Case study | BT Conferencing effortlessly manages over 10,000 deferral accounts with Subscription Billing.

Company overview.

BT conferencing is a telecommunications company providing robust conferencing solutions for businesses for over 25 years. By pairing with Dolby Voice, they bring unparalleled audio quality and round-the-clock support to companies worldwide. With the ability to facilitate up to 2,500 people on a conference call, they are the go-to solution for companies adapting to remote working.

The problem.

As part of BT Conferencing’s global expansion, they acquired WireOne Communications to become a leading player in the growing global conferencing market. As a publicly traded 32-billion USD company, The BT Group has to meet strict regulations for compliance.

With BT Conferencing being just a small division of The BT Group, they had to adapt to these workflow requirements and meeting rigorous accounting standards for revenue recognition and deferrals. Fortunately, they had Subscription Billing Suite on hand. However, it was not being maximized.

When Paul Fortson joined the team as the Director of Financial Systems, he quickly saw the need to fully implement Subscription Billing Suite to meet the growing list of challenges the team was struggling to meet.

The challenges.

• Maximize the use of existing resources while growing at a rapid pace.
• Reporting became more frequent, with a formal monthly revenue report required by the BT Group’s overall financial compliance team.
• One team member was handling all deferrals using a mix of spreadsheets and the subscription management software.
• Increasingly labour-intensive demands were placed on the accounting team.
• Required to manage a growing base of over 10,000 deferral accounts.

The solution.

BT Conferencing quickly decided that full implementation of Subscription Billing Suite was necessary to automate deferrals and reporting. This solution’s flexibility has provided BT Conferencing with the ability to scale, allowing them to effortlessly add anywhere from 300 to 700 new deferral schedules a month without complications. Currently, the system allows them to support over 10,000 existing deferral schedules.

The benefits.

Optimized use of resources.

Once the full transition was complete, they realigned their resources to have one person in charge of their financial department who also managed their deferral schedules. With this task making up around 10% of their day, this employee can also manage all the other tasks related to running the financial department. This reallocation of time allowed BT Conferencing to use their existing resources better and add value without extra costs.

Improved financial reporting accuracy.

Financial reporting was also made more accurate by automation. The reduction in manual data entry meant they could rely on their figures, giving BT Conferencing the ability to have better insight into their business faster than ever before.

Accurate forecasting.

Regular forecasting for five years into the future became possible, and period forecasts for monthly sales. Having existing data to tell them the revenue streams scheduled for the next 12 to 36 months helped form a solid basis for these calculations and provided greater accuracy.

Workflow automation and increased productivity

Significant reduction of the hours required to process the thousands of journal entries every month. At the click of a button, users could automate the journal entry process and save days’ worth of effort. Team members were more productive as a result.

Key results:

• 10,000+ deferral accounts managed easily.
• 2+ months saved.
• $25M on average deferred annually.