How technology gave back time to Finance

Having the native integration and having the data from billing sync directly into revenue was one of the biggest things that was great for our team. This was something that took away a day and a half of the close just by ha- having the data talk together. Our team doesn’t work weekends or close anymore, not even quarter-ends or anything like that. So I get to focus on my kids more, I get to spend more time with my family, and really it makes it so that we all can focus on our lives more. Real people doing real accounting, getting back to real life. Hey everyone, my name is Catherine Sheely, I am on our product marketing team here at Zorra, and welcome back to our Get Back

to Real Accounting series. This is part two of our interview with Zorra’s own Rachel Knoll. She is our director of Quote-to-Cash here at Zorra, and if you missed the first part, we went through how this shift from not just the technology, but how we’ve sort of rebuilt our Quote-to-Cash processes from the ground up, how that impacted her org, how that impacted her team morale, and how that impacted audit season. In this second part, we’ll be diving into the technology piece of this, so the how we’re actually going about doing some of these more efficient processes, how the technology itself has created more capacity for her team, and, uh, really the digging into what brought that, you know, 15-day

close cycle that we talked about in part one, um, down to just a few days. Rachel, welcome back. Happy to be here. Rachel, last time we touched a bit on the technology challenges that you and your team were facing. Um, now I wanna dig into that in a bit more detail in this part. Take us through what wasn’t working. It was a lot of different things. First of all, you have to think that all the processes were kind of siloed. You had your billing process that would then have to go through this custom integration layer that required manual handholding by a revenue team member that would then get uploaded into revenue and have manual errors because the processes were manual in billing, manual in the integration layer, and manual in revenue.

And the billing team was also building out a lot of the deals because they weren’t able to get full quotes from the quoting tool. Just to give you an idea, there would be basic deal structures that sales needed to do, um, in the course of business that we couldn’t support. Um, a classic example is ramps. Our quoting tool just would not quote ramps, and so the deal desk team would have to send a flat quote to the billing team who would then add the ramps to the deal. And then you would have the integration layer where the invoices wouldn’t map appropriately for the ramps, and so the revenue team member had to remap them. And then it would get to revenue,

and the revenue tool was not set up to recognize the revenue the way we needed to straight line, and so the revenue team would need to take it offline and calculate it themselves and potentially book an entry if the impact was large enough. So that’s just one example of a deal structure that did not work end-to-end. That would happen quite frequently. Rachel, I have to imagine that that was an incredibly painful process for your team. A- again, seeing that, you know, you look after Quote-to-Cash and revenue accounting, like, this isn’t just, you know, one part of your team that’s impacted by this. This is quite surely, you know, the entirety of your team that is being burdened by all of this manual work, and it kind of all starts at, in- in this circumstance, the- the quoting process. Whenever you thought

about this reimplementation process, what- what were some of the main goals, right? You can’t boil the ocean immediately, but- but what were the main goals that you were looking to get out of this? So I think that the main goal was we wanna use the system as out of the box as we can. Now granted, um, there’s always things that you may have to customize, but our goal was really to be able to do that. And then a second goal was really to, um, be able to support the deals that sales did frequently, so we made, or wanted to do that maybe we were ha- having to push back on because we couldn’t support. And so really it was taking a hard look at all those deals and seeing how we could solve them in the new tool. We also wanted to take a step back and look at our policies

and see if there were policies that n- when, since we were gonna be on a new tool that we could change to make things flow more easily end-to-end and really, uh, try to stop doing as many manual processes as we could. So not only did the policies inform the system selection or the tooling, but the tooling is also informing some of the processes too, knowing that it can handle certain scenarios, and again, I’m thinking for, you know, Zorra, traditional enterprise B2B SaaS, these- these complex deals are coming in quite frequently. These are the way that, you know, sellers want to sell at B2B companies. How did that transformation close the gap between this tactical work and the strategic advisory that you’re talking about where you’re thinking about reimagining these processes and the tactical work to get there? Walk

us through how the gaps have been closed there. I’ll go back to my ramp example. Now our quoting tool does support ramps, and so when the quote is received by the billing team, there’s no more intervention on most of the deals. The billing team just has to review it and make sure that it’s in the system in accordance with the contract, and then now we have a native integration layer that works between billing and revenue, and so that deal that’s built in billing can just be synced over and collected in revenue, again without manual touchpoints. It really helps improve the accuracy and make sure that, uh, the systems are able to match what’s on the order form, and again, without the manual touches, uh, it makes it a lot easier to review for all the teams.Yeah. And you, you

touched on accuracy there, which I also think is just a really important topic for most, uh, revenue accounting leaders. How has the reliability shifted in the systems that you look after, and wha- what’s been the impact across that? ‘Cause I know we touched a lot in the first time about this cross-functional role that you and your team has. How has this technology shift supported some of that increased reliability, increased accuracy, and increased visibility across your cross-functional collaboration? I mean, it makes it so that, um, one, uh, when sales wants to do a ramp deal, or a bundle deal, or something like that, it’s now something that we can support. And so, it’s not something that we, um, push back on as much. Secondly, from an audit perspective, we’re,

um, able to get them to rely on the systems more. And so, they’re able to, um, again, review less deals and be able to really ask better questions about the deals that are in the system. And then our teams are able to get the numbers to FP&A and all of our cross-functional stakeholders more quickly because we’re able to trust the data across all the systems. FP&A is an interesting one, Rachel. I, I wanna double-click into that. Has there been a noticeable difference whenever you think about, you know, things that FP&A really cares about, like financial forecasting and those aspects of the business? Yeah. I mean, before, we were getting them the numbers maybe very close to their earnings release, so they weren’t really able to act

on anything that came up in the actuals. Now, because we’re able to partner with them and get them the numbers very much ahead of time, um, they are able to digest it, understand it, and really have a better prep for their meetings. Got it. So, again, like, enabling other parts of the org that n-… don’t necessarily fall within your purview, but are, but are really benefiting from having this real-time accurate, highly visible data that’s unified across these systems. So, again, technology is kind of supporting that transition to supporting that visibility and supporting the success, not just of your team, but of the teams that you support as well. All right, Rachel, so we are diving into a little bit of ZORA The Product here and tell us a bit about the features, uh, you

know, across the quote-to-cash process that you feel like have made the biggest impact for your team. What things in ZORA The Product do you feel like you really couldn’t live without? I kept mentioning the customized integration layer- Mm-hmm…. taking about a day and a half for somebody to remap data and upload it into ZORA Revenue, um, in our previous implementation. In our new reimplementation, having the native integration and having the data from billing sync directly into revenue was hands down one of the biggest things that was great for our team. Um, this was something that took away a day and a half of the close just by h- having the data talk together more seamlessly. But there were other… are a

bunch of other features too that we really are, um, impressed with. Um, another one is the variable consideration. We don’t use it broadly across the population, but every once in a while, there’s a deal that we need it on, and we’re able to just do an upload and have the revenue schedules be exactly what we’re expecting with the variable consideration. That would’ve been something that we would’ve taken offline in the past and done manual calculations and followed journal entries all the way through the lifecycle of a contract. The ramps and being able to account for price ramps in the system and actually have the system straight-line the revenue for us without touching it is something that was huge for our team, because that was a long analysis that we’d have to do at the end of every quarter,

uh, to really be able to understand the impact of not having that work in the system. We also now use, uh, ZORA Billing as our AR sub-ledger. Previously, we were actually syncing all the transaction data into NetSuite, and we were having to reconcile invoice-by-invoice against the two systems. So, this really is a lot easier, because we have all the transactional data in one place, and then we send the summary entries over to NetSuite. So, much easier to reconcile, a lot more seamless for our teams. The other features we love are probably the contract modifications and then being able to do the grouping roles the way we need to for our contracts in revenue. And would you say a lot of these things are fairly common scenarios for enterprise B2B

SaaS companies that sell similarly to ZORA? Yes, absolutely. Um, I feel like the enterprise SaaS deals, um, they’re known for being complex. There are gonna be, um, things that you put in the contracts, uh, for these deals, because you are customizing each deal for these customers. That makes sense. And thinking about, you know, going back to your team and what they’re able to do because of this, you mentioned ramp deals is one of them. Are there any other examples of things that your team can focus on now that perhaps they couldn’t previously, just because of the, um, because the tooling forced them into a certain workflow or forced them into a certain way of going about their job or just taking too much time? What are things that your team feels

empowered to do now? Yeah. So, a lot of it is really these, um, the process improvements with IT and system improvements, being able to take on these projects where we actually are able to implement new features. Um, a lot of this, because we are using ZORA, is, uh, implementing features that are ZORA, so that also gives them a chance to give feedback to the product team as well, um, which is something that we just would never have had time for previously. They’re also, again, more involved upfront on the deals with sales. They’re part of that approval process. Um, and so they’re getting to see these deals before they even, uh, become signed in a quote and going all the way downstream. Tell us about implementation. Implementation

can kinda be a sticky topic. And I think, you know, as most folks are thinking or maybe even considering taking on some of these projects or making a business case for some of these projects, um, implementation can be a hard conversation to have, um, especially when, you know, even, even at ZORA, these processes were so interwoven. We had a ton of, you know, manual integrations or custom integrations. What worked well for you on the technology implementation front, and what might you recommend to others that are considering this? So, first of all, um, I would say it’s not a one-size-fits-all. Um, I can tell you what worked for us and why. We ended up doing a two-phased approach. And a lot of… And basically what that meant was we went live on the new system for new business deals and then

did a, a larger cutover a few months later. And part of the reason for that was there were other initiatives. So, for example, we had a…… pricing initiative where we were gonna launch a new catalog. And had we launched the catalog on our old system, we would have had to set it up in the old tool, which would have taken a lot of time because of all the customizations, and really would have just been rework when we went live on the new tool. Um, so for us, that worked really well, and it actually gave the team, uh, a chance to get used to the new tool before we did the final cutover. So, that worked for us. But I could definitely see a world where, had that initiative not been part of the situation we were in, maybe we would have, um,

just done it all in one. So, I think it really depends on, um, where you’re at with your initiatives and what works best for, um, your teams and your company. And as we’re kind of closing out on this, you know, technology session that we’ve had, if someone like you, one of your peers, was evaluating Zuora, the product, what- what would you want them to know? I’d want them to know that it’s as good as the data you’re gonna put through it. And so, um, really taking a step back and understanding how you want to structure these things and making sure that you set it up well ahead of time is really gonna set you- yourself up for success in the future. You know, for us, it’s been great, because we did take the time to take a step back and understand

how we were gonna treat each of these deal structures. And I think that’s really part of what’s contributed to that success. That makes sense. So, it wasn’t just necessarily, you know, flipping a switch, turning on the new technology. But just like we covered in the first part of this series, taking a look at processes, taking a look at, you know, initiatives that are priority for the business. And Rachel, I wanna tie it back to everything that we talked about in part one, the- the operational processes, the organizational structure, the- the- the people and how they were impacted by, you know, the technology that we just overviewed. Bring- bringing both of those together, tell- tell us about how that actually impacted your team, the- the- the people doing the work. How were they able to get back to real accounting and get back to the things that they enjoy doing, both inside of

work and out? One thing that’s been amazing is, our team doesn’t work weekends or close anymore, not even quarter-ends or anything like that. Um, we also don’t work late nights very often. So, that really, um, makes sure that the team is able to, you know, go be with their families. I know I get to spend a lot more time with my kids, um, and not have to worry about whether our team is gonna get the books closed on time. So, I get to focus on my kids more, I get to spend more time with my family, and really, it makes it so that we all can focus on our lives more. Real people doing real accounting, getting back to real life. I love that, Rachel. This was really insightful, Rachel, in terms of how the technology specifically impacted that transition.

As we move into our third and final part, we will dive more into the future, the art of the possible, exactly what this is going to enable your teams to do, not just today, but tomorrow and years forward. Rachel, thanks again for joining us. It was, once again, great to speak with you on this. Great to speak with you, too. (music)