Yesterday, while most of Washington DC was consumed with Robert Mueller hearings on Capitol Hill, innovative DMV tech companies gathered in Bethesda, Maryland to celebrate efficiency gains brought about through billing and revenue automation and other process improvements.
One of the main goals of the evening was to build community between parts of organizations that don’t often have opportunities to share and learn best practices with other finance and accounting professionals.
As part of the celebration, we also highlighted the great work of Play Octopus and BAO Systems who are building solutions to meet the needs of their customers all the while reducing payment and collections friction.
Sameer Gulati and Matthias Teufel
Sameer Gulati, Founder & CEO of Ordway, presented the Ordway Billing Rock Star award to both Play Octopus and BAO Systems as a testament to their work becoming a relentlessly efficient finance and accounting teams (and true organizational rock stars).
“I’m accepting this award on behalf of the entire Play Octopus team who worked alongside Ordway during a shift in our business model to smoothly transition our accounts receivable functions,” said Matthias Teufel, Finance Associate at Play Octopus. “Our team was able to focus transitioning our tech, go-to-market strategy, and internal process while the Ordway flipped over our billing process without a hitch.”
- Need for organizations to build systems of systems. The SaaS ecosystem requires companies to effectively connect software and systems to reduce friction for internal and external stakeholders. Seamless connections to a wide range of accounting software and ERPs are critical to maintain confidence in organizational financial data.
- Change is the only constant in today’s business environment. Organizations need to be flexible as their customers’ demands change. A combination of legacy pricing plans and terms often need to co-exist with updated business models. Organizations need to spend considerable effort converting existing customers with unique terms to new models. A modern billing and revenue automation platform can reduce that effort tremendously.
- Reporting and dashboards support business decision making. People are less interested in reams of data, but rather ways to interpret that data. While teams are generally comfortable in an Excel-based world, access to reporting and BI tools to augment their analysis, is critical.
