About SquadStack
SquadStack is an AI-driven sales outsourcing platform that boosts client conversion rates with a fully managed on-demand network of remote inside sales agents.
With over 7 million sales agents selling products and services to over 200 million consumers, SquadStack handles more than 100K customer calls daily managing over 170K+ leads daily.
SquadStack’s pricing complexity
SquadStack's billing was based on the usage of their services - SMS and email units sent, call and WhatsApp usage times by the sales agents, as well as the outcomes delivered - leads reached, processed, and converted. Further, a single client could have multiple campaigns with different pricing structures.
They had slab-based usage pricing where the per usage cost varied based on usage volume – specifically, the price per calling minute varied as the number of processed leads increased within specific ranges.
SquadStack also had a complex credit rollover system. For prepaid customers, they had a minimum guarantee on usage. If the usage was less than the minimum guarantee, the remaining credit would get rolled over. But the rollover credit was limited to a certain percentage of the total usage subscribed for upfront.
This meant that even if a client used only a portion of their allotted minutes, the rollover credit would be capped at the specified percentage of the total quantity.
And if the client incurred overages, the rollover credit that was allowed to cover these overages was again limited to a fixed percentage of the minimum guarantee. And the client had to pay for the remaining overages at the end of the billing cycle.
This added an extra layer of complexity to the already intricate pricing model, as clients had to keep track of their usage, rollover credits, and overage charges.
The limitations of an in-house billing system
SquadStack started their journey with an in-house billing system. However, as their business grew and their requirements evolved, the limitations of the approach became evident.
Burden on the engineering team
Building and managing the in-house billing system became a strain on the engineering team. Everytime pricing evolved or billing requirements changed, the engineers had to spend time building it into their system.
The continuous support and ad hoc requests related to billing operations cut into engineering bandwidth. This was beginning to overload the team, causing delays in the product development, and inevitably missing their key KRAs.
Manual efforts by the finance team
Bridging system deficiencies required manual hours that burdened the finance team. Contract terms like minimum commitment, custom credits rollover were difficult to accommodate in the internal billing tool, and needed to be manually handled by the finance department.
They faced challenges in directly accessing usage information, relying heavily on engineering to generate invoices manually.
SquadStack discovered that the combination of an in-house billing system and manual invoicing was unsustainable for them. Recognizing the growing challenges, they sought a robust external billing solution to replace their in-house tool.
Despite exploring various billing solutions, none could adequately handle the intricacies of SquadStack’s pricing and unique use cases.
Why SquadStack chose Zenskar
The SquadStack team found Zenskar while exploring billing solutions. They signed up for the sandbox without a lot of expectations and realized it checked all their boxes.
- Handle pricing complexity
- Automate billing processes
- Reduce engineering dependency
- Accessible and easy to use by all the teams involved
- Iterate and evolve with pricing models and billing needs
SquadStack evaluated and implemented Zenskar in phases during their free pilot.
The usage data was connected with Zenskar to check the ease of connection and reliability of the usage transfer. The team implemented several test cases to ensure their pricing complexity can be handled. Zenskar’s integrations allowed the engineering team to easily connect their existing systems.
How Zenskar solved SquadStack’s billing challenge
Complex and custom pricing made easy
Zenskar is built to solve complex billing use cases.
Our advanced contract builder uses a graphical data model to create complex pricing models as a series of simple pricing nodes connected through a logical workflow using a drag-and-drop editor. This modular approach to storing pricing terms as objects in a graph allows any model to be configured easily.
The Zenskar team utilized this advanced contract builder to set up a pricing model tailored to SquadStack's specific requirements.
This enabled the team to configure intricacies such as minimum commitment, different pricing for different slabs, complex rollover logic with percentage cap on rollover, usage of rollover credits for overages, set up fees, etc.
The pricing plans were also designed to provide flexibility to non-tech teams, empowering them to create custom contracts without the need for any custom code.
With this, Zenskar made it easy for SquadStack to handle their unique billing requirements without burdening their engineering team.
Transparency with usage reports
SquadStack’s usage data was sent to Zenskar via API connection near real-time. Some of the usage metrics that were aggregated by SquadStack’s system in-house were sent in batches.
Zenskar also supports usage tracking outside of billing and invoicing since its architecture decouples contracts and usage. This meant SquadStack could add consumption information to the invoices even if it wasn’t an invoice line item. This was handled by the finance team manually before switching to Zenskar.
Every month, SquadStack sends its customers their usage information along with the invoice for transparency. This was another initiative that Zenskar could automate. The communications module enabled sending custom emails to their customers. This was used to configure and send consumption reports to their customers along with the invoices.
Seamless invoicing
Before Zenskar, the finance team had to handle a portion of their billing manually since it could not be configured into their billing system.
The invoice amounts were calculated on spreadsheets built on top of the usage reports and contract terms. Terms like minimum commitments were completely tracked on spreadsheets. About half of their contracts had a custom rollover of their credits to the next month. This also had to be handled case by case previously. Account or campaign level invoice splits also had to be accommodated manually.
The invoices were generated on Zoho based on the amounts manually calculated and the tax component added through the platform.
The overall process was tedious and time-consuming for the team.
By configuring all of their pricing complexity and esoteric invoice logic into the Zenskar platform, the finance team was able to automate invoice generation. The usage reports were also automated with Zenskar. This saved them from hours of grunt work.
The invoices were calculated automatically on Zensakr based on usage data. The finance team reviewed and approved the invoices and passed them to the account executives to verify and finalize them. Once the invoice was approved on both levels, it was sent to the Zoho account in real-time automatically through Zenskar's integration for GST tax computation to be added.
Pricing experimentation
The product team could not experiment with SquadStack’s pricing before Zenskar due to the limitations of the in-house setup. The pricing structure was rigid since the internal system could not be reconfigured from time to time. Since the team did not know how their pricing would evolve, they could not afford to build different pricing models just to experiment.
This is a common limitation most in-house systems face. Most companies do not have the engineering bandwidth to build and perfect a dynamic environment that can support pricing iteration.
After switching, the team began offering prepaid and postpaid plans to their customers to a segment of their customers. They are also experimenting with a pricing component in the form of an upfront fee at the start of the billing cycle.
Impact delivered
Engineering saves 120 hours/quarter with a robust system
Engineering invested bandwidth in setting up their billing on Zenskar once, to set up processes that met the needs of all of the teams involved. They could create custom processes that met their specific needs with Zenskar.
SquadStack could support iterative requirements and evolving pricing models.
This saved them from having to expand the capabilities of their inhouse system. They no longer had to periodically invest engineering bandwidth to support billing requirements. They essentially future proofed their billing system.
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Shalini estimates this saved the engineering team 80 hours/quarter if not more. Time that is redirected to the team’s core deliverables - to build more features, and release them faster. The team no longer had to delay product launches to help with billing and were now better placed to meet their OKRs.
Finance team saves 180 hours a month by automation
Automating billing with Zenskar ensured accurate invoicing without the finance team’s intervention. The team no longer had to manually manage the rollover of credits, minimum commitment etc. This also rid them of invoicing errors. The team no longer had to create monthly usage reports, Zenskar automatically sent them with the invoices.
This saved the teams about 180 hours every month that went into manual billing.
2% increase in revenue with pricing experimentation
The introduction of minimum guarantee and offering the flexibility for their customers to pay prepaid or postpaid was just one of the pricing experiments Squasdstack performed.
By introducing a mix of product pricing strategies and offering more flexibility, SquadStack was able to capture more demand from the existing customer segment in the form of various campaigns. This led to a 4% increase in SquadStack's monthly revenue.
The sales team could now offer new pricing plans without any concerns about their ability to support them.
Easier collaboration, happier teams
The platform could be used by tech and non-tech users with ease. The reduction of dependencies between the teams meant fewer requests and ad hoc tasks additions to the teams.
