The top 3 ways finance leaders can pave the way for greater growth
SaaS companies are navigating turbulent times. Growth is slowing, customer churn is rising, and efficiency is under the microscope. Yet, the demand to scale, innovate, and remain compliant persists. In this challenging business climate, finance leaders—especially Chief Accounting Officers (CAOs) and Controllers—are uniquely positioned to drive both operational excellence and sustainable growth.
However, many SaaS businesses still rely on a fragmented approach to their order-to-cash processes, often using separate systems like Salesforce for CRM and NetSuite for general ledger accounting. These disjointed systems lead to inefficiencies, errors, and compliance risks that ultimately hinder growth.
As businesses scale into new markets, adopt complex pricing models, and expand their offerings, these inefficiencies become a critical bottleneck.
So what is the key to growth and staying competitive? Finance leaders need an integrated solution that streamlines operations, empowers sales, and adapts to change.
In this article, we’ll give you the top 3 ways finance leaders can pave the way for greater growth.
“Through 2025, more than three-fifths of organizations will limit the effectiveness of revenue management with an incomplete view of a customer’s journey from lead, engagement, purchasing, onboarding, renewals and expansion.”
– Stephen Hurrell, Director of Research, Office of Revenue, ISG Software Research
1. Streamline bookings, billing, and revenue in one system
Finance teams often struggle to align bookings, billing, and revenue data. Without a unified system, teams waste valuable time reconciling data across multiple platforms, leaving room for error and compliance risks.
The challenge
The following are some of the key challenges and pain points you may be facing:
- Data reconciliation headaches: It can take weeks to prepare for audits or revenue reporting due to fragmented data.
- Bad data hygiene: Inconsistent data capture across systems creates additional manual work.
- Lack of confidence in numbers: Only 44% of finance leaders feel highly confident in their revenue data.
“We frequently observe that upstream systems inadequately capture the data required for the revenue accounting process and often will inconsistently use the data that is captured upstream. This leads to manual interventions by the revenue accountants to collect, validate and correct the upstream data in order to accurately perform revenue accounting. The lack of systems expertise for the contract-to-revenue process is a frequent obstacle in improving data quality and automating the revenue accounting process.”
– Jeff Johnson, Executive Director, Ernst & Young LLP
The solution
A single order-to-cash system consolidates bookings, billing, and revenue data — providing end-to-end traceability. This eliminates data silos, reduces manual intervention, and accelerates financial close processes.
The single financial data model
Look for a solution that offers the following key features and capabilities:
- Traceability across orders, invoices, and revenue contracts
- Continuous accounting for real-time visibility and forecasting
- An order-to-revenue data model that ensures regulatory compliance
Learn more: Navigating quote to cash (QTC) complexity
2. Enable sales with creative deals, without creating extra work for finance
SaaS companies thrive on innovation in their pricing and sales strategies — multi-year contracts, usage-based pricing, and hybrid models are now the norm. But these creative deals often introduce complexity that slows finance teams down.
The challenge
The following are some of the key challenges and pain points you may be facing:
- Manual interventions: 74% of finance leaders report daily manual processes for transaction management.
- Automation gaps: On average, teams waste over half their time on repetitive tasks.
- Saying “no” to creative deals: The business needs to support new strategies and deal structures, but the finance team simply cannot support this from a technology, workforce, or process perspective.
“With our old solution, there was no integration, so our outsourced team was manually taking signed contracts and keying them into the system. This introduced the opportunity for human error and sloppy data entry.”
– Lauren Feeney, Financial Controller, Secureframe
The solution
Automate order-to-cash workflows to handle even the most complex deals seamlessly. By removing manual roadblocks, finance teams can support sales innovation while maintaining operational efficiency.
Look for a solution that offers the following key features and capabilities:
- Automate contracts with multi-year ramps, prepaid balances, and free trials
- Support hybrid pricing models, including subscriptions and usage-based billing
- Manage split invoices, applied payments, and pay-as-you-go models
3. Adapt fast as the business changes
The pace of innovation in SaaS is relentless. New products, strategies, and market demands require agility from finance teams. Yet, legacy systems often hinder the ability to pivot quickly.
The challenge
The following are some of the key challenges and pain points you may be facing:
- Growing go-to-market complexity: 76% of finance leaders report increasing demands on their systems.
- Limited flexibility: Rigid ERPs make it difficult to implement new pricing models or processes.
- IT dependency: Customizing and maintaining legacy systems is time-intensive and costly.
“Technology is an enabler of agility. Even if your processes and people are in the right place, if you don’t have the right technology, you’ll always have problems being agile. Technology is crucial for agile transformations.”
– Cem Yöndem, VP of Digital Customer Relationship Management and IT Platforms, Schneider Electric
Learn more: The risks of building your own billing software
The solution
Leverage an extensible financial operations platform that adapts to change without requiring extensive IT intervention. With pre-built integrations, a flexible product catalog, and sandboxes for testing, finance teams can stay ahead of the curve.
Look for a solution that offers the following key features and capabilities:
- A command center for real-time monitoring
- Flexible product catalogs that support evolving business needs
- Enterprise-grade controls and audit trails for compliance
Which challenges is your business facing today?
Whether you’re ready to begin a transformation project or just looking for ways to improve the efficiency of your financial operations down the line, here are some valuable questions to consider:
- Where does your bookings, billing, and revenue data sit today?
- How much time does your team spend reconciling data?
- Are your current processes audit-ready?
- What percentage of your orders are automated?
- How often do manual processes delay deal approvals?
- Are you prepared to handle new monetization strategies, like bundled services or dynamic pricing?
- How easily can your current system handle new pricing models?
- Are your IT teams burdened by system customizations?
- Do you have the tools to test changes before they go live?
Streamline financial operations with one order-to-cash solution
For SaaS companies, finance leaders are no longer just stewards of compliance—they are influential growth enablers. By streamlining financial operations, empowering sales teams, and building for flexibility, CAOs can help their organizations thrive in an increasingly competitive market.