Spring 2020 Product Updates: Enterprise-like Sophistication, Without The Complexities
6 MIN READ
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Updated on December 7, 2022
Today we’re announcing our lineup of product updates for Spring 2020. I know you’re scaling fast, and I know 2020 is big on the goals and targets. So this release is all about enabling you with the process sophistication you need to scale to the next level, without any complexities that slow you down.
Growing pains of hyper-growth SaaS
The average SaaS business doubles in revenue every 18 months. That means the team structures, processes, sales motions, finance workflows, and the entire organizational compass that worked in Christmas 2019 won’t cut it for Easter 2020.
The degree of sophistication in sales and revenue operations for pretty much any business only goes up with scale. Just that for SaaS, the road from $1M to $100M is steeper, faster and infinitely more dynamic.
Selling to big-ticket, enterprise-y customers demands a higher-touch sales process. Your revenue operations grow to include deal desks that provide Order-to-Revenue and Quote-to-Cash visibility. Product and finance get involved when you Configure, Price and Quote (CPQ). You start signing more annual contracts each carrying completely unique terms. These changes should boost growth, not stunt it. The tools that offer this deep sophistication though, were built for the traditional enterprises. Before the era of ‘Let’s reinvent ourselves every year’.
After all, SaaS is not just about growing. It’s about growing fast. The sophistication you need in your sales and revenue process shouldn’t have to come at the cost of your agility.
The Balancing Act
What if I told you that you could achieve enterprise-class sophistication in your revenue management workflows, without sacrificing the startup-level agility that got you here?
Today at Chargebee, we are announcing our Spring 2020 lineup of Product Updates that will bring a whole new level of sophistication to your sales workflow, and supercharge the way you make revenue every month.
1. Define, Manage, and Enforce Contract Terms:
What: Automate contractual obligations in your subscriptions, including lock-in periods and contract termination fees.
Why: Higher ARPU customers often come with equally large lists of terms, conditions, and contractual clauses. Previously you had to maintain these contract terms separately, outside the actual subscription in Chargebee. This update now brings these terms right into each subscription that you create in Chargebee. So now, when a customer breaks a multi-year contract right after you’ve spent months in implementation and training, you still get to exercise and collect your termination fees automatically.
Check out how you can start shooting out Contract Terms in Chargebee
2. Completely re-imagined Salesforce Integration: Account Mapping
What: 1-1 mapping and real-time sync between accounts in Salesforce and customers in Chargebee.
Why: In B2C or lower ARPU sales motions, mapping individuals to subscriptions makes sense. In a sophisticated B2B sales context where you are selling to the business, you’d want to pull out subscription, revenue, and deal reports at the account level.
Previously you could connect a Salesforce Contact with a customer in Chargebee. But if you had an elaborate Account setup with multiple contacts in them, you’d still be forced to connect a particular contact to the customer record in Chargebee. This update lets you connect Accounts directly to Customers in Chargebee.
That way business doesn’t have to stop just because there was a change in the key contact and you didn’t know who to invoice anymore.
Learn more about the Chargebee-Salesforce Integration
3. More Salesforce: Map Hierarchical Account relationships in Salesforce into Chargebee.
What: Parent-Child Hierarchies between contacts in Salesforce and customers in Chargebee can now be synced.
Why: If you have complex enterprise sales processes, chances are you already have nested parent-child relationships to define “who to bill” and “who to invoice”. Only previously you’d have maintained duplicate records of this relationship in your Salesforce Accounts and Chargebee. Not anymore – now you can map these relationships from Salesforce directly into Chargebee.
We’re now live on the AppExchange
Meanwhile back at the barn, you can get the Chargebee app on your Salesforce set up directly through the AppExchange.
4. Even more Salesforce: Automate Deal Closure and Subscription Behavior
What: Mark deals as Closed/Won when the subscription gets active. Or automatically send out payment links and move subscriptions to active as soon as the deal is marked as Closed/ Won.
Why: The Chargebee-Salesforce Integration lets you create and update customers in Chargebee, or create subscriptions, update payment methods and more right from Salesforce.
Remember the days when Mike would send a payment link and then spend the next 3 hours checking if they actually made the payment so you could start their subscription period? That’s so prehistoric now!
You can now set up deals to be marked as closed/won as soon as the payment goes through, or start the subscription period, and collect payments automatically as soon as a deal gets marked as Closed/Won.
All so Mike can keep closing!
See all the ways Chargebee now enables your Sales-driven Workflow
5. Tap into that EU market with Adyen – SEPA
What: If you use Adyen for your payment gateway you can now collect Direct Debit payments from European customers via SEPA.
Why: As you scale up, there are two things that are sure to happen – more high-value deals coming in, and a general expansion across geographies. That means you need to be able to accept Direct Debit as a payment method in addition to Credit Cards.
If you already use Adyen as your preferred payment gateway in Europe, you can now allow customers to pay via Direct Debit through Adyen SEPA right from your Chargebee Checkout.
6. Get the context of subscriptions within Pipedrive
What: The new integration enables one-way sync between customers in Chargebee and contacts in Pipedrive.
Why: If your sales team lives inside Pipedrive, this one’s great news for you. To be better at closing deals, locking in renewals and upgrades, they need the context of subscriptions. This integration enriches contacts in Pipedrive with detailed subscriptions info from Chargebee so that your sales team can focus on closing more deals and not fret over context switching between Pipedrive and Chargebee.
Getting subscription and invoice information in spreadsheets is ancient and obsolete. Pipedrive should be the single source of truth for your sales team.
Learn more about the Chargebee – Pipedrive Integration
[Note: For those of you who have been using our Hubspot integration – It’s now officially out of beta.]
7. Now send PDF attachments with your email notifications
What: You can now configure your email notifications to go out with a PDF attachment to your users if you’re using custom SMTP servers.
Why: Remember the old workaround, when you had to upload documents to your Google Drive, and then insert the drive link in the body of your email? That’s history now.
Let’s say you want to send a legal document (like terms and conditions) when users activate their subscriptions. Now you can configure your notification emails to go out with a PDF attachment – it’s that simple. There’s even support for attaching documents in multiple languages.
See how you can use your Subscription Emails to drive growth .
So whether your SaaS business aims to expand across geographies to grow rapidly, or if it aims to expand on your existing revenue opportunities; or if you want to move up-river and sell to bigger enterprise customers – you need a revenue operations platform that equips you with the sophistication to achieve your objectives, that lets you stay as agile as a startup without weighing you down with complexities. With Chargebee, you get more than just a billing software. You get a partner who invests in your growth.
