formerly FinancialForce
formerly FinancialForce
The world has undergone rapid and profound changes, driven by cloud platforms, mobile technologies, regulatory shifts, economic and political transformations, and the emergence of the Everything-as-a-Service (XaaS) economy. These trends have revolutionized the role of the CFO and financial operations, marking a departure from the traditional focus on compliance and financial tasks.
Successful CFOs and finance professionals today extend their vision beyond day-to-day operations. They explore opportunities to expand their business footprint and capitalize on the XaaS revolution. While closing the books remains crucial, it is equally important to guide the organization in discovering new product innovations, revenue streams, and pathways to customer satisfaction. Below, we highlight key insights and best practices in financial management to support you on this transformative journey.
Certinia’s Financial Management solutions seamlessly integrate front and back-office functions, consolidating key financial operations on the Salesforce Platform. This includes general ledger, revenue recognition, fixed assets, invoicing, accounts payable, and accounts receivable. Certinia’s automation streamlines the entire opportunity-to-cash process, ensuring precise revenue management and providing flexibility to adapt to new business models in the evolving services economy. Implementation is straightforward, learning is easy, and maintenance is trouble-free.
For CFOs in product-based companies without services, seizing opportunities to expand and build recurring revenue is paramount. In the XaaS economy, successful CFOs explore various paths to growth, turning products into services and vice versa. This could involve repackaging existing products and services creatively, fostering ongoing relationships with customers.
In the service-centric economy, every business must prioritize customer experience, necessitating CFOs’ active engagement in customer satisfaction and retention. Close involvement in post-sales functions, such as onboarding, service delivery, support, and customer success, is crucial. A comprehensive view of the entire account, with insights into customer behavior, service quality, and product quality, enables informed decision-making to meet customer needs.
Given the high cost of acquiring new customers, focusing on key customer success metrics is vital. Metrics such as time-to-value, product adoption rates, project status, usage rates, and service call patterns can predict future rates of renewal, churn, and expansion. Understanding customer lifetime value (CLV) and customer acquisition costs (CAC) allows immediate adjustments to optimize business outcomes.
Billing errors can erode a company’s credibility built during the marketing and sales cycle. Flexible billing systems that support diverse revenue streams are essential to offer a seamless billing experience from opportunity closure to billing, payment, renewal, and revenue recognition.
CFOs should discern the highest-margin products and understand why customers choose them. Defend and capitalize on successful products while dissecting them to replicate their success throughout the business. Respond to customer trends, such as global expansion, or address underutilized modules to enhance overall product and service offerings.
Achieving a comprehensive view of the entire account requires connecting back-office functions (ERP) with the front office (CRM) to create a master customer record. This unified record streamlines customer acquisition, quoting, contracts, financial operations, and fulfillment. It empowers customer-facing staff to provide immediate, high-quality support and offers financial leaders valuable data for strategic decision-making.
With regulations multiplying in complexity, turning compliance into an opportunity is crucial. A robust revenue recognition solution automates data gathering for various revenue models, producing clear audit trails and freeing up time for proactive business value creation.
Modern CFOs require integrated front and back-office systems that unify data and manage diverse billing models. Connecting ERP and CRM establishes a single customer database, automating billing, revenue management, and core financial processes. This approach ensures a consistent view of critical customer data across departments, fostering efficiency and collaboration.
Transform your financial management practices with Certinia, aligning your processes with the demands of the evolving business landscape.
With Certinia solutions, we can ensure all consulting-related information seamlessly flows from sales to services to invoicing, paving the way for our continued growth. We now have one source of truth, faster invoicing and faster month-end closes.
Monica Engelhardt, CFO, Clearsulting
Even though we’re a small company, Certinia worked closely with us to help define our key processes, enabling us to implement the right tool to fit our growing company. Plus, because the Certinia solution is so flexible, it will support our changing needs.
Ida Pai, CFO, DeepRoot
Revenue forecasting is one of the biggest things that we do. Pulling data from our opportunities in sales and analyzing what the forecast is going to look like for revenue over the next 12 months is hugely critical for us.
Sean McDermott, CEO, Windward
After moving off QuickBooks and onto Certinia, we are able to do reporting for our combined companies all as one. Certinia was the perfect solution for our Salesforce-centric organization.
Jim Radochia, CTO, SimuTech
Knowing it was all going to be in one area where I could see from quoting through the CRM and onto cash collection, all in one place on the Salesforce platform, I was sold.
Sara Curry, CFO & Director of Operations, Interra Global
