How SaaS leader Whereby propels subscription operations with lean, agile finance team in 130+ countries

How SaaS leader Whereby propels subscription operations with lean, agile finance team in 130+ countries

Time Stamp: April 20, 2023 5:59 AM
Source Node: 2596319

Founded in 2013, Whereby is a video conferencing tool that makes it easy to host video meetings, with features like screen sharing, recording, chat, live reactions, and integrations. Whereby distinguishes itself from the other video conferencing tools with its product Whereby Embedded, which lets businesses such as telehealth, eLearning, and virtual event providers integrate video chat into their platforms easily via their API.

Whereby’s globally distributed teams serve 850,000 daily active users across 130 countries with a mission to provide people the freedom to work and live anywhere.

The Problem

Whereby initially relied on its in-house billing system, which had basic integrations with Stripe Billing. However, this system required extensive manual work, custom developments, and diversion of engineering resources from their core product to work on the in-house billing system. This led to a point where the Whereby finance team had to manage billing on their own and use Stripe primarily for payment collection.

As demand for video conferencing tools surged during the pandemic, Whereby experienced rapid growth. But the volume outgrew what their existing integration with Stripe Billing could handle. They also needed more pricing and packaging flexibility to scale acquisition and expansion efforts swiftly.

Also, the internal teams needed to catch up on many data inaccuracies regarding revenue recognition. “Our revenue data was spread across Stripe Billing, Quaderno, and TaxJar, but these systems were not communicating. This left us to consolidate revenue accounting data in multiple Excel spreadsheets, and it was a painful process each month. It was also tough to track data accurately over time and verify the accuracy of our recognized and deferred revenue,” said Malika Kenzhebaeva, Finance Director at Whereby.

The Solution

Malika realized the need to centralize their entire billing and revenue recognition infrastructure under a single umbrella and reached out to Chargebee. Chargebee consultants worked with Malika’s team to understand their subscription needs, billing practices, taxation requirements, and payment collection processes.

Here’s how Chargebee enabled Whereby to manage its end-to-end subscription and billing operation needs:

  • Pricing & packaging flexibility: Whereby found managing pricing, packaging, and sign-up process iterations for product-led growth challenging, but Chargebee’s structured product catalog made it easier to experiment and quickly launch changes.

One of the main reasons we chose Chargebee as our billing system is that it gives us the flexibility to combine different billing approaches for our products and services. This allows us to offer both flat fee and usage-based pricing options, as well as easily configure freemium vs. free trial subscriptions.

Iwona Włodarczyk, Lead Product Manager, Growth

  • Single source of truth for Whereby teams: Chargebee has been widely embraced by cross-functional teams at Whereby, including Customer Success for subscription and renewal management, Marketing for promotional campaigns using coupons, and Product for pricing experiments.

  • Hybrid billing motions: With Chargebee, Whereby’s PLG onboarding and renewals are automated globally, while sales-assisted billing is streamlined for enterprise clients through customer-facing teams, enabling customized plans, discounts, and tax calculations. “Through Chargebee’s support, we’ve achieved significant improvements in streamlining our sales and billing processes, enabling us to devote more time to strategic initiatives,” said Tomi Oludemi, Financial Controller at Whereby.

  • Streamlined revenue recognition: Chargebee RevRec combines the data from Chargebee Billing and other data sources of Whereby (Stripe & Quaderno), offering a unified sub-ledger for its revenue. Malika loves viewing the revenue drill down by plan and transaction-level tax details. This eliminates manual data verification and reconciliation each month while also improving the accuracy of revenue accounting.

The Impact

  • An end-to-end revenue management system: Chargebee helped the Whereby finance team consolidate its billing, payments, revenue recognition, and reporting processes under one umbrella, which allowed the team to improve its financial performance.

  • Expedited month-end closes & compliant reports: After using Chargebee RevRec, the team has witnessed a drastic improvement in the time it takes for month-end closes. By automating the revenue recognition processes, the team has also reduced the risk of improper revenue recognition and non-compliance.

  • A future-proof solution to support Whereby’s vision: “We’ve achieved positive ROI with Chargebee Billing and RevRec, automating processes and improving efficiency. The time saved on finance operations and admin tasks allows us to shift focus to customer retention and LTV. We look forward to leveraging Chargebee Receivables and Retention as they provide valuable insights to reduce voluntary and involuntary churn by understanding payment patterns and customer cancellation reasons,” Malika added.

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