In the past year, COVID-19 has completely changed the world we live in, and no business has been immune to these changes. In addition to transforming the way businesses operate day to day, COVID-19 has also affected the way businesses perform even their most core processes, including revenue recognition. 

Last week, I saw that Roblox, a global online game platform, has been forced to delay its public market debut due to scrutiny from the SEC. My daughter is an avid Roblox player, so I was immediately intrigued.

Roblox’s valuation has grown over seven-fold in the months since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, as video games continue to rise in popularity. However, according to an SEC memo, the commission has reservations over the way in which Roblox recognizes revenue from the sale of its currency, Robux, on the platform.

The struggles Roblox is facing are similar to the challenges of B2B companies we serve. In fact, simplifying revenue recognition for subscription businesses is one of the reasons we built the Ordway platform. 

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of honoring three finance leaders in DC Tech for their hard work and innovation. We piggybacked our awards with DCA Live’s Star CFO virtual gala hosted by Doug Anderson. Although we wish we could deliver these awards in person, we will be donating to the World Central Kitchen on behalf of each recipient to show our gratitude for all that they do to make their organizations better. 

Our team is on a mission to help companies compete on a global scale through the Ordway platform. Today, I’m proud to announce our release of multi-entity billing and revenue management which means businesses can expand internationally with ease.

As your business grows, the last thing you want to worry about is if your finance stack will scale with you. I commissioned our team to leapfrog the limitations of legacy software and find solutions to multi-entity support that historically were only available to the Enterprise. Historically, only costly and clunky legacy ERP software could support multi-entity companies with their billing and accounting needs. This translated into manual workarounds and spreadsheets and hundreds of thousands spent on software fees and professional services, placing a drag on even the most nimble companies.

Today, companies can run their business units independently and still unify billing, revenue schedules, and reporting within one system on the Ordway billing and revenue automation platform.

Scaling a SaaS business is a unique challenge, and a good problem to have. The need to scale comes from an increase in customers and ARR, and likely greater headcount as well. As you scale, it’s critical that the backbone of your business- your billing and revenue system- is scaling along with you. 

While it may have taken grand ideas and more than a little ingenuity to build some of today’s most well-known companies (e.g., Amazon, Apple, Disney, Google, HP and Microsoft started in their founders’ garages), the long-term success of businesses these days is built on the backs of customer relationships.

The last couple of months continuing to build our business during the COVID-19 crisis have seemed like years — for us, and for many of our customers. We’re all adapting to new ways of interacting with each other and with our customers. 

At this moment, everyone is doing what they can to meet customers "where they are" and grow efficiently. Here are six ways our customers are using the flexibility of the Ordway billing and revenue automation platform to stabilize their business, and to better serve their customers during this challenging period.

In this post, we're not revealing names of the companies involved to protect their internal process and relationships with their customers.

When we launched our billing and revenue automation platform to the world 18 months ago, I set high expectations for the founding team. Transforming the way sales and finance teams work together to modernize their business models is no small undertaking.

With customers around the world in industries including software development, healthcare, logistics, performance management, manufacturing, and finance, we’ve witnessed transformation first hand. Building on this foundation, today I’m excited to announce we’ve raised a $10M Series A led by CRV and joined by Clocktower Ventures, Lerer Hippeau, and Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund.