Milestone Marketing and Avalara Select Tensoft(R) to Manage Their Complex Billing and Revenue Recognition Processes

SAN JOSE, CA--(Marketwire - November 12, 2009) - Tensoft, a leading technology industry ERP provider announced today that its customers Milestone Internet Marketing and Avalara chose Tensoft Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) to help manage their complex billing and revenue recognition processes. Both companies needed to streamline and automate billing processes for improved internal productivity and visibility.

"We invoice for a variety of services and features in a host of different ways," said Anil Aggarwal, CEO of Milestone Internet Marketing, Inc., a leading provider of Internet marketing solutions for the lodging industry. "I'd say that significantly increased invoicing accuracy is one of our biggest benefits with Tensoft RCM to-date. We have more confidence in our invoicing and appreciate being able to instantly deliver billing projections when our customers request them."

Web-hosted sales tax automation provider Avalara's Operations VP, Bob Waite, chose Tensoft RCM for similar reasons. "Avalara has nearly 10,000 businesses of every size and level of complexity relying on us for accurate sales tax calculation," he said. "These customers are processing more than 200 million transactions per year, so our billing and revenue management solution needs to handle high volumes, and it needs to integrate seamlessly with our accounting and financial solution, Microsoft Dynamics GP. Like Avalara, Tensoft is a Microsoft Gold Certified ISV, so we feel confident that they understand and can handle our business needs."

"As revenue streams become more complex, so do business needs around billing, contract and revenue management," said Tensoft CEO Bob Scarborough. "Tensoft RCM's ability to flexibly handle this constellation of needs, combined with its delivery as a tightly packaged end-to-end ERP solution for technology companies, helps our customers in sometimes surprising ways. For example, one customer not only recognized vastly improved profits, but recently facilitated an attractive company sale using RCM's reports to convincingly project future revenue."

Milestone Internet Marketing and Avalara are representative of the subscription or enterprise contract model, one of several business transaction models that technology companies use today. Tensoft's experience shows that business model support is as important as revenue and billing management to truly support productivity improvements for customers. Business models vary based on company creativity, but generally fall into the following categories:

--  Subscription or Enterprise Contracts -- Generally these contracts are
    big enough to require administrative oversight and change management.
    Customers using this model need a variety of billing and revenue models,
    integration across their company to sales and operations, and robust
    support to help manage complex customer contractual relationships.
--  Web Commerce Subscriptions -- These business relationships are often
    business-to-consumer transactions, high volume and low-touch web sales.
    The company website is the product or an important part of the product, and
    the customer purchase transaction is integrated into this offering.
    Revenue management starts where the commercial transaction ends.
--  Sell-Through Model -- These business relationships leverage extended
    channels: distributors, resellers or intellectual property licensors. They
    often require contract management, with a sharp focus on channel sales
    information integration, complex pricing and execution management.
--  Direct Sales with Deferred Revenue -- These sales follow the classic
    order-entry-to-shipment model.  However, after the sale has occurred, the
    appropriate compliance based or company revenue model needs to be correctly
    applied, monitored, and maintained.
--  Two-Cycle Customer Models -- These models combine channel sales (cycle
    one) with end-customer activation (cycle two).  The two cycles manage each
    part of the business model flow and need to integrate with the appropriate
    internal and external systems.
--  Hybrid Billing and Revenue Model -- Technology companies in this
    category use a combination of some or all of the models described above.
    

About Tensoft RCM

Combined with the core financial and reporting capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics, Tensoft RCM provides one central location -- and one integrated system -- to automate a company's lifecycle business processes such as billing and contract renewals, as well as revenue recognition and management. Using fully auditable and traceable processes, it is a strong fit for companies that utilize enterprise license models, royalty or OEM contract management, complex billing driven by usage and sophisticated pricing terms, large account business management or high-level models.

About Tensoft

Tensoft, Inc. specializes in end-to-end ERP solutions for technology companies. Delivered either on-demand (SaaS) or on-premise, Tensoft solutions offer customers significant improvements in the areas of productivity, visibility and compliance. Tensoft is based in San Jose, California. For more information, go to http://www.tensoft.com or call (888) 450-4030 X406.