Q&A with Nishant Nair on Managing Complex Recurring Billing and Revenue Simply

RecVue is a fast-growing, niche player in the recurring billing and revenue management space (sometimes referred to as agile monetization, subscription management, or intelligent billing solutions). Founded in 2015, RecVue’s recurring billing and revenue management platform streamlines and simplifies the complexities of managing subscription and usage-based contracts from opportunity to invoicing. RecVue replaces the error-prone, manual processes and spreadsheets which companies use to manage their complex subscription models with a simple and efficient application.

Despite its age, RecVue is already managing over $5B in recurring billing and revenue and has an impressive customer roster. We sat down with Nishant Nair, CEO of RecVue, to learn more about the company and its early success.

Q: Nishant, what was the genesis of RecVue?

RecVue, like any company, started with an idea backed by passion. For us, that idea was giving businesses a way to handle complex recurring billing and revenue scenarios simply. We saw a couple of things happening: 1) a shift in the market towards recurring billing and revenue models and 2) the inability for traditional ERP systems to handle recurring billing and revenue model complexity.

First, recurring billing and revenue models have been around for decades. They were first introduced by large global telecommunication companies who had the resources to build custom billing systems. These home-grown systems were the only way to handle the subscription and usage pricing, billing, and revenue management complexities. Cloud technologies have made it more attainable for companies outside of telecommunications to pursue more sophisticated pricing. Today, recurring billing and revenue models are being adopted by all types of industries such as software, financial services, retail, and internet media.

Second, our roots are based with a very large application and technology consulting company who does medium-to large-scale ERP and CRM implementations. We’ve spent decades working with both enterprise and fast-growing companies. They want flexibility with pricing models, accuracy managing complex billing contracts, visibility into recurring billing and revenue streams, and the ability to recognize revenue at a granular level. The ERP systems were not satisfying our client’s needs.

Those two things, market demand and our expertise, caused us to develop our own platform to manage our customer’s recurring billing and revenue business needs. RecVue is an “overlay” technology to the ERP and CRM, bringing sophisticated recurring billing and revenue management functionality to the business technology stack.

Q: RecVue has had some early, impressive successes. Can you tell us more?

We’ve incubated RecVue within our consultancy with enterprise customers and fast-growing companies on the cutting edge of telemedicine, gaming, social platforms, and internet media. Over 95% of our early customers, some would refer to these as beta customers, continue to use the platform today.

In fact, we are managing over $5 billion in recurring billing and revenue and quickly growing as some of our newer customers go-live. We are managing over 50 million transactions annually and are set to more than double that number in the next year.

With this proven track record, we feel comfortable bringing both the technology and the company to market on a broader scale.

Q: With data volumes that high, what is the technology behind RecVue?

We did a thorough evaluation of all the players to determine which technologies would work best for us and our customers. In the end, we decided to build RecVue with Oracle Cloud technology powered by Oracle Big Data Cloud. Our vision was to build a platform that is secure, scalable and flexible that works for a $20 million company as well as a $20 billion company. Oracle is a proven technology that has the security, the scalability, the flexibility, and a name that enterprise customers trust. We have also invested in integrations to systems like Salesforce, Oracle Sales Cloud, Oracle ERP Cloud, Netsuite, Avalara Tax Engine etc. ensuring our customers have a seamless experience.

RecVue is also available through the Oracle Cloud Marketplace. We had to achieve certain standards with our platform such as security protocols and performance benchmarks in order for RecVue to be validated and accepted in the marketplace. The visibility within the Oracle ecosystems brings immediate scale to our sales channel, allowing us to continue investing in developing a world-class recurring billing and revenue management platform that drives customer success.

Q: You are also on the Oracle ISV Advisory Board. Why do you think this is important for your customers?

RecVue was selected out of thousands of ISV partners to be part of a select few who serve on the Oracle ISV Advisory Board. This gives us an opportunity to build relationships with key technologists, see previews of announcements, and have input into technology roadmaps, processes, and more. In turn, this gives us the ability to serve our customers better. The seat at the table allows us to be customer advocates with Oracle, and that is huge.

Q: Although you are built on Oracle Cloud technology, you state that you are ERP independent. What does that mean?

As I mentioned, we chose Oracle as the technology platform for its security, scalability, flexibility, and the ability to integrate with any existing ERP or CRM application on the market. It made sense to first build integrations with Oracle. We also have integrations with Salesforce and NetSuite. Soon we will have them with Microsoft, Workday, Infor, and SAP.

Ultimately, the problem we are trying to solve is how to simplify complex pricing models and recurring billing and revenue models for accurate and timely billing and revenue recognition operations. It transcends across all industries and technology stacks. We want to develop the best platform to solve these issues. This means a customer can have a best-of-breed technology stack with applications from multiple solution providers, and we can integrate seamlessly within their stack.

Q: You recently secured $2 million in funding. What’s next for RecVue?

Along with continuing to drive our platform innovation and customer success, we want to scale our sales and marketing operations to capture more market share. Our client roster is strong and growing; we recently closed the fastest growing grocery delivery service in the U.S. We want to accelerate this growth now that our platform has proven itself with very strong, referenceable accounts.

Along with the funding, we are excited to have Bobby Yazdani join our board of directors. He has been a true visionary and instrumental in partnering with innovative companies that are looking to disrupt key market segments. He will be an invaluable asset to RecVue as we close 2017 in a position of strength, and set our sights on 2018 and beyond.