billing operations, they can identify new efficiencies and optimize their cash flow.

Enterprise billing platforms offer reporting and analytics tools that track customer trends and revenue patterns to uncover additional growth opportunities.

Advanced metrics such as average time-to-payment, invoice disputes, and net revenue realization rates provide valuable information about company performance and financial health.

Provides Data Security

Data security is a huge concern for most customers and one of the biggest reasons for noncompliance fines for businesses.

Enterprise billing systems protect customer data with advanced encryption and authentication technology, while conforming to the highest data privacy standards and regulatory compliance.

Enterprise Billing Integrations

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems give businesses a single view of their entire operation, with integrated finance, HR, marketing, inventory management, and order management modules.

Billing solutions integrate with ERP platforms to provide real-time access to customer data, product configuration information, availability, pricing tiers, taxes, and fees.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Customer relationship management (CRM) software provides a comprehensive view of customer profiles and activities across marketing, sales, and service operations.

Integrating CRM with enterprise billing solutions allows companies to access up-to-date customer information for more personalized service and improved loyalty. It also gives businesses greater visibility into customer behavior and buying patterns.

Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ)

CPQ software and billing go hand-in-hand (in DealHub’s case, they integrate natively).

CPQ automates quote and contract generation in response to customer inquiries. With integrated billing capabilities, customers can configure products themselves, see pricing estimates and availability information in real-time, and complete the purchase in one fluid motion.

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