Doubling Revenue Projections, Maintaining a Churn Rate of less than 1% Trusted Tech Team's Winning Strategy

Located in California, Trusted Tech Team (TTT) is a leading value-added software reseller. Driven by a vision to offer both an outstanding purchase experience and technical expertise, Trusted Tech Team does stand out from the traditional reseller crowd.

Previously, TTT was solely focused on generating revenue through sales of traditional 'one-time' purchase software products. But witnessing the SaaS economy offer more sustainable opportunities, TTT decided to switch to a recurring billing model.

The Problem

A major chunk of TTT's customers is Managed Service Providers (MSPs). The MSPs, in turn, provide IT services to several businesses. The team wanted to offer customer-centric subscription experiences but identified a few roadblocks:

• Different billing requirements: TTT's customers, the Managed Service Providers (MSPs), deliver software services to both large enterprises and smaller companies. Hence, MSPs demand different billing frequencies based on the number of software licenses purchased for their end clients. When purchasing licenses in bulk for larger enterprises, they prefer annual billing. Some MSPs prefer monthly, biweekly, or quarterly billing cycles to reduce the cost barrier for smaller organizations.

• A Spaghetti billing workflow in reality: David Spencer, Director of Operations at TTT, recalls the complexities that cropped up when the team tried to customize their billing model "Oftentimes, we resell the same software multiple times to an MSP who is dealing with 50 other enterprises. And we have to rebill the MSP multiple times per product per month. This disjointed payment and invoice data can get very messy and that’s what I call the Spaghetti Billing"

• Clunky billing processes: TTT witnessed its competitors offer slow and inflexible billing processes. For example, simple requests such as editing the number of licenses purchased, or associating a Purchase Order with the respective invoice, took a longer turnaround time. TTT wanted a billing system that was equipped to offer self-service customer experiences

The Solution

TTT needed the perfect combination of a pre-built out-of-the-box billing solution that also offered customization on the backend to solve their unique use cases. Secondly, they wanted to focus on delivering a smooth, streamlined purchase experience. Chargebee handles both.

David articulates "We have to acknowledge that we are selling a commodity. So we are selling the same thing as some of the other resellers are selling. It's not like we're a car manufacturer and you're gonna debate, Hey, this is a Toyota, and this is a Honda. At the end of the day, we're providing the same product as our competitors. So we have to differentiate ourselves. We honestly have been able to do that because of Chargebee."

1. Flexible billing frequency Let's say a customer (the MSP) purchases 1000 Microsoft Office licenses. The lump cost could hit the customer pretty hard. Offering the option to pay monthly could help the customer budget well. So, during the onboarding process, the TTT team understands their requirements and offers flexible billing options and payment terms.

2. Consolidated invoicing: Instead of sending an invoice per client, the team can send consolidated invoices to MSPs. And even customize invoice recipients if needed.

3. Streamlined management of end-users:

• Chargebee's Account Hierarchy empowers the Trusted Tech Team to help their customers manage all their licenses in one window. MSPs are defined as parents (payee) and their client accounts as children (payer). The team also solves some interesting scenarios such as invoicing the MSPs but sending payment links to the clients, sending invoices for multiple customers to one MSP, or directly invoicing the clients.

• Self-serve Portal offers a one-site experience to the MSPs. On logging in to their self-serve portal, they can view and manage subscription and payment details of all their end clients. MSPs download invoices, edit or upgrade the number of licenses, pause their children’s subscriptions with ease.

The Payoff

Maintaining churn rate at less than 1%

The best subscription experiences are nurturing rather than controlling. The perfect combination of features such as Account Hierarchy and the Self-serve Portal that exist in Chargebee and TTT’s API customizations work together to help the Trusted Tech Team create a different kind of billing experience that is both "human", and scalable. And keeps their customers happy.

Constantly exceeding their revenue projections, despite Covid

David shares his experience "We saw a huge boom in the adoption of subscription products. People who were using on-premise licenses switched to working from home. Hence, a lot of businesses transitioned to cloud-based services. It was crucial having Chargebee in place and our billing infrastructure set before Covid. We doubled our revenue projections, and hired more people in the past 6 months than before."

The best part about Chargebee is that it gives us 90% of the billing foundation that we need to keep the revenue coming. And the other 10% we can push across the line ourselves because Chargebee's API allows us to customize functionalities on the backend and solve our unique scenarios. Additionally, anytime we've run into a problem we can't solve ourselves, the team has been more than helpful!

Tyler Means, Director of Technical Operations, Trusted Tech Team