How Proxyclick Scaled to Newer Territories with Optimized Subscription and Revenue Operations

The Problem

Moving to a subscription business model was a natural decision for Proxyclick. Before Chargebee, Proxyclick used Excel spreadsheets to manage their billing. The pain started when their monthly invoice volume increased heavily month over month. The process became tedious and time-consuming given the fact that prospects could sign up directly without any involvement from a finance/billing perspective.

Soon issues of scale started creeping in, as with businesses in the growth stage. Their one-member finance team managed everything related to the pricing and revenue reporting. And every time they had to offer custom pricing to their prospects, they’d essentially end up creating a new product. This was proving to be a burden as their client base grew rapidly. At the same time, their enterprise plan - which offers custom pricing - started enticing more customers.

Scaling also meant expanding to new geographies. As a Belgian company, expanding to the US proved to be a challenge for Proxyclick. They had to navigate the complexities of changing sales tax rates in each jurisdiction. Especially taxing was the Supreme Court ruling in 2018 that required online businesses to collect sales taxes irrespective of physical presence. "Nowadays it would be impossible to maintain our customer base outside of any automated billing tool," said Jean-Thomas Cock, (Former) VP of Finance at Proxyclick.

The Solution

Proxyclick looked for a tool that would enable automatic invoicing upon renewal that they could set and forget. They also wanted to integrate the tool with their product so that prospects could sign up online and have their license activated without manual input.

When Proxyclick chose Chargebee, specific needs were identified and fulfilled by key areas including IT, Product, and Finance. Chargebee’s open REST APIs were also a critical component that suited them better, compared to the other billing systems they’d tried.

Our Developer is very happy whenever I ask him something related to Chargebee or the data coming from Chargebee. He’s like, ‘Yeah. You can do anything’. Because the API is so good.

Jean-Thomas Cock, VP of Finance, Proxyclick

The Pay-off

The biggest benefit was seen by the Finance team, followed by Marketing and Sales. The Finance team, in particular, found the system to be efficient, easy to use, and reliable.

Chargebee’s Price Override allowed them to offer custom pricing to their enterprise segment prospects without having to reinvent the wheel when they negotiated custom pricing.

For Proxyclick, “Chargebee’s integration with Avalara has been a game-changer and lifesaver.” It helped them in setting up their finance operations in the US. “I couldn’t have done it without it (Chargebee + Avalara) because I didn’t know enough about sales tax at the local in the States, and we sell in pretty much every state,” said Mr. Cock.

As the VP of Finance at Proxyclick, Mr. Cock keeps track of non-paying customers, generates invoices and appropriate financial reports, customizes billing rules for some customers, and iterates on pricing when necessary.

Proxyclick has also been able to control churn by pausing or reactivating customer subscriptions in cases where clients want to use the product for a specific event.

By building a smart workflow between Intercom, Chargebee, and HubSpot, the Marketing team is able to track the trial status of users and roll out a contextual onboarding campaign based on where the users sit in the customer journey.