BillingPlatform, a startup that’s aiming to transform the way companies can charge for their products and services, has hired a new chief executive officer to lead its war on legacy billing providers.

In addition, the company has landed $4 million in funding from venture capitalist firm Columbia Capital. The cash will be topped up by additional $14 million over the next 18 months, the company said.

The new CEO is Dennis Wall (pictured), who has been promoted from the chief revenue officer role he assumed in January. Wall was previously a co-founder of the global cloud advisory and technology services firm Cloud Sherpas LLC, which was acquired by Accenture Plc. in 2015.

BillingPlatform likes to call itself an “agile monetization” specialist, and its main offering is a quote-to-cash software platform that enables more flexible billing options for enterprises. Quote-to-cash is a term used to describe processes such as product or service selection, pricing, quoting, contracting, invoicing, payment checking and contract renewal. BillingPlatform’s offering is rivaled by similar platforms from Aria Systems Inc. and Zuora Inc.

The company said agile monetization is becoming increasingly popular among some of the more dynamic movers and shakers in the enterprise. For example, Netflix Inc. uses quote-to-cash to offer customers a range of pricing options based on different features they use, such as image resolution and the number of supported screens. BillingPlatform also cited a recent study from MGI Research that shows the agile monetization market will grow from $8.9 billion in 2016 to $36.75 billion by 2020.

“Simply put, consumers have more options than ever when it comes to whom they buy their products from and how they consume those products, putting pressure on companies to be more flexible in their pricing,” Wall said in a statement. “The most successful companies going forward will recognize this trend and adopt agile monetization platforms that allow for a high degree of configurability, scalability and integration with complementary systems.”

Looking ahead, BillingPlatform said the new funding will be used to further its product development and to boost its sales, marketing and support efforts.

Image: BillingPlatform