Business model of Bill.com

Customer Segments

Bill.com has a niche market business model, with a specialized customer segment. The company targets its offerings at small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs).

Value Proposition

Bill.com offers five primary value propositions: convenience, accessibility, performance, risk reduction, and brand/status.

The company offers convenience by simplifying operations. Its solution automates a wide range of payable and receivable processes, saving clients the time needed to search for missing documents, chase after approvers, sign checks, print and mail checks, and look up information for vendors.

The company creates accessibility by offering a wide variety of options. It acts as an add-on feature to accounting software packages (rather than as a standalone option), and it enables integration with most major providers, including QuickBooks, QuickBooks Online, NetSuite, Xero, and Intacct.

The company has demonstrated strong performance through tangible results. It reduces the time spent for clients to receive, approve, and pay their bills online by 50%. When the clients’ customers pay their invoices online, the cash goes into clients’ bank accounts 2-3 times faster than previously.

The company reduces risk through high standards for financial data protection. Examples of its security practices include the following:

• Physical Protections – The company’s servers are located in a high-security facility with biometric access controls and guard and video surveillance 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
• Network Protections – The company prevents unauthorized electronic access to servers through intrusion-detection devices and firewalls.
• Data Protections – The company protects data with the same encryption tools that banks use.
• Applicaiton Protections – The company utilizes multi-factor authentication (MFA) to prevent fraudulent access to clients‘ Bill.com accounts.
• Payments Protections – The company’s Positive Pay feature works at the bank level to assure that altered checks will not be paid.
• Process Protections – The company has a leading national accounting firm regularly conduct a SOC 1, Type 2 Audit.

The company has established a powerful brand as a result of its success. It touts itself as the leading digital business payments firm offering A/P and A/R solutions. It helps more than 1,000,000 network members process more than $26 billion in payments each year. It has many prominent clients, including three of the top ten U.S. banks and 44% of the top 100 accounting firms. Lastly, Bill.com has won 44 major awards for technology innovation and leadership. These include recognition as one of the San Francisco Business Times‘ “Most Innovative Companies“, a PC Magazine Editor's Choice Award, and placement on the CNBC Disruptor 50 and OnDemand Top 100 lists.

Channels

Bill.com’s main channels are its website and its direct sales team. The company promotes its offering through its social media pages and participation in summits and conferences.

Customer Relationships

Bill.com’s customer relationship is primarily of a self-service, automated nature.

Customers utilize the service through the main platform while having limited interaction with employees. The company’s website features a “Resources” section that includes self-help tools such as white papers, case studies, and webinars. The site also provides answers to frequently asked questions.

That said, there is a personal assistance component in the form of phone, e-mail, and live chat support.

Key Activities

Bill.com’s business model entails maintaining a robust cloud platform for its clients.

Key Partners

Bill.com’s main partners are the vendors whose offerings integrate with its solution in order to offer its clients automation services.  They are as follows:

• Hubdoc
• Xero
• Intacct
• NetSuite
• QuickBooks for Windows
• QuickBooks Online
• Tallie
• Salesforce.com
• Earth Class Mail
• Tax1099.com

The company also maintains the following types of partnerships:

Referral Partners – Bill.com invites third parties to refer its solution to their associates. Referrals that lead to a purchase result in one month’s worth of free service for the referring party and the new customer. The offer is limited up to $150 per month.

Developers – Bill.com invites developers to use its APIs to integrate their products with its solution, where they can then benefit from integrations with the numerous applications on its platform.

Key Resources

Bill.com’s main resource is its proprietary software platform, which serves over 1,000,000 clients.

It depends on its engineering employees to maintain and update the platform and its customer service staff to provide support.

Lastly, as a startup it has relied heavily on funding from outside parties, raising $159.1 million from 19 investors as of April 2015.

Cost Structure

Bill.com has a cost-driven structure, aiming to minimize expenses through significant automation and low-price value propositions.

Its biggest cost driver is likely marketing expenses, a fixed cost. Other major drivers are in the areas of product development and administration, both fixed expenses.

Revenue Streams

Bill.com has two revenue streams:

Subscription Revenues – Revenues generated from fees charged for monthly access to the company’s SaaS platform. Subscription plans are as follows:

• Essentials – Manages payables or receivables. Costs $19 per user per month.
• Team – Manages payables or receivables and accounting software integration. Costs $29 per user per month.
• Corporate – Manages payables and receivables and provides robust workflow options. Costs $49 per user per month.
• Enterprise – Offers same features as Corporate plan as well as additional integration features. Sales staff must be contacted directly as pricing is customized.

Transaction Revenues – Revenues generated from fees charged for the following transactions:

• Send or receive ACH payments - $0.49 each
• Bill.com mails client’s checks or invoices - $1.49 each
• Bill.com conducts client’s payables data entry - $0.50 each