How Devoli Cut Billing Time by 80% with ZoneBilling

As one of New Zealand's fastest-growing providers of broadband connections, Devoli’s automation-focused telecom business underwent remarkable expansion. Over a four-year period, the company's revenue and operations almost doubled annually as it onboarded an increasing number of managed service providers, ISPs, and enterprise customers. This accelerated growth and the resulting complexity in subscription billing management highlighted the need for a flexible, robust billing solution that could seamlessly integrate with Devoli's core NetSuite ERP system.

The Challenge: Outgrowing the legacy billing systems

As Devoli's revenue soared from $12 million to approximately $100 million in a span of just four years, the company's legacy billing systems proved inadequate to manage the demands of its rapidly growing operations. The company’s financial systems, built to support a much smaller operation, were simply not equipped to handle the increased scale, surge in transaction volumes, and increased complexity of the business.

"The financial systems we had supporting a $12 million revenue business were not suitable for the ~$100 million revenue business we are today." - Blair Woodbury, CFO at Devoli

To sustain its impressive growth trajectory, the company required a billing platform that could not only handle the high volume of transactions and diverse pricing models, but also provide the financial visibility and control necessary to support its evolving business requirements and increased financial reporting needs.

Devoli's primary objective was to find a solution that could meet three critical criteria to support the company's rapid growth trajectory:

1. Scalability: The platform needed to demonstrate true scalability, with the capacity to accommodate Devoli's accelerating business expansion and the increasing complexity of its subscription billing operations.
2. NetSuite integration: Seamless integration with Devoli's existing NetSuite ERP system and other bespoke financial tools was essential, ensuring platform familiarity and a streamlined and accurate data flow across the company's core systems.
3. Security: Devoli required a proven, secure solution with a track record of stable and reliable performance, to safeguard the integrity of its sensitive financial data.

"We needed a system that could scale at the pace we needed, integrate easily with our existing ERP and other systems, and had a strong security posture." -  Blair Woodbury, CFO at Devoli

The Solution: A flexible billing solution in NetSuite for a rapidly expanding telecom business

After thoroughly assessing the billing solutions available on the market, Devoli selected Zone & Co’s ZoneBilling. This decision was guided by the strong recommendation from their implementation partner, Liberate IT (now part of Fusion5).

The solution perfectly aligned with the company's core business needs due to four key reasons:

• Familiarity: Devoli's existing experience with the NetSuite ERP and CRM made ZoneBilling (a native NetSuite SuiteApp) a natural and seamless fit for their operations.
• Ease of integration: Devoli's complex financial system and subscription-based business model required a billing solution that could integrate deeply and efficiently with the NetSuite ecosystem. ZoneBilling's streamlined integration capabilities were a major selling point.
• Credibility: With a customer base of over 3,000 satisfied Zone & Co customers, ZoneBilling has demonstrated its stability, reliability, and suitability as a billing platform for Devoli's industry. The solution's flexible architecture and automated features enable businesses to operate with confidence while maintaining data integrity and compliance.
• Scalability and customization: Devoli was drawn to ZoneBilling's scalable and robust feature set, as well as the availability of local support resources that could provide the necessary guidance and assistance during and post-implementation.

The Result: Fully automated subscription management in NetSuite

By integrating ZoneBilling with NetSuite ERP and CRM, Devoli was able to automate revenue recognition, invoicing, and other accounting processes that were previously manual. The company streamlined the entire subscription lifecycle, from signup to revenue recognition, and realized the objectives it had set out to accomplish at the start of its search for a tailored billing solution. The main outcomes include:

‍Reduced billing time by 80%: ZoneBilling has significantly streamlined Devoli's billing cycle, slashing the time it takes to complete essential billing tasks from five days a month down to just one day. This translates to a whopping 48 days saved per year, which allows Devoli's team to focus their efforts on more strategic, high-value initiatives rather than being consumed by manual billing work.

“Thanks to ZoneBilling, our billing processes that used to take 5 days to complete monthly, are now done on Day 1. This efficiency gain cuts our manual workload by 80%.” - Blair Woodbury, CFO at Devoli

Improved billing accuracy: By utilizing ZoneBilling, Blair and his team now get a granular, detailed view of their financials and revenue streams directly in NetSuite. They can track growth, usage, contract amendments, fluctuations, renewals, cross-sells, up-sells, and more. This comprehensive overview grants them better insights and control over data with improved accuracy in financial reporting, as the subscription data flows seamlessly between the two systems.

Dynamic pricing flexibility: ZoneBilling gives Devoli the ability to support complex pricing models and billing scenarios, such as charging different customer segments varying rates. The platform's sophisticated automation engine handles the complexities of these diverse billing requirements.

Efficiency in revenue processing: Before implementing ZoneBilling, Devoli's billing department could manage $4 million in revenue per full-time employee (FTE). However, the automation and efficiency gains delivered by ZoneBilling have enabled each FTE to now handle billing for around $30 million in revenue – an 8-fold increase in capacity.

Operational excellence: With the adoption of ZoneBilling, sales teams now enjoy effortless integration and comprehensive visibility across customer portfolios, empowering them to drive business growth and customer satisfaction. This synergy between finance and sales is the cornerstone of Devoli’s accelerated business performance.

Streamlined scalability: The automated subscription management and billing capabilities of ZoneBilling have enabled Devoli to scale its business operations and accommodate rapid customer growth without significant back-office strain. The platform's ability to handle high volumes of subscribers and transactions has been crucial in allowing Devoli to expand its services without the high risk of failure that would have come from relying on manual processes. 

“Without ZoneBilling, we would not have been able to support our customer growth without significant back office effort and a high chance of failure.” - Blair Woodbury, CFO at Devoli

Conclusion: Devoli’s journey to billing excellence with ZoneBilling

ZoneBilling’s scalable architecture and automated billing capabilities enabled Devoli to effortlessly manage the exponential growth in its B2B customer base and the associated surge in transaction volumes, and completely streamline its entire subscription management lifecycle. 

“ZoneBilling has been instrumental in helping our company's growth. The solution is easy to work with and has integrated well with our ERP, upstream systems, and CRM.” - Blair Woodbury, CFO at Devoli

Moreover, the seamless NetSuite integration has allowed Devoli to maintain a unified view of its financial data, while the platform's robust security measures have provided the company with the confidence to entrust its mission-critical billing operations to ZoneBilling, Zone & Co’s advanced billing solution.

This improved the company's accounting accuracy, financial reporting, and overall scalability, allowing Devoli to focus on its core business while completely automating the complex aspects of subscription billing and revenue recognition.

“We have not yet fully utilized the power of ZoneBilling and are about to commence a sweeping and radical rebuild to allow for the solution to modernize our customer, product, and billing activities.” - Blair Woodbury, CFO at Devoli

Looking ahead, Devoli is expanding its use of ZoneBilling to fully modernize its customer, product, and billing activities further, creating a full cycle of efficiency and precision in financial operations.

Join 3,000+ businesses that trust Zone & Co to handle their complex billing challenges. Book a demo today and find out how ZoneBilling can meet your specific business needs.

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