Rev.io
Atlanta
rev.io
Q: Please tell us about your company history. When was it founded? How has the company evolved since its founding? Have your services changed? Are there key milestones in your company’s history and growth that you can highlight?
Before Rev.io became the company that it is today, recognized as a billing, payments, and customer management software-as-a-service (SaaS) leader for clients in the advanced communications and technology spaces, our origin story stretches back to Pensacola, Fla. It is there that we launched the “H2O” billing platform in 2002. Our first client was a small, regional telecom provider in North Florida who faced the same kind of challenges that our clients face today: how to ensure their billing and back-office is an enabler, and not an inhibitor, of efficient revenue growth.
Our small team grew H2O at an impressive rate through the business’s first decade of operation. But starting in 2013, the company’s true evolution really began taking shape. Brent Maropis, a telecom industry veteran from his time in sales leadership and general management at CBeyond, joined as CEO of H2O in January of that year. Shortly after, we officially moved our headquarters from Pensacola to Atlanta.
Our new leadership team moved quickly to professionalize the business. Evan Rice joined the team in July 2013 as the company’s first dedicated sales professional, drawing on enterprise sales and leadership experience at CBeyond and VMWare to build out a formalized, modeled sales process and team.
At this time, we also turned our focus to enhancing the H2O platform to meet evolving market needs. Significant team resources were devoted to product development in essential areas within the billing software. The business continued to expand its offerings and capacity at a rapid rate, debuting new open API functionality and a brand-new customer portal.
Between 2014 and 2015, H2O began making substantial noise in the advanced communications space, subsequently growing our client base rapidly. We hosted our first Client Summit, an event now widely regarded as annual tradition among clients and partners, in 2014.
Most importantly of all, H2O’s leadership team outlined the type of qualities we pledge to uphold as an organization. After extensive brainstorming and collaboration, the group established its mission (“to help clients grow revenue efficiently”) and “ACT TOP” Values. These defining characteristics would go on to serve as the guiding light for H2O as we expanded operations, grew our team, and pushed further upmarket.
By 2016, a full rebranding project was underway. We transitioned away from our H2O identity to Rev.io, a name that reflects the business’s clear intention of helping clients grow their revenue efficiently. More SLT hires would come in these years, as different executives were brought in to build their own departments in Client Success, Onboarding, and Technology while overseeing growing teams.
With a larger, more professional and specialized team in place, we turned our focus as a company to building a full ecosystem of products and solutions that would further strengthen our strategic partnerships. We launched the Rev.io Partner Marketplace in 2018 as part of this vision, accompanied by expanded integrations. Rev.io Payments also launched that year, helping evolve Rev.io’s sophisticated billing platform into a complete financial processing experience for its clients.
In 2019, we set our annual company theme as “Specialize,” which inspired one of the most important periods in the company’s history. Widespread specialization initiatives led to a massive team expansion throughout 2019, bringing in new employees across departments with focused roles to help consolidate the current responsibilities of tenured employees. The “Specialize” theme inspired strong business momentum and clear synergy across the entire team.
By 2020, we were truly ready to capitalize on our momentum and reach a new tier in client and revenue growth, while driving significant expansion in our product offering capabilities. But like every business worldwide, we were thrown a curveball by the COVID-19 pandemic. Fortunately, we were able to lean on our strong culture of results, accountability, and caring for our employees and clients to seamlessly carry on through this period of disruption. We transitioned to full work from home in March, while maintaining our Client Success, Onboarding, Sales, and Engineering processes without interruption. And while we faced challenges in maintaining the same rate of growth as in past years, we still managed recurring revenue growth of nearly 30% while finishing the year with over 150 billing clients across telecommunications, managed services, and IoT.
We also entered a new era for our company in 2021 by securing outside equity investment for the first time. Our founder Ross Overstreet stepped out of his day-to-day role at the company after the transaction, but our leadership team has never been stronger. Our newest addition was James Phillips, Rev.io’ new CTO, a 20+ year veteran of the IT industry with extensive leadership experience in everything from start-ups to enterprises.
As Rev.io looks ahead to 2021 and beyond as a member company of INCOMPAS, we could not be more optimistic about our future. We are humbled and proud to serve some of the strongest service providers in telecommunications, who have proven their importance over the last year in keeping businesses and people connected. We expect continued growth in our team and client roster, with ongoing success in growing our revenue and building our product capabilities to meet the evolving demands of our marketplace.
Q: Please tell us about company’s top executives and the work that they are doing in our industry.
Brent Maropis – CEO: Brent has been the CEO of Rev.io since 2013. He has more than 15 years of executive and sales leadership, with the vast majority coming within service to the advanced communications industry. Brent began his career at Cbeyond as a Sales Manager and quickly rose to the position of VP/GM, launching multiple new markets for the company. As CEO of Rev.io, Brent has overseen significant growth in both client base and revenue, and Rev.io has been recognized as an Inc. 5000 winner on seven separate occasions.
James Phillips – CTO: James joined Rev.io as our new CTO in January 2021. He has over 20 years of experience in information technology, leading teams and processes in both large, complex organizations and fast-growing SMB environments. James is also a noted thought leader in key technology areas such as SQL, BI, Data Visualization, DevOps, and other areas. Follow him at http://anothersqlgeek.com/.
Robert Benoit – CFO: Robert has been the CFO of Rev.io since June 2020. He has over 20 years of domestic and international experience in financial analysis, management reporting, accounting, forecasting, and planning in a variety of industries, including B2B software.
Evan Rice – EVP, Sales and Marketing: Evan joined Rev.io as our first Sales team member in 2013, building and implementing our proven model while developing our talented organization over the past eight-plus years. He has over 15 years’ experience leading sales and marketing teams across enterprise software and IT services. He notably began his career at Cbeyond, progressing from individual sales rep to territory manager, launching several new markets for the company.
Matt Robison – SVP, Client Success: Matt has led our Client Success team since 2016. He has over 15 years’ experience leading service organizations, building service models, recruiting and coaching team members, and ensuring client retention. Most notably, he was the Global Head of Service at eVestment, developing and scaling a model implemented across numerous geographic markets for complex financial institutions.
Brian Wuollet – VP, Product: Brian has been the VP of Product at Rev.io since 2020. He has over 10 years’ experience in product and program management at both establish enterprise-level and fast-growing software companies. At Rev.io, he leads the product management team that is responsible for delivering the roadmap items that will create more value for our advanced communications clients.
Hampton Harrison – VP, Onboarding: Hampton joined Rev.io’s Onboarding team in 2018 and has led the department since 2019. He has nearly 10 years’ experience in client service and implementation roles across the SaaS industry, and oversees a sophisticated project management process in onboarding our advanced communications clients onto the Rev.io platform.
Patrick Elliott – VP, Marketing: Patrick has been VP of Marketing since 2019. He has over 15 years’ experience in product marketing, strategy, go-to-market tactics, and business development in several B2B industries. In addition to leading demand generation and content marketing at Rev.io, Patrick is our main contact with media industry groups like INCOMPAS. He can be reached for partner inquiries at patricke@rev.io.
Q: Explain your geographic reach. Where do you provide services?
Rev.io’s software platform serves telecommunications companies, managed service providers, IoT/mobility companies, and other service providers across North America. As a cloud-based platform with a well-defined onboarding and client service model, we are able to activate and support client usage of our system in a fully remote fashion.
Q: What types of products and/or services do you offer your customers?
Rev.io solves common problems of fast-growing communications and technology companies, many of whom have used legacy billing systems that are unable to handle the increased complexity of sophisticated billing as their business grows.
Our platform is a robust billing as a service (BaaS) and customer management software solution. Built to solve mission-critical problems of communications companies, IoT companies, and technology service providers, Rev.io enables businesses with sophisticated subscription billing models to accurately manage their end customers’ billing, usage, taxation, and payment processing.
Our solution is full Quote-to-Cash, intended to position a single source of truth for managing client information. The core of our platform is our complex billing system, with key components for usage rating, taxation, and payment processing. Additionally, the Rev.io system can help clients:
- Leverage business intelligence through robust reporting capabilities
- Deliver customer and agent self-service portals
- Delegate tasks through ticketing and custom workflows
- Automate manual processes
- Decrease time to collect cash and speed A/R
- Integrate to homegrown & third-party platforms leveraging our Rest API
Rev.io’s legacy serving the telecommunications industry dates all the way back to 2002, and we have evolved with the fast-changing industry to remain a key partner with some of the most prominent names in the industry, including several INCOMPAS members.
The benefit of the Rev.io system is that it is applicable to a wide range of offerings and services within the wider advanced communications realm. Our clients include everything from full suite UCaaS/CCaaS providers, to VoIP, CLECs, local/regional access carriers, MVNOs, and more.
Any advanced communications provider that manages complex usage-based billing models and struggles to maintain efficient revenue growth within their current billing solution, is a solid potential client for Rev.io.
Some of our clients that are INCOMPAS Service Provider Members include:
- Spectrotel
- Fuse.Cloud
- Allied Telecom Group
- Impulse Advanced Communications
Q: What are the biggest challenges that your company faces and how is your company overcoming these challenges?
As 2021 is underway, we are laser focused on overcoming two key challenges.
The first is technical recruiting, which includes software engineers, quality assurance developers, data migration engineers, and data analytics professionals. To meet our goals for business growth, client service, and ensure that our technology is fully modern and scalable, we will need to make numerous hires in this area in 2021. To address the challenge, we are aggressive in internal recruiting, team member referral bonuses for bringing great candidates to our attention, expanding our geographic footprint with recruiting beyond Metro Atlanta, and creating a path for clear progression and development for technical staff within Rev.io.
Secondly, we remain challenged by the uncertainty of the pandemic, specifically our ability to reconvene as a team in an office while also meeting clients and prospects live. We will remain cautious in our plans to reconvene, prioritizing employee safety while still creating appropriate opportunities for collaboration. On the client and prosect side, we reply on Zoom for seamless electronic communications day-to-day, and we also host virtual events, webinars, and social touch-bases regularly.
Ultimately, we are optimistic that we can continue to grow our business and maintain a well-engaged workforce in 2021, as we look ahead to re-engagement while our economy opens back up.
Q: What are your competitive advantages; what sets you apart from other companies?
At Rev.io, we identify four key competitive advantages that separate us from other billing and customer management platforms:
First is our unique and positive culture. In 2020, 100% of employees agreed that Rev.io is a Great Place to Work. That unanimous survey recognition is a testament to the impact of our ACT TOP Values (Achieving Extraordinary Results, Caring for Employees, Clients, and the Community, Take Responsibility and Act Like an Owner, Transparent Leadership, Opportunity to Make a Positive Difference, Passion for Innovation) and the positive influence these values have on relationships, partnerships, and collaborations within our organization.
Second is our complex usage rating engine, which is designed and built specifically for communications companies. The complexities and intricacies of telecom usage rating necessitate a new billing solution at scale, and we consistently improve Rev.io’s engine to support our clients’ growth at scale.
Third is the presence of native merchant processing (Rev.io Payments). We are unique among the billing software providers serving the advanced communications industry in featuring native payments processing within the same system, streamlining clients’ financial processing experience.
Finally, we have a large and growing integration set to Rev.io, including key carriers, software integrations, switches, and other functions. We also offer a REST API to clients to build custom integrations, and work with several custom developers to enhance integrations to our system on an ongoing basis.
Q: How is the evolving communications marketplace impacting your business model?
By virtue of serving advanced communications companies for over 18 years, Rev.io has evolved with the marketplace through various waves of change. Importantly, our billing, customer management, and payments platform is not purpose-built for a singular type of communications offering. As clients evolve and expand their offerings, Rev.io is a steady partner beside them, supporting their launch of new products, entries into new markets, digital transformation efforts, and the complex management process that comes with rapid growth in the marketplace.
Q: Have you recently acquired new customers? Entered new markets? Added new services/products? If so, please provide details.
In late 2020, we announced the signing of two major new clients: INCOMPAS member Fuse.Cloud and Telesystem. For both of these major players in telecommunications, we are excited to help them optimize billing and customer management processes as they seek to continue advancing their impressive recent growth.
In 2021, we will have numerous key announcements to share on product expansions and growth in our client base. We encourage you to follow Rev.io on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook to follow our latest happenings.
Q: Describe your relationship with INCOMPAS. How long have you been a member? Why did you decide to join the association? What are you looking to gain from your INCOMPAS membership (policy advocacy, new business, networking, education, etc.)?
Rev.io has been a Marketplace Member of INCOMPAS since January 2021. While we have exhibited at past events with the association, we decided to join as a full member at recommendation of Gary Watts, CEO and Founder of Fuse.Cloud.
We have joined the organization because it is a premier group in advocating for the advanced communications industry that we are so proud to serve. Through our membership, we seek to build our connections within the industry, earn new business, keep up with news and events, and support the growth and advocacy that will help our industry stay open, innovative, and competitive.
Q: How have you benefited from INCOMPAS membership (e.g. finding strategic partners, growing sales, networking, etc.)? Please provide as many details as possible.
We have already benefited from our INCOMPAS membership in just a few weeks as Marketplace Members. The PR and Communications team helped us quickly get acquainted with all the ways we can engage with the member community and we expect this can pay dividends in helping fellow members learn more about Rev.io’s services and ultimately grow our client roster. We look forward to engaging with members virtually (via webinars and other connections) and are eager to exhibit live at The INCOMPAS Show in October.
We look forward to expanding our relationships with INCOMPAS clients and partners in 2021 and beyond. To learn more about Rev.io and to start the conversation, please contact us at marketing@rev.io.