Continuous, the first embedded pricing and revenue solution purpose-built for Salesforce and NetSuite, is excited to announce a strategic partnership with Milo Massimo, experts in Salesforce Revenue Cloud Advanced (RCA) implementation and strategic advisory. This collaboration simplifies and accelerates how enterprises operationalize advanced consumption and credit-based pricing models directly within their existing CRM and ERP environments—without introducing additional billing silos.
Why This Partnership Matters
Today, businesses are rapidly adopting sophisticated pricing strategies like consumption-based and prepaid credit models. Yet many find themselves hindered by the complexity of legacy billing tools and challenging integrations between sales (CRM) and finance (ERP) systems.
Continuous uniquely solves this challenge by seamlessly integrating advanced usage rating, credit management, and flexible pricing directly into Salesforce and NetSuite. Milo Massimo complements this capability by providing deep, process-driven expertise in deploying and optimizing Salesforce Revenue Cloud environments, ensuring seamless alignment between sales and finance processes.
Together, Continuous and Milo Massimo offer a complete solution, enabling enterprise customers to:
Quickly launch and scale complex credit and usage-based pricing models.
Maintain a single integrated ecosystem across Salesforce CRM and NetSuite ERP.
Eliminate manual processes, reduce errors, and accelerate revenue cycles.
Shared Vision, Complementary Strengths
Milo Massimo’s extensive experience with Salesforce Revenue Cloud and their process-first implementation methodology ensures clients achieve streamlined, user-friendly experiences. Continuous enhances these implementations by providing powerful, flexible billing capabilities specifically tailored for sophisticated monetization scenarios, eliminating the need for costly customizations or standalone billing silos.
Insights from Our Teams
“We’re thrilled to partner with Milo Massimo,” said Sean Joyce, Co-founder and Head of Alliances at Continuous. “Milo Massimo’s unmatched expertise in Salesforce Revenue Cloud Advanced implementations aligns perfectly with our mission of simplifying consumption-based monetization. Together, we’re empowering companies to rapidly adopt innovative pricing strategies without disrupting their existing sales and finance systems.”
“Continuous fills a critical gap for our clients,” said Maria Warheit, CEO of Milo Massimo. “With their real-time usage rating and robust credit management capabilities, Continuous allows us to implement sophisticated monetization strategies directly within Salesforce Revenue Cloud and NetSuite. This partnership ensures our clients can innovate quickly and scale.”
What’s Next?
This strategic partnership positions Continuous and Milo Massimo to deliver rapid value to enterprise customers looking for a seamless way to manage consumption and credit-based monetization. Our joint solutions offer businesses a clear pathway to modernize their quote-to-cash processes, driving efficiency and unlocking new revenue opportunities.
To learn more about how Continuous and Milo Massimo can transform your monetization approach, please contact us or visit our partnership page for additional details.
About Continuous
Continuous provides the first embedded pricing and revenue platform specifically designed to enhance Salesforce and NetSuite, enabling enterprises to quickly launch and scale complex usage, credit, and hybrid monetization models without standalone billing systems. By leveraging existing CRM and ERP investments, Continuous delivers unmatched flexibility, scalability, and speed to market. Learn more.
About Milo Massimo
Milo Massimo is a consultancy built around making Salesforce Revenue Cloud work at scale across industries. Combining strategic advisory and hands-on implementation, Milo Massimo helps enterprises streamline revenue operations, eliminate friction, and realize faster outcomes across Sales and Finance. Learn more.
Medallia, the leading software company in the customer experience industry, faced a challenge supporting consumption models for their commercial business unit. In particular, they needed a solution to complement their existing technology stack of Salesforce Revenue Cloud and NetSuite Financials. Although Revenue Cloud solved the core use cases of SaaS subscription products, supporting usage models, specifically credit balance management, was proving to be challenging. Customizing Salesforce would add costs, increase maintenance costs and limit Medallia’s ability to rapidly bring additional business units and pricing models onto the platform, which could hinder growth.
The Challenge: Consumption & Credit Balance Concerns
Medallia understood the critical role that credits played in customer growth and satisfaction, but they needed to ensure that financials were tracked accurately across the product-to-revenue lifecycle. Credits provide flexibility for customers to better allocate spend, but their dynamic nature makes them uniquely challenging to support. To address this challenge, Salesforce recommended that Medallia work with Continuous, a leading Salesforce partner focused on launching and growing usage and consumption models. The Continuous solution is purpose-built to support consumption and credit balance management models and was an ideal partner for Medallia’s needs. Specifically, Continuous provides best-in-class credit purchase, monitoring, application, and re-up capabilities all on the Salesforce platform, with no customization required.
The Solution: Seamless Usage Rating & Credit Balance Management
Continuous collaborated with the Medallia team to implement usage rating and credit balance management with seamless integration to the Medallia product portal enabling omni-channel customer experiences. Since going live in November 2022, the partnership has grown with the migration of additional business units and the implementation of new usage automation and amendment capabilities onto the platform.
“The Continuous product connects seamlessly into our Salesforce Revenue Cloud solution and makes it easy for customers to manage their credit balance while also providing real-time usage and purchase visibility to our sales and finance teams,” said Deepa Hiriyanna, Director, Enterprise Operations at Medallia.
Results & Impact: Improved UX, Scalable Growth
Continuous collaborated with the Medallia team to implement usage rating and credit balance management with seamless integration to the Medallia product portal enabling omni-channel customer experiences. Since going live in November 2022, the partnership has grown with the migration of additional business units and the implementation of new usage automation and amendment capabilities onto the platform.
“The Continuous product connects seamlessly into our Salesforce Revenue Cloud solution and makes it easy for customers to manage their credit balance while also providing real-time usage and purchase visibility to our sales and finance teams,” said Deepa Hiriyanna, Director, Enterprise Operations at Medallia.
As a result of this successful partnership, Medallia solved its challenge and achieved its goal of supporting consumption models on the Salesforce platform. Medallia customers can now purchase and manage credits and have those credits applied to both software and services. The joint Salesforce and Continuous solution is designed to support the future growth of any monetization model across all sales channels, including assisted sales and self-service. Medallia looks forward to further partnering with Continuous to support its growth and expansion. By standardizing on the Salesforce Revenue Cloud platform and Continuous, Medallia was able to go live with a platform optimized for future growth and expansion.
“The Continuous team is a strategic partner and their customer service is excellent,” said Kofi Frimpong, Vice President of Enterprise Solutions at Medallia. “Their unsurpassed experience in consumption models combined with a product that works directly with Salesforce enabled a rapid go live and allowed us to deliver customer innovation on time and on budget.”
With Continuous, Medallia successfully transformed its approach to supporting consumption models — enhancing customer flexibility, streamlining credit balance management, and ensuring seamless integration with Salesforce Revenue Cloud. This collaboration has not only optimized Medallia’s operations but also positioned the company for scalable growth across new business units and monetization models. As Medallia continues to expand, Continuous remains a key partner in driving efficiency, customer satisfaction, and long-term success.
Talk to an Expert
Looking to optimize your revenue operations with Salesforce Revenue Cloud Advanced? Connect with our consumption-based pricing experts to learn how we can help you unlock the full potential of usage-based and hybrid pricing models.
Salesforce Revenue Cloud Advanced (RCA) is redefining modern revenue lifecycle management by unifying quoting, contracts, billing, and order management into a seamless, native Salesforce experience. Businesses adopting RCA benefit from enhanced automation, flexible pricing models, and streamlined collaboration across sales, finance, and legal teams.
But, as businesses evolve beyond traditional subscriptions toward usage-based pricing, they’re discovering powerful new opportunities—and equally complex challenges. Usage-based pricing, now the gold standard in SaaS, cloud, telecom, and technology industries, directly ties revenue to the actual value customers receive, creating stronger customer relationships and more dynamic revenue streams.
Building upon our previous primer on Salesforce Revenue Cloud Advanced, this deeper dive explores how RCA supports usage-based pricing and rating, highlighting areas where Continuous significantly enhances RCA capabilities including:
Advanced rating and high usage volumes
Real-time usage mediation and aggregation, ensuring timely and accurate handoff to finance systems for comprehensive visibility across sales, customer service, finance teams, and customers.
Credit balance, prepayment, and enterprise savings plans
We’ll outline RCA’s strengths, identify critical considerations, and illustrate how Continuous enhances RCA capabilities—particularly around scalability, compliance, financial accuracy, and seamless ERP integration.
Whether you’re currently using Salesforce CPQ & Billing, considering RCA, or exploring consumption-based pricing, this guide provides essential insights for mastering usage-driven revenue models.
How does Salesforce RCA simplify usage-based billing?
Salesforce RCA differentiates itself through several core features:
Unified Salesforce-Native Architecture: RCA is fully built on Salesforce’s core platform, eliminating the previous reliance on managed packages inherent to Salesforce CPQ & Billing. This architecture leverages Salesforce’s robust scalability, security, and integration capabilities as well as enabling easy upgrades using Salesforce’s seasonal release schedule.
API-First Composable Architecture: RCA offers an API-first, composable approach, empowering customers to selectively deploy the elements of RCA they specifically require—including complex configuration, dynamic revenue orchestration, contract lifecycle management, and usage-based selling and billing. This modular flexibility enables rapid adaptation to evolving business models without the need for wholesale system replacements.
Real-Time Visibility via Digital Wallet: RCA’s digital wallet provides immediate, transparent tracking of credit balances and usage commitments, forming a robust foundation for credit and commitment-based pricing models. This visibility empowers sales, finance, customer service teams, and customers themselves to proactively manage usage, ensure contractual compliance, and adapt quickly to changing consumption patterns.
How Continuous Complements Salesforce RCA
Continuous builds on the already robust foundation provided by Salesforce RCA, empowering companies to confidently evolve their pricing models without needing to replace their existing sales or billing systems. By enhancing RCA’s capabilities, Continuous addresses complex scenarios and enterprise-scale challenges:
Enhanced Scalability for High-Volume Data
During peak periods, usage data can significantly exceed typical volumes. Continuous provides an off-platform rating engine optimized for large data volumes, preserving Salesforce’s responsiveness and efficiency.
Support for Real-Time Usage Mediation and Rating
Customers benefit from immediate insight into their usage. Continuous complements RCA’s periodic data aggregation with real-time mediation and rating capabilities, ensuring accurate, up-to-the-minute visibility.
Advanced Credit Balance and Enterprise Management
Visibility into commitment progress is crucial for sales, customer service, finance teams, and customers themselves. Continuous ensures synchronized visibility across Salesforce, ERP, and other platforms:
Enterprise-Wide Credit Pools: Centralized credit management across multiple departments or subsidiaries.
Automated Credit Rollovers and Replenishments: Seamless, automated credit management aligned with contractual agreements.
Complex True-Up Calculations: Real-time monitoring and adjustments, ensuring billing accuracy and compliance across all systems.
Streamlined Financial Integration and Compliance
Continuous seamlessly integrates RCA’s sales-driven rating processes with ERP and accounting systems, including a productized integration specifically for NetSuite, while remaining flexible enough to support any downstream financial application. By embedding the Continuous Revenue Fabric within RCA, Continuous ensures an optimal handoff tailored to the specific needs of revenue operations and finance teams. This approach provides finance teams with a complete and reliable financial system of record, delivering comprehensive visibility and significantly reducing manual reconciliation efforts.
Advanced Pricing Insights and Analytics
Continuous provides advanced analytics and pricing capabilities, enabling customers and sales teams to more accurately estimate and price usage-based offerings. This facilitates precise determination of prepaid credit amounts and commitments required upfront. Additionally, Continuous can leverage actual customer usage data to deliver powerful insights through integration with leading analytics tools like Tableau or Snowflake, driving informed decision-making and enhanced revenue growth.
Real-World Scenario: Cloud Infrastructure Company
Consider a cloud infrastructure company offering platform subscriptions paired with usage-based, pay-as-you-go charges. They manage highly complex rating scenarios involving millions of usage records that need to be assessed across multiple attributes to accurately reflect how the platform is used.
Initially, customers utilize a pure pay-as-you-go model but the company aims to transition them toward prepaid commitments using virtual currency credits. RCA provides foundational support through robust rate cards and digital wallet visibility, enabling the sales and customer success teams to track usage effectively.
Continuous further enhances RCA by managing extremely high usage volumes off-platform, providing real-time mediation and aggregation of billions of records without impacting Salesforce performance. This capability allows precise, multi-attribute rating essential for accurate billing.
Moreover, Continuous ensures seamless integration with their ERP, NetSuite, ensuring that detailed usage data and credit consumption are fully visible for critical financial processes including Accounts Receivable, Revenue Recognition, and Financial Reporting. Additionally, by utilizing actual customer usage data, Continuous facilitates accurate cost estimates that help customers confidently transition to prepaid commitments.
Finally, the enriched usage data integrated into analytics tools like Tableau or Snowflake empowers broader business insights, influencing strategic decisions beyond billing—such as product development, customer retention strategies, and marketing initiatives.
Ready to Optimize Your Usage-Based Pricing and Billing? Talk to Our Experts Today
Together, Salesforce RCA and Continuous provide a comprehensive solution optimized for complex, consumption-driven scenarios. This combined approach ensures scalability, real-time accuracy, advanced credit management, financial compliance, and actionable analytics, empowering businesses to confidently scale their usage-based revenue models.
Whether you are a current Salesforce Revenue Cloud user, considering an upgrade to Revenue Cloud Advanced, or simply navigating challenges operationalizing usage and credit-based pricing, Continuous is here to help. Reach out to us today to discuss —Connect with our consumption-based pricing experts
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
What types of businesses benefit most from Salesforce RCA and Continuous? Any business using complex pricing models, particularly in SaaS, cloud services, telecom, or technology, will greatly benefit from RCA combined with Continuous.
Can Continuous work with other Salesforce applications such as CPQ & Billing? Yes, Continuous extends any Salesforce application including Salesforce Sales Cloud and Salesforce CPQ & Billing.
Can Continuous integrate with ERP systems other than NetSuite? Yes, Continuous has a productized integration for NetSuite but can also integrate seamlessly with virtually any ERP or downstream financial system.
Do I need to replace my current Salesforce deployment to use Continuous? No, Continuous complements and enhances your existing Salesforce setup, allowing you to extend capabilities without replacing your core deployment.
How does Continuous support large-scale data requirements? Continuous uses an off-platform rating engine optimized for extremely high data volumes, managing billions of records monthly without affecting Salesforce performance.
Can you explain the difference between Salesforce CPQ & Billing and Revenue Cloud Advanced? Salesforce CPQ & Billing originated from Salesforce’s acquisition of Steelbrick and InvoiceIT, and thus still relies on managed packages. Revenue Cloud Advanced, on the other hand, is fully built on Salesforce’s core platform. It leverages an API-driven, composable architecture, bringing forward all the strengths of the original CPQ & Billing solution while offering significantly enhanced flexibility, scalability, and integration capabilities.
How is Continuous different from other usage-based billing systems? Traditional usage-based billing applications require businesses to set up products within their own separate billing catalogs and then integrate these catalogs with sales tools like Salesforce—an approach that often creates complexity, cost, and maintenance challenges. Continuous eliminates this complexity by embedding directly within Salesforce’s existing product catalog through native AppExchange extensions. This unique embedded “revenue fabric” approach ensures businesses can manage all pricing and packaging directly within Salesforce, completely removing the need for complex billing system integrations. Additionally, Continuous ensures your existing financial system—such as NetSuite—remains the financial system of record, avoiding duplication of functionality and the cost and complexity associated with maintaining integrations. This embedded approach ensures coordinated visibility and control across revenue operations and finance teams, allowing businesses to leverage the full capabilities of both Salesforce and their ERP solutions.
Salesforce has long been at the center of the revenue management conversation, helping businesses scale their sales and finance operations with tools like Sales Cloud, Salesforce CPQ & Billing, and Commerce Cloud. With the launch of Salesforce Revenue Cloud Advanced, Salesforce is taking a significant leap forward—positioning itself as the end-to-end solution for modern revenue lifecycle management.
This shift is driven by the need for businesses to monetize more complex pricing models—including subscriptions, hybrid models, and usage-based pricing—while ensuring seamless integration between sales and finance teams. Revenue Cloud Advanced is designed to unify these processes within Salesforce, but it also raises important considerations for finance leaders who need to maintain existing ERP investments.
This primer explores what Revenue Cloud Advanced is, its core capabilities, and what businesses should consider when evaluating the transition.
What is Salesforce Revenue Cloud Advanced?
Revenue Cloud Advanced is Salesforce’s next-generation revenue management platform, designed to support the full quote-to-cash process within Salesforce. It integrates quoting, contract lifecycle management, order management, and billing into a single, natively built Salesforce experience.
Salesforce is positioning RCA as a unified system that eliminates silos between sales, finance, and legal teams. Instead of relying on multiple integrated solutions, businesses can manage their entire revenue process on the Salesforce Platform—with automation, AI-driven insights, and embedded finance functionality.
Key Capabilities of Revenue Cloud Advanced
Salesforce RCA introduces several powerful capabilities:
Unified Data Model – Built natively on Salesforce, ensuring real-time data flow across the entire revenue lifecycle without the need for complex integrations. Because Revenue Cloud Advanced runs on Salesforce Core, customers benefit from access to all new features with every seasonal release. Additionally, this architecture makes it easier to support models like self-service, as all Salesforce products can seamlessly leverage the Revenue Cloud Advanced engine.
Flexible Product and Pricing Models – Businesses can now configure a single product with multiple pricing models (one-time, subscription, usage-based) without duplicating product records.
Enhanced AI and Guided Selling – Agentforce supports automated pricing recommendations, contract drafting, and approval workflows, reducing sales cycle friction.
Dynamic Revenue Orchestration (DRO) – Automates complex order decomposition, fulfillment, and billing processes, enabling seamless execution of multi-stage transactions (e.g., software provisioning, physical shipments, recurring services).
Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) – Streamlines the contract process by automating contract creation, negotiation, approvals, execution, and ongoing management.
API-First Architecture – Headless APIs allow Revenue Cloud Advanced to be embedded in e-commerce platforms, partner portals, and external sales channels.
Usage-Based Pricing & The Shift Toward Flexible Monetization
Salesforce recognizes that businesses are increasingly adopting consumption-based and hybrid pricing models. Revenue Cloud Advanced is designed to support these models by allowing businesses to configure, sell, and manage usage-based products natively within Salesforce.
However, Revenue Cloud Advanced provides robust native capabilities for quoting and managing usage-based pricing. For high-volume businesses requiring complex mediation and rating at scale, complementary solutions like Continuous ensure seamless automation and financial alignment.. High-volume businesses—such as SaaS, cloud services, and telecom—will still need to ensure that their finance teams have the tools required for rating and revenue recognition.
Integrating Revenue Cloud Advanced with ERP and Financial Systems
One of the biggest questions finance leaders face when evaluating Revenue Cloud Advanced is: How does this impact our ERP strategy?
Salesforce is positioning Revenue Cloud Advanced as a modern, flexible revenue operations platform that seamlessly integrates with existing ERP investments while streamlining revenue workflows. For companies with ERP investments in platforms like NetSuite, SAP, and Oracle, Revenue Cloud Advanced ensures a seamless integration, helping finance teams streamline revenue operations without disrupting their existing workflows. These systems remain critical for revenue recognition, general ledger reporting, and financial compliance.
Revenue Cloud Advanced supports API-based integrations with ERPs, ensuring that businesses don’t have to completely shift their financial operations into Salesforce. Instead, companies can leverage Salesforce as their revenue operations hub while maintaining ERP workflows for accounts receivable, taxation, and compliance.
For a seamless integration between Salesforce Revenue Cloud Advanced and NetSuite, our Continuous for NetSuite Advanced Financials SuiteApp ensures automated data handoff between sales and finance, eliminating manual reconciliations and streamlining invoicing and revenue recognition.
For finance teams, this means:
More automation in revenue management, reducing the need for manual reconciliations between Salesforce and ERP.
Real-time rated usage data flows, ensuring finance has full visibility into consumption-driven revenue streams.
Accurate revenue recognition compliance with standards like ASC 606 by ensuring that invoicing and revenue schedules align between Salesforce and ERP.
Is Revenue Cloud Advanced Right for Your Business?
If your business is already using Salesforce for revenue management, Revenue Cloud Advanced represents a powerful opportunity to modernize quote-to-cash operations. However, the transition requires careful consideration, particularly if your finance team depends on ERP-driven billing, rating, and compliance workflows.
Key evaluation questions:
Do you need more flexibility in pricing models, including subscriptions, usage-based, and hybrid models?
Is reducing dependency on custom integrations a priority for your sales and finance teams?
Does your finance team need advanced revenue automation and real-time billing workflows?
How will your ERP interact with Salesforce if you transition to Revenue Cloud Advanced?
Salesforce’s vision is clear: Revenue Cloud Advanced is the future of quote-to-cash on Salesforce. However, businesses need to align this vision with their own finance operations, ensuring that ERP integration and usage-based billing scalability are part of the strategy.
Final Thoughts
Salesforce Revenue Cloud Advanced is an exciting step forward for businesses looking to streamline and automate revenue operations. As organizations evaluate the transition, the key will be ensuring that their quote-to-cash processes remain scalable, finance-friendly, and aligned with ERP investments.
For businesses exploring the best path forward, expertise in Salesforce revenue solutions, finance operations, and usage-based monetization will be critical. With the right strategy, Revenue Cloud Advanced can deliver the flexibility and automation that modern businesses need—without disrupting financial workflows.
Talk to an Expert
Looking to optimize your revenue operations with Salesforce Revenue Cloud Advanced? Connect with our consumption-based pricing experts to learn how we can help you unlock the full potential of usage-based and hybrid pricing models.
Coming Up Next
📌 Next in this series: Supercharging Salesforce Revenue Cloud Advanced for Usage-Based Pricing & Rating at Scale—How to Extend RCA for High-Volume and Complex Monetization Models.
On August 6, 2024, Gartner released their latest “Magic Quadrant for Recurring Billing Applications“ followed by Forrester’s “The Recurring Billing Solutions Landscape, Q3 2024“ on September 3, 2024. These reports assess a competitive landscape that has been evolving for over a decade, evaluating vendors based on their ability to manage the entire sales-to-finance process for recurring billing.
While these reports are valuable, they also reveal a deeper problem in the industry—a problem rooted in how standalone billing systems approach the recurring billing challenge. At Continuous, we believe the way the market has evolved has fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the recurring billing problem, making it difficult for analysts to cover accurately and even more painful for customers to select the right solutions.
Both the Gartner and Forrester reports rank vendors based on their ability to handle the entire recurring billing lifecycle, which includes tasks such as:
Sales Process and Quoting: Creating flexible pricing models and accurate quotes within the sales cycle, ensuring they align seamlessly with both CRM and billing systems.
Contracting: Managing the transition from quoting to contracts, including drafting, signing, and handling amendments or renewals, while integrating pricing and terms from the sales process.
Service Provisioning: Setting up and activating services according to contract terms, tracking usage in real-time to ensure accurate billing.
Usage Data Collection and Rating: Capturing, mediating, and rating usage data in real-time, applying pricing rules to ensure accurate and scalable billing for consumption-based models.
Billing and Invoice Generation: Consolidating one time, periodic and usage charges into detailed invoices, ensuring timely delivery to customers via their preferred channels.
Payment Processing: Facilitating payment collection, managing recurring payments, and ensuring accurate reconciliation with financial systems.
Revenue Recognition and Financial Reporting: Ensuring compliance with accounting standards by accurately recognizing revenue and providing detailed financial reports that integrate with the ERP system.
These tasks encompass a wide range of functions traditionally handled by CRM (Sales) and ERP (Finance) platforms. However, over the past decade, specialized billing vendors have emerged to address gaps in these systems. Their solution? Introduce a “billing system of record” – a third platform that sits between CRM and ERP to manage these critical processes. This shift has created a new category of software, one that analysts like Gartner, Forrester, IDC, and others are now tasked with evaluating.
The Rise of Standalone Billing Systems: A New Category Emerges
Around 2010, a belief took hold that CRM and ERP vendors couldn’t handle the increasing complexity of billing as companies shifted from traditional perpetual license models to subscription billing models. In response, a range of specialized billing systems began emerging, offering solutions to support this new “Subscription Economy”.
By 2017, this new category of standalone billing systems had matured enough to receive formal analyst coverage, leading to the release of reports like the Gartner Magic Quadrant and Forrester Wave. These vendors promised to simplify recurring billing by offering a third-party solution that could manage the billing lifecycle independently. This trend accelerated as consumption and prepaid credit models gained popularity, leading to the crowded market landscape we see today.
But here’s the issue: billing is not, and never should be, a standalone process. It’s intertwined with sales, finance, and customer management. When billing is siloed into a separate platform, businesses are forced to build complex integrations, juggle multiple systems, and deal with costly maintenance—problems that CRM and ERP systems were originally designed to solve.
What These Reports Reveal: Complexity, Not Simplicity
The criteria used by Gartner and Forrester to evaluate vendors include tasks that traditionally belong within the domains of CRM and ERP systems. However, instead of enhancing these core systems, standalone billing vendors have introduced an unnecessary third layer of complexity.
Consider the following:
Quote Creation and Negotiation are native functions of CRM systems, where sales teams manage customer interactions and quote data from all channels should be stored.
Contract Drafting and Management should flow naturally from CRM to ERP, enabling seamless financial reporting.
Invoice Creation and Payment Processing are core functions of billing that should reside within the ERP or CRM system, where financial and sales data is already managed.
By positioning a third-party billing system as essential, standalone vendors have shifted what should be natural extensions of CRM and ERP into fragmented processes. This fragmentation forces businesses to build complex integrations, making it harder to achieve a seamless sales-to-finance workflow.
The Problem with Standalone Billing Systems
At Continuous, we believe the current approach taken by standalone billing vendors is fundamentally flawed. Instead of simplifying processes, these vendors create friction by placing themselves as overlapping solutions with the CRM and ERP systems they are also dependent on. This introduces costly, cumbersome integrations that are difficult to maintain—particularly as pricing and packaging models evolve.
There’s no inherent reason why traditional sales and financial processes should be managed by a separate system when sales and finance teams have already invested in systems like Salesforce and NetSuite. Standalone billing vendors want businesses to believe they must control these processes, but the reality is that doing so makes their systems “stickier” by requiring complex customizations and significant services investments. The end result for customers of these vendors are deployments that are:
Expensive to integrate: Building and maintaining integrations between CRM, ERP, and standalone billing systems often requires costly services and custom work.
Rigid and limiting: Once integrations are built, they become rigid, making it difficult for businesses to adapt to new pricing models or market changes without extensive rework.
Manual and error-prone: Despite these integrations, many billing processes still require manual intervention, leading to inefficiencies and potential errors in financial reporting and customer invoicing.
This is why the current market is so difficult for analysts to cover: the premise of a standalone billing system is inherently flawed. The criteria that Gartner and Forrester use to evaluate these vendors encompass functions that should naturally belong in core CRM and ERP systems. However, standalone vendors pull these critical processes into a third cloud, which struggles to work effectively alongside CRM or ERP solutions.
The Continuous Approach: Back to Common Sense
At Continuous, we challenge this status quo. We believe that the best way to solve the recurring billing problem is to go back to what was previously common sense: there should not be a third cloud in between CRM and ERP.
Instead, we advocate for enhancing the core applications that B2B companies already rely on—CRM for sales and ERP for finance—and supplementing them with a powerful calculation engine that integrates with customers’ internal platforms. By doing this, we enable a truly unified quote-to-consumption process that is:
Easier to maintain.
More flexible as pricing and packaging needs evolve.
Less expensive to deploy, reducing both software license and integration costs.
Conclusion: Challenging the Status Quo
The release of the Gartner Magic Quadrant and Forrester Wave reports highlights how deeply entrenched the idea of standalone billing systems has become. But as businesses increasingly adopt complex pricing models and usage-based billing, the limitations of these systems become more apparent.
At Continuous, we believe there’s a better way—one that embeds billing awareness directly into the tools businesses use every day, rather than introducing another layer of complexity. By rethinking how billing should work, we can simplify the process for businesses and create a more efficient, flexible future for recurring billing.
Ready to simplify your sales and finance processes?
Stop juggling fragmented systems and costly integrations. At Continuous, we unify your sales and finance workflows by building on the trusted CRM and ERP platforms you already use.
If you’re ready to move beyond the limitations of standalone billing systems, let’s talk. Explore how Continuous can streamline your quote-to-cash process and help your business scale with confidence. Find out more today at: Product | Continuous Technologies.
If Henry Ford had said to customers, “Here are the keys to your brand new car, go out and take a spin” would he have sold more cars?Â
Of course he would.
And this is why so many companies offer free trials today.
Free trials can be a great way to provide prospective users with hands-on experience. Because, let’s face it, most buyers are risk averse. We want to know first-hand what we are getting for our money.
For companies, trials also help provide valuable feedback on target buyers, pricing, key use cases, what’s working and where users are falling down. And they hold the promise of landing new customers faster, without a lot of hand-holding and associated costs.
But what’s the best way to go about conducting a trial? After all-we know that SaaS trial conversion rates are incredibly low with 66% of Saas vendors reporting Free Trial conversion rates of 25% or less.
Well, for one, organizations need to make sure their service or product is ready for a trial. And by ready, I mean that it is something that customers can easily get, understand, use and see value from.
But another, perhaps equally important thing companies can do to drive more attach to their trials is to look at how they are setting these up.
Typically most companies look at time-based trials and usage-based trials. Time-based trials allow you to download and use a product or service for a fixed period of time. Usage-based trials don’t restrict your time, but they do put a limit around how much of the product you can use.
There are pros and cons to each approach, but if you are a company with a product or service that is being sold on a consumption-basis, you should seriously nix going with time-based trials and opt for usage-based trials instead.
Here are four reasons why.
Time-based trials rarely work- How many times have you downloaded a time-based trial with the best of intentions and found you just can’t get to use it in the time allotted? This is particularly true if the trial requires any set up, 3rd party integrations or back-end approvals with other teams or users.Time-based trials are meant to create a sense of urgency. But typically that urgency is only felt by the company offering the trial. The person using it is usually on a completely different timeline.So, they have two choices–they can let the trial lapse-which many do. Or they can renew again and again for as long as it takes. But in both cases, your company is no closer to making a sale or getting the feedback they really need.
Usage-based trials provide an easier transition for customers to move from trial to production for usage-based products- If you are planning on putting usage-based pricing in place for your products or services,then, usage-based trials will make it easier for your customers to understand and predict how much of your product or service they will likely need when they move to production. It will also get them more familiar with your metric and will help them put a business case together to support moving to the next phase.
Usage-based trials can serve as an early indicator for the success of a new product or consumption-based pricing model– Curious about what features are being used? Usage-based trials can give you real-time visibility into which capabilities or features are most widely adopted. These trials can also be fantastic for companies who are introducing consumption-based pricing into the market for the first time-especially if they are using a brand new metric.
For example, one organization wanted to launch a new data access governance product into the market. They thought going with column-based pricing would be the optimal approach. Unfortunately they had no data on how many columns their customers would need and if this type of pricing would fly. Introducing a usage-based trial gave them a window into usage and helped them understand where their customers were getting hung up and whether or not their new pricing model would fly.
Usage-based trials allow you to minimize costs and maximize customer experience– If you have a new product or service with metered pricing, you likely have to account for some costs on the backend. These infrastructure and hosting costs can quickly add up and will likely be difficult to predict with time-based trials. Going with usage-based trials helps curb costs and ensures organizations can predictably plan and support customers to ensure they have the best possible experience. And as PwC points out, experience is everything. In fact, if you focus on customer experience, you can expect to get a 16% price premium from your customers.Usage-based pricing makes this easier. It ensures companies have the right back-end infrastructure in place to support customers with the best possible experience throughout their trial.
In the End
Trials are a great way to bring new customers into the fold and secure feedback on products, pricing and services. But as the old adage goes,just because you build it, doesn’t mean customers will come (or use your product). Making sure your trial is is easy to use and adopt is key to driving adoption and conversion. But so too is structuring your trial for success. And this often means-throwing time-based trials out the window in favor of usage-based trials–especially when it comes to usage-based pricing and products.
Looking for an easy way to run usage-based trials with your customers? Be sure to check out Continuous. Continuous is the only solution designed to help you launch and grow usage consumption pricing models on the Salesforce platform. Find out more today at: Product | Continuous Technologies.
Consumption-based pricing is a pricing model that charges customers based on the amount of resources or services they consume, rather than a flat fee or subscription model. This pricing model has been adopted by various industries as a way to drive innovation, improve customer experience and provide greater flexibility for both customers and businesses. In this blog post, we will explore how different industries are innovating using consumption-based pricing.
Cloud Computing Industry
The cloud computing industry has been a pioneer in adopting consumption-based pricing. With cloud computing, businesses can purchase computing resources on-demand, without the need to invest in costly hardware and infrastructure. Consumption-based pricing allows businesses to pay only for the computing resources they use, rather than paying for a fixed capacity upfront.
This has enabled businesses of all sizes to leverage the benefits of cloud computing, including scalability, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness. Consumption-based pricing has also enabled cloud service providers to compete on price and offer more personalized and targeted pricing models to their customers.
Telecommunications Industry
The telecommunications industry has also embraced consumption-based pricing as a way to offer flexible pricing models to customers. Traditional pricing models in the telecommunications industry are typically based on fixed subscription plans, with customers paying a fixed fee for a set amount of data, minutes or texts.
Consumption-based pricing in the telecommunications industry allows customers to pay only for the data, minutes or texts they use, rather than paying for a fixed amount upfront. This provides greater flexibility for customers and allows them to tailor their plans to their usage patterns.
Software as a Service (SaaS) Industry
The SaaS industry has been another early adopter of consumption-based pricing. With SaaS, businesses can access software applications and services over the internet, rather than investing in costly on-premise software and hardware.
Consumption-based pricing in the SaaS industry allows businesses to pay only for the software and services they use, rather than paying for a fixed subscription upfront. This provides greater flexibility for businesses and allows them to scale their usage up or down as needed.
Energy Industry
The energy industry is also exploring consumption-based pricing as a way to incentivize energy efficiency and reduce energy consumption. Traditional pricing models in the energy industry are typically based on fixed rates, with customers paying a fixed fee for a set amount of energy.
Consumption-based pricing in the energy industry allows customers to pay only for the energy they use, rather than paying a fixed fee upfront. This provides an incentive for customers to reduce their energy consumption and adopt more energy-efficient practices.
Transportation Industry
The transportation industry is also adopting consumption-based pricing as a way to provide greater flexibility and convenience for customers. Traditional pricing models in the transportation industry are typically based on fixed fares, with customers paying a fixed fee for a set distance or time.
Consumption-based pricing in the transportation industry allows customers to pay only for the distance or time they travel, rather than paying a fixed fee upfront. This provides greater flexibility for customers and allows them to tailor their transportation needs to their specific usage patterns.
Conclusion
Consumption-based pricing is a powerful tool for driving innovation and improving customer experience in various industries. By providing greater flexibility and incentivizing efficiency, consumption-based pricing enables businesses to better align their pricing models with customer needs and preferences. As more industries adopt consumption-based pricing, we can expect to see further innovation and new opportunities for businesses and customers alike.
As more and more companies adopt a digital-first approach, pricing models are becoming increasingly important. Two popular pricing strategies are usage-based pricing and subscription pricing. In this blog post, we’ll compare the two models and highlight the pros and cons of each.
Usage-Based Pricing
Usage-based pricing, as the name suggests, charges customers based on their usage of a product or service. This model is particularly useful for businesses that offer services that have a variable usage pattern, such as data storage or cloud computing. Customers are charged according to the amount of data they store or the amount of processing power they use.
Pros:
Flexibility: Customers can scale their usage up or down as needed, making this model particularly useful for businesses that experience fluctuations in demand.
Fairness: Customers only pay for what they use, which can be seen as a fairer pricing model.
Incentivizes customers to use less: Since customers are charged based on usage, they may be incentivized to use less and optimize their usage, which can be a win-win for both the customer and the business.
Cons:
Lack of predictability: Because customers are charged based on usage, their bills may vary from month to month, making budgeting and forecasting difficult.
Complexity: The usage-based model can be complex, particularly if there are different usage tiers or pricing structures based on the type of usage. This complexity can be a turnoff for some customers.
Subscription Pricing
Subscription pricing charges customers a recurring fee in exchange for access to a product or service. This model is particularly useful for businesses that offer ongoing services. Such as software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies or media streaming services.
Pros:
Predictable revenue: Since customers are charged a recurring fee, revenue is predictable. This makes budgeting and forecasting easier.
Customer loyalty: Customers who subscribe to a product or service may feel a sense of loyalty to the brand. Which can result in long-term customer relationships and a stable revenue stream.
Simplicity: Subscription pricing is straightforward and easy to understand.
Cons:
Lack of flexibility: Subscription pricing can be inflexible, as customers are often locked into a fixed period of time, such as a year-long subscription. This can be a turnoff for customers who only need a product or service for a short period of time.
Potential for unused subscriptions: If a customer subscribes to a service but doesn’t use it, they may still be charged for the duration of their subscription, which can be seen as wasteful.
Conclusion
Ultimately, the choice between usage-based pricing and subscription pricing will depend on the specific needs of the business and its customers. Businesses that offer services with a variable usage pattern may find that usage-based pricing is more appropriate. While those that offer ongoing services may find that subscription pricing is a better fit. Carefully consider the pros and cons of each pricing model. Businesses can choose the option that works best for them and their customers.
