Making Billing a Non-Event for Sovos Compliance, LLC

Introduction

Sovos designs and develops tax compliance and business-to-government reporting software, serving customers worldwide. Sovos operates a diverse portfolio of businesses, each with their own distinct operational requirements and revenue models.

“Trajectory worked closely with our Salesforce implementation partner and the Sovos business teams to design and build a streamlined Salesforce to NetSuite architecture that has redefined operations at Sovos. Our project goal was to make “Billing a Non-Event” and this solution has helped us achieve this aggressive goal. Sovos’ quote-to-revenue process is now operating more smoothly and the company is poised to onboard new acquisitions to the unified business processes more efficiently going forward. Trajectory’s integrated consulting and development teams were a value-add, ensuring fluid and efficient implementation of the solution.”

Venu Martha
VP, Business Applications
Sovos Compliance, LLC

Consolidating the multiple entities into a single Salesforce and NetSuite ecosystem required clear definition of new state business processes across Sales, Sales Operations, Customer Success, and Finance and huge data transformation and migration efforts. Highlights of the project included:

• Business Process Redesign – This was a foundational element of the project. Rethinking how Salesforce and NetSuite would work synchronously, set the tone for the solution and was key to ensuring data consistency going forward.
• Data Migration Approach Definition and Execution – This was a highly complex undertaking, as various data sets needed to be identified, extracted from various source systems, cleansed, transformed, aligned, and reloaded to the new solution to ensure data accuracy. It was the single most important aspect of the project; if the new solution didn’t reflect accurate information, the implementation would have been a failure.
• Revenue Recognition Audit Challenges – The historical revenue recognition processes led to unbilled revenue and allocation challenges. The revised solution architecture and business processes effectively addressed those challenges.
• Financial Reporting Consolidation – The unification of business processes and revenue recognition practices enabled the generation of consistent reporting.
• Solution Scalability – The solution was designed to facilitate the integration of future acquisitions onto the platforms.
• Optimal Execution Team Design – This project highlighted the importance of execution team design. Ultimately, there were over a hundred stakeholders involved in the project from various business teams, executives, implementation partners, project managers etc. Although there was a defined project team structure with representation from all affected departments, the key to overall project success was a central Project Manager within Sovos who ensured task clarity, timing, resource availability and task completion.

Following this, we transitioned into the implementation phase, during which the solution was developed, accompanied by regular checkpoint demonstrations for key project stakeholders. This allowed them to observe the evolution of the new functionality and provide feedback throughout the process. Once the solution was built, it underwent extensive testing through multiple rounds of end-user evaluations.

The design and execution of the data migration approach represented the most time-consuming and complex aspect of the project. A significant volume of data accumulated over the years required thorough review, cleansing, transformation, and reloading into the systems to align with the new business processes. This meticulous process spanned several months and involved the collaboration of dozens of team members.

• Synchronized and streamlined business processes from Salesforce to NetSuite
• Aligned and cleansed data across systems
• Consolidated reporting, revenue recognition alignment with international standards
• Scalability, a new acquisition (entity) was rolled onto the solution within 8 months of the implementation

Alex Olano