CFOs and other business leaders have done it for decades — pouring over multiple, tedious spreadsheets to identify optimum pricing, secure business insights, and run revenue calculations.
This was never easy as the spreadsheets were inherently inefficient and prone to errors and data leaks. But, somehow, software companies used to make do.
That is, until the advent of the subscription economy.
Today, B2B SaaS business leaders have come to realise that using spreadsheets to manually keep track of data related to subscriptions, renewals, billings, revenue recognitions, and upgrades is near impossible.
And if spreadsheets still play an integral role in your daily operations, be prepared for data inaccuracies or half-baked insights, which in turn can cause revenue leakages (click here for a webinar), poor customer experiences, or lost funding opportunities.
Spreadsheet software, with their many vulnerabilities and the lack of governance frameworks, can also pose a very real challenge of security breaches. This equals fines and losing the trust of your customers.
All things considered, it's time to retire the error-ridden and unwieldy spreadsheets and choose an AI-powered subscription management solution (SMS) that offers a single source of truth (SSoT) through system integrations.
Read on, as this post showcases how switching from spreadsheets to an SMS will allow you to cut across silos and make strategic and timely business decisions, every time.
Business intelligence to manage your subscription portfolio can be secured from the data that resides within the sales CRM, financial system, ERP, customer support platform, and service desk system. But these disparate systems only offer a narrow perspective on the business operations.
A one source of truth is built to store master data from all these different sources, in one location.
Many businesses use spreadsheets as their SSoT. But, that's not good enough if you want to arrive at accurate and up-to-date data for revenue forecasting, and attain a heightened level of control over subscriptions.
Enter: A subscription management tool that offers advanced SSoT capabilities.
Once integrated with your source systems, it offers a comprehensive, compliant, error-free and accessible view of your organisation-wide subscription billing data, in one location. And since it's updated in real-time, you get to make more pertinent and informed decisions.
To easily build such an authoritative and centralised one source of truth, it would help to onboard a purpose-built subscription management solution like Younium.
Younium connects with your entire tech stack to provide one source of truth for all your data. Here are just a few of the many tools that it integrates with.
Image via Younium
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Spreadsheets are a rudimentary SSoT – one that passively and manually captures and analyses data.
If you are still using this software program, especially as your business is trying to scale, here is why you are fighting a losing battle:
Hence, you only gain a fragmented view of bookings and SaaS metrics.
Also, every team may have its own version or definition of the same data, and it's difficult to know which data set to use when forming a strategy or plans. For example, the start date for a subscription could be the day the client starts using your software in a CRM, while in a financial database, it could mean the day the first payment was made.
So when collating data from different sources, the data points could be wrongly interpreted, affecting the integrity of the SSoT.
At a macro level, here is how all these shortcomings of storing all your data on spreadsheets affect your business:
Bookings and subscription metrics, such as CMRR, ACV, and MRR, tend to be outdated in the spreadsheets, which may give a poor or incorrect view of the current and future state of your business. This and bad PR, from a lack of compliance with industry norms, could really hit your business’s valuation.
Also, it's difficult to put business rules on data, easily generate a report, or backup the data.
These unmanageable spreadsheet problems are an indication that you need a more dependable, intelligent, and scalable system that brings together your business data.
Yet, as Wolter Rebergen, Commercial Director, Younium points out, “95% of B2B SaaS businesses still use spreadsheets.” This is interesting to note since they also recognise that the tool isn't a very user-friendly or accurate source of data.
And the top reason for not upgrading from spreadsheets is the lack of awareness of a better way to run their business. Learn more about B2B subscription management in our webinar where we cover the fundamentals of how you can gain more for your business with the right tools in place.
So, what’s the solution?
Using a subscription analytics platform like Younium can help you consolidate data and provide one source of truth for different customer-facing teams. Here are some benefits of SaaS analytics to motivate you to invest in such platforms.
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1. What does one source of truth mean in SaaS?
One source of truth means having a single, unified, and continuously updated repository for all critical business data. In essence, every department is operating with the same, consistent information.
2. Can a subscription management system offer a one source of truth?
Yes, a robust subscription management system like Younium is designed to be a one source of truth for recurring revenue businesses. It integrates CRM, finance, and support platforms into one unified system.
3. Can a one source of truth reduce revenue leakage?
Absolutely. When all departments share a single, reliable view of subscriptions and customer contracts, it minimises errors in billing, prevents unbilled services, and ensures timely collections.
4. What kind of businesses benefit most from one source of truth?
Any SaaS business model with recurring revenue models would benefit from a one source of truth for efficient and transparent financial management.
5. Why are spreadsheets not a reliable single (one) source of truth?
Data in spreadsheets is often fragmented, prone to version control issues, and lacks real-time updates, audit trails, and integration capabilities, which makes it impossible to maintain one source of truth as the business scales.
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It's clear that spreadsheets, once the mainstay of business management, are no longer fit for purpose in the dynamic SaaS business model. As operations scale and customer expectations evolve, relying on outdated systems only adds risk and complexity.
However, transitioning to a one source of truth model, especially with a platform like Younium, will allow your teams to operate from a single, trustworthy data set.
With this, your business can stay compliant, reduce the chances of data errors, and make data-driven decisions that move the business forward.