BillingPlatform Raises $18 Million to Grow Agile Monetization Business

BillingPlatform, the agile monetization company, has drawn an initial $4 million from the funding commitment provided by Columbia Capital. The investment comes at a time of rapid growth for BillingPlatform and widespread interest in agile monetization among enterprises and emerging companies. The money will be used on sales and marketing, product development and support for BillingPlatform’s global customer base. Columbia plans to invest an additional $14 million in BillingPlatform over the next 18 months.

In related news, BillingPlatform has appointed Dennis Wall to CEO. Wall joined BillingPlatform in January 2017 as Chief Revenue Officer and has helped the company add and expand its relationships with enterprise clients, including PGi, Energy Australia and a large international airport. Wall was a co-founder of Cloud Sherpas, the global cloud advisory and technology services firm acquired by Accenture in 2015. BillingPlatform co-founders Nathan Shinn and Leonid Solomonik have been named Chief Strategy Officer and CTO, respectively.

BillingPlatform launched in 2012 with a cloud-based platform that supports quote-to-cash and related processes, such as billing and revenue recognition. Highly configurable, BillingPlatform offers a native metering and rating engine that enables unique and complex business models, and integrates with leading CRM, ERP and other core systems. BillingPlatform was recently named a Strong Performer in The Forrester Wave: Recurring Customer And Billing Management, Q3 2017, report, and received perfect scores for corporate vision and product focus, ahead of products like Apttus and Aria Systems.

Agile monetization strategies have become increasingly popular as businesses and consumers acquire products and services in nontraditional ways. Ford, for example, allows users of its GoBike service to purchase single ride, day pass or annual memberships. Netflix allows customers to select pricing based on options such as image resolution, the number of supported screens, and with DVDs or without. Uber and Lyft provide their customers with a veritable menu of pricing options. Analysts are recognizing that more companies are shifting to flexible pricing strategies. MGI Research forecasts the agile monetization platform market will grow from $8.9 billion in 2016 to nearly $36.75 billion in 2020.

“What we’re seeing is a fundamental shift in the way that companies price their offerings that is consistent with the emergence of on-demand services, mobile apps and cloud technologies,” says Wall. “Simply put, consumers have more options than ever when it comes to who they buy their products from and how they consume those products, putting pressure on companies to be more flexible in their pricing. The most successful companies going forward will recognize this trend and adopt agile monetization platforms that allow for a high degree of configurability, scalability and integration with complementary systems.”

“Companies are becoming more creative in the way they charge for products and services and can use monetization as a competitive weapon,” says Jason Booma, Partner at Columbia Capital, who has joined the BillingPlatform Board of Directors. “In talking with enterprise buyers, we heard the consistent message that customers are seeking a platform that could be rapidly configured to handle complex use cases and high transaction volumes without lengthy development burdens. We’re confident that the BillingPlatform team will capture a sizable portion of its market with its differentiated solution.”

“Our mission,” says Wall, “is to give companies flexibility in how they monetize their products and services, and agility in how they innovate and evolve their processes. Legacy billing solutions simply can’t do this. As one of our largest customers said, ‘We felt like we had to mold our monetization strategy and processes around [the legacy provider’s] solution, whereas BillingPlatform was able mold its solution around our business.’ That statement says everything you need to know about the direction of our market and our place in it.”