07.01.2009 – July 1, 2009 - Toronto, Ontario - Today, just months after announcing the launch of their “Software as a Network” model, FreshBooks, the leader in online invoicing, revealed that nearly one out of five customers are now “connected”. Their network model enables small business owners to send and receive invoices with each other through their own FreshBooks accounts - and their customers are connecting in droves.
FreshBooks customers who were using the friendly and professional service to invoice clients, are now also enjoying the simple convenience of sending and receiving invoices with each other. Previously, these small business owners would have to juggle and manage incoming invoices from their contractor partners in different formats (word, excel, email, pdf). Now, they are inviting all their key contractors to send them estimates and invoices with FreshBooks so that they can receive everything in one place and in one format. The time savings and convenience are enormous.
This is particularly true for businesses that rely heavily on a large contractor network to get work done. The ability to see a contractor’s logged hours in their account, as well as the ability to receive and view all their timesheets, invoices, expenses and estimates in one place, is a major victory. Additionally, businesses have instant visibility into their network as far as who’s worked on what and access to consolidated reporting on all their contractors - another time saving and value added benefit.
"We took a risk by investing in the technology to connect our customers and the response has us all feeling pretty good about it right now. The astonishing thing is, the vast majority of FreshBooks users signed up when we did not offer this networking capability, yet one in five are now using it. We''re really excited to see our customers connect like this and enjoy the added conveniences of being able to work with each other, and their clients, on one platform. Small businesses work as a network and therefore they need to be served as a network," says Mike McDerment, CEO of FreshBooks.
On top of the added convenience and organization, FreshBooks customers now also have an entirely new level of visibility into their cash flow. The FreshBooks dashboard gives them both an instant view of what’s come in, and what’s going out while more detailed information can be accessed quickly through the FreshBooks reporting capabilities.
“[FreshBooks’ invoicing network is] brilliant, freakin’ brilliant! We’re growing and hiring lots of freelancers and we never get push back from someone when we recommend this tool - they all seem to think it’s great,” says Matthew Dunn, “Chief Explainer” of video creation company Say It Visually. “We get one place to actually manage our projects and contractors, and we have a consistent mechanism to go from contractor estimate to invoicing our customers. Thanks [FreshBooks] for making my life easy.”
FreshBooks is regarded as an innovator in SaaS thanks to their Report Card and Benchmarking Service and their Software as a Network (SaaN) approach to servicing small businesses. With their new SaaN model they are now encouraging other SaaS providers to think about how they might view their audience as a network. “Ultimately software is designed for people, and people live and work within networks. Software needs to be designed with this in mind and it’s high time software vendors wake up to this fact” according to Mike McDerment.
The company created a video demonstration and visualization of just how viral their network has become, and the types of relationships that are formed.
VIDEO (Length 2:32): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhY0jcTG6q8
To learn more about how FreshBooks is using a networking approach to its business model, please go to http://www.SoftwareAsANetwork.com.
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