“With growth comes complexity, and with that complexity come challenges on the revenue side. With Zuora Revenue in place, we know that whatever happens, we’re well positioned to support our growth as we scale. The solution can handle complex transactions, providing us with peace of mind.” – Karl Mosgofian, CIO
Gainsight’s innovative customer-centric technology is driving the future of customer success. The company was established in 2009, and its Customer Cloud offers solutions focused on customer success, product experience, revenue optimization, customer experience, and customer data, that together enable businesses to put the customer at the center of everything they do.
Gainsight was leveraging a combination of spreadsheets and scripts to manage the company’s revenue. With this manual process, a large burden was placed on Finance teams and there was a high risk for errors, resulting in time-consuming recalculations during audits. Gainsight needed a solution that would automate its revenue-related processes and provide the company with more accurate revenue reporting.
Gainsight selected Zuora Revenue to address its revenue-related needs, including revenue recognition, automation of key business processes, access to real-time data, and improved visibility, thereby reducing the time required to complete tasks, and decreasing risks associated with manual calculations. Working closely with Zuora’s Professional Services team, Gainsight implemented Zuora Revenue in 9 months.
Gainsight now has easy access to more accurate, real-time data. Time required to close the books each month was reduced by 30 percent, and the time required to complete an audit was cut in half. The level of automation and greater visibility into recognized revenue enables Gainsight’s team members to shift their focus from tedious manual work to strategic projects, enabling the team to scale with its ongoing growth.
“With our previous system, basic operational activities, day-to-day revenue reports were a heavy lift, and we didn’t have real time visibility in the data to ensure accuracy. Now, with Zuora Revenue, once sales orders and invoice details are loaded, we can easily pull reports and count on the accuracy of the information it contains to start our monthly close process. As a result, we have better visibility into revenue recognized, and our forecasting has improved significantly.” – Anna Lee, Director of Revenue
Gainsight is a high-growth software company that is redefining the landscape of Customer Success. However, with fast growth also comes operational hurdles – especially for revenue recognition
Gainsight found themselves in a far from ideal situation. “Revenue is something that you don’t want to worry about,” states Karl Mosgofian, CIO of Gainsight. “You want to have confidence in the data, but having various components working together did not give that comfort feeling.”
Manual calculations took team members’ time away from pursuing more strategic initiatives. Audits were time-consuming as data that had been calculated manually had to be recalculated to ensure accuracy of the results. During these recalculations, errors would sometimes surface, prompting the need for manual adjustments. “It was a huge time sink for IT team members, who were trying, in parallel, to stay on top of their regular responsibilities,” explains Mosgofian. “Beyond IT, others were spending so much time doing normal revenue processing, rather than thinking more strategically or exploring different business models.” The Accounting team was significantly impacted as it was challenging to complete basic, yet critical tasks, including closing a quarter.
Gainsight chose Zuora Revenue to automate the company’s revenue-related processes and provide more accurate revenue reporting. “People want a revenue system that they feel is bulletproof and that they can count on, so they aren’t constantly having to worry about double-checking data,” states Mosgofian. “Zuora Revenue was the best solution that fits our business model”
Gainsight relied heavily on Zuora Professional Services for guidance when it came to configuration of Zuora Revenue. “Part of the trick with a project like this was that we didn’t necessarily know what questions to ask because the solution was new to us,” explains Mosgofian. “Having the Zuora Revenue experts to guide us was helpful as they could rely on their past experience when providing us with advice and best practices.” This guidance helped Gainsight decide when to use default settings, and when to pursue customizations.
With Zuora Revenue in place, Gainsight now has access to many features and functionality that have had a positive impact on their business. Gainsight uses Zuora Revenue to automate and scale contract modifications, linking and delinking use cases, mass updates and more. The team has confidence in the data presented in Zuora Revenue’s reports, improved visibility into revenue recognized, and more accurate revenue forecasting. Team members also appreciate access to features that were lacking in their previous system, including SSP functionality, mass allocations, short-term and long-term calculations, as well as contract asset and contract liability splits.
Gainsight is now in a position where they can run the company’s day-to-day revenue without placing undue burden on employees.
“We have already benefited from significant time savings and cost savings with Zuora Revenue,” explains Anna Lee, Director of Revenue. “From contract modifications being calculated automatically to mass updates on data using the solution’s user-friendly interface, Zuora Revenue has been a game-changer for our organization.”
Faster month-end close: The amount of time required to complete month-end close has been reduced by approximately 30 percent. According to Lee, “We’ve gone from closing Revenue using best estimates to closing them properly and rolling the numbers forward to the next month, giving us a good starting point.” Lee looks forward to the day when they can close the books on day zero.
Reduction in errors: Fewer errors have resulted in fewer questions being asked by top management and the Board because there is more confidence in the accuracy of the data provided. When questions are asked, it takes less time to answer them thanks to access to real-time data. On the occasion when an error surfaces, it is easy to identify using a log in Zuora Revenue.
Improved reporting: Lee appreciates Zuora Revenue’s extensive reporting capabilities. “In our old world, producing basic operational, day-to-day reports had to be done in Excel,” explains Lee. “Now I can easily and quickly pull a report in RevPro, and rely on the data.” The timeliness of the information, combined with the improved visibility, has also improved agility in the business.
Less time required to complete an audit: By implementing Zuora Revenue, Gainsight was able to complete an audit in half the time that it used to take. “Being able to do an audit with more accurate data saves us both time and money,” says Lee.
More time for strategic work: With many revenue-related processes now automated, Gainsight’s team members are spending more time on revenue analysis and strategic initiatives, such as thinking about different business models.
As Gainsight continues its impressive growth trajectory, expands into new geographies, and introduces new business models, Zuora Revenue will serve as the backbone of the company’s revenue recognition. The Gainsight team is now eager to focus on improving front-end systems and the data flowing into Zuora Revenue as part of the path towards continuous improvement and enhanced automation.
“If you’re not agile enough to keep up with changes to your business model, then your department becomes a bottleneck to the business. Zuora Revenue provides us with the short- and long-term agility that we need to support changes to our business and innovation.” – Karl Mosgofian, CIO
