Modernizing Billing: Salesforce x Sage Intacct
Fair Trade USA, Product Owner
2019
Focus Areas
Billing, sales operations, supply chain management, nonprofit
Skill Set
Build vs. buy, CRM, ERP, data integration, sales operations, business process design, vendor & stakeholder management, project management, data migration, QA testing, launch strategy, sales enablement training
Background
Fair Trade USA saw steady growth between 2010-2019 as they expanded their certification programs and services into new product categories, nearly doubling their annual revenue to $20MM+ by 2019. Despite this financial growth, the organization’s sales operations and accounting technology lagged behind, relying primarily on bloated, error-prone spreadsheets and understaffed teams to track and calculate fees for over 2000 customer accounts every quarter. These systems were sorely due for an upgrade.
After conducting a buy vs. build assessment, we landed on a hybrid solution that integrated new modules of our existing CRM and ERP systems, Salesforce and Sage Intacct, with some custom software development. This solution allowed us to maximize the potential of our existing technology investments, while minimizing project costs and the mental load required for adopting new tools.
The success of this project had widespread impact across the company. Automating the contracting and billing process created opportunities for the Sales team to streamline operations, innovate pricing strategy, and utilize accurate sales forecasting for the first time. Hundreds of hours were saved as Data and Certification team members were no longer performing tasks outside of their function, and customers received an improved, error-free invoicing experience.
High-level system diagram and data flow
Contract records synced form Intacct to Salesforce
Invoices shown in Salesforce
Deliverables
Led buy vs. build exploration and solution design and obtained executive buy-in
Managed project budget, resources, and stakeholder engagement across Finance, Data, Certification and Operations and Business category leads
Oversaw all key project work streams: vendor implementation, in-house software development, business process design and data migration
Partnered w/ Engineering to deliver integrated contracting and billing system between Salesforce, Sage Intacct and custom transaction data platform
Developed QA and launch strategy, including training for 50+ staff members across 4 teams
Results
Reduced staff time spent on billing by 12x, from 65 hours to <5 hours per quarter
Reduced billing errors from 2.8% to <1%
Reduced average time-to-invoice from 12 days to 1 day
Learnings
Gained new insights on sales operations function and expertise on ERP and CRM integrations