New as-a-service business models have also unleashed an explosion in “commercial innovation.” In today’s market, businesses compete not just on product features and customer experience, but on flexibility in pricing models and contract structures as well. While these different pricing and contract instruments provide sales with the firepower they need to win big deals, they also create a lot of complexity downstream for finance organizations.

The average $50M as-a-Service company has to support over a trillion different combinations of pricing models, payment schedules, billing and accounting parameters to be competitive in the market. We call this the “priceberg” effect and even finance platforms developed ten years ago are struggling to support all of these different permutations.

There is a significant gap between the “commercial innovation” sales teams need and the product features of the software applications finance teams use. Billing systems have become the Achilles heel for innovation, often blocking entrepreneurs and innovators from implementing the pricing and contract models they want to launch.

CFOs are put in the impossible position of either having to 1) say “no” to the creative deal structures needed to win big deals or 2) having hiring a small army of accountants to perform all the calculations in supersized spreadsheets. More and more innovative companies are choosing option #3 – building their own billing systems, which consumes in-house product development resources.

Ordway wasn’t designed for how business was done in the past, but for how it is done today and how it will be done in the future. Ordway supports all of today’s innovative pricing strategies and contract structures. It also has the flexibility to adapt to new, emerging business models that haven’t been invented yet. With Ordway you feel confident that you can support whatever creative deal structures your sales team negotiates and respond to whatever new pricing trends emerge in the market.

One of our aspirations is to grow the world’s population of unicorns. Greek mythology tells tales of these magical creatures roaming the forests and gliding across the sky thousands of years ago. For several millennia most of the world assumed that unicorns were extinct, but they have re-emerged over the past few decades. Today they number in the low 1000s, primarily inhabiting North America, but still far short of what their numbers could and should be.

Armed with the flexibility and automation of Ordway, finance organizations gain the scale they need to become unicorns. Billing and revenue operations can scale exponentially as the customer base and product catalog continues to grow. Finance leaders evolve into more than just CFOs. They become uniquestrians, taking the reins of the business to guide it on the best path forward.

Ordway, the next-generation billing and revenue automation platform for scaling companies, today announced it is the first to offer enterprise-level multi-entity billing and revenue management support for the SMB market. This means, regardless of size, companies can focus on global expansion and compete with Fortune 500 companies on an affordable and flexible order-to-revenue framework.

“With entities doing business in the U.S., Canada, and Sri Lanka, Ordway’s platform helps us invoice customers all over the world and keep our entities’ accounting separate,” said Eric Magas, CPA, Controller at MyDigitalOffice. “We’re in the process of scaling our business, and through our research, Ordway was the only vendor who could provide the multi-entity support we needed within the budget we could invest.”

Historically, only legacy ERP software, burdened with non-relevant functionality and high expense, could support multi-entity companies with their billing and accounting needs. This meant many companies cobbled together systems and spreadsheets to manage their multi-entity businesses. Today, companies can run their business units independently and still unify billing, revenue schedules, and reporting within one system on the Ordway platform.

“We are excited to provide multi-entity support to companies with global ambitions like MyDigitalOffice via our flexible and nimble platform,” said Sameer Gulati, CEO and Founder of Ordway. “Our customers across North America and Europe are able to expand into new geographies without worrying about needing to replace their finance stack.”

The company recently announced a new partnership with Sage to automate billing for innovative pricing models and contract structures.  Ordway’s application has been integrated with the Sage Intacct cloud financial management system and is now listed on the Sage Intacct Marketplace.

Direct integration between Ordway and the Sage Intacct platform enables details about invoicing and payments to flow into the Accounts Receivable application then on to other applications such as cash management and the Sage Intacct Intelligent GL™.  By automating complex billing processes, organizations can reduce their dependency on spreadsheets and scale their invoicing without having to add a large number of employees. Ordway supports a diverse range of innovative billing models including subscription, usage-based, percentage commission, and dynamic pricing.  To ensure that bills are accurate Ordway captures details such as products, pricing, and payment terms for each account directly from the CRM application.  For variable fees, consumption data is streamed from the customer’s product into the Ordway rating engine for calculations.  Ordway also automates complex upgrades and renewal contracts for existing accounts, performing the necessary pricing adjustments and prorations.