For RevOps, Finance, and Product leaders supporting usage-based pricing, this case study shows how Medallia partnered with Continuous to manage credits, streamline consumption models, and scale monetization on Salesforce Revenue Cloud and NetSuite.
TL;DR - Medallia needed to support consumption and credit-based pricing without heavy Salesforce customization. - Salesforce Revenue Cloud handled subscriptions, but usage and credit balance management were missing. - Continuous delivered embedded usage rating and credit management directly on Salesforce. - The result: better customer experience, real-time visibility for sales and finance, and scalable growth.
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.
For RevOps, Finance, and Product leaders evaluating usage-based pricing, this guide explains how Salesforce Revenue Cloud Advanced supports consumption models—and where Continuous strengthens scalability, credit management, and financial accuracy.
TL;DR - Salesforce Revenue Cloud Advanced provides a native, API-first foundation for usage-based pricing. - Usage models introduce complexity around rating, scale, credits, and financial accuracy. - Continuous extends RCA with real-time usage mediation, high-volume rating, and enterprise credit management. - Together, RCA and Continuous enable scalable, compliant, and finance-ready usage-driven revenue models.
What is Salesforce RCA?
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.
For RevOps and Finance leaders evaluating Salesforce Revenue Cloud Advanced, this primer explains how RCA modernizes quote-to-cash, supports flexible pricing models, and what to consider when integrating with existing ERP systems.
TL;DR - Salesforce Revenue Cloud Advanced is Salesforce’s next-generation, native quote-to-cash platform. - It unifies quoting, contracts, billing, and revenue orchestration inside Salesforce. - RCA is designed to support subscriptions, hybrid, and usage-based pricing models. - ERP systems like NetSuite remain critical for billing, compliance, and revenue recognition. - Continuous extends Revenue Cloud Advanced by bridging Salesforce and ERP systems and supporting complex usage and monetization at scale.
Introduction
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.
This article is for product, pricing, and revenue leaders exploring usage-based pricing. It breaks down how consumption-based pricing works across SaaS, cloud, telecom, energy, and transportation—and why it’s driving flexibility and innovation.
TL;DR - Consumption-based pricing charges customers based on actual usage, not fixed fees. - Cloud and SaaS industries pioneered the model to improve scalability and cost control. - Telecom, energy, and transportation use consumption pricing to increase flexibility and efficiency. - Usage-based models align pricing more closely with customer value. - Adoption across industries continues to accelerate as flexibility becomes table stakes.
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.
