As Pinecone rapidly scaled, the team found it challenging to rely on their in-house billing solution to support a nuanced multi-product billing structure.  With an upcoming product launch, they needed a single source of truth to provide the teams with accurate data and continue to scale with future billing requirements.

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Orb provides the Pinecone team with a single source of truth and the flexibility to maintain a flexible billing structure to stay ahead of the market. With automated invoicing, reliable data for its finance team, and an API-based product, Pinecone uses Orb to support sophisticated multi-product usage-based pricing for its customers.

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• Pinecone needed a more sophisticated billing solution to support its multifaceted billing structure.
• They implemented Orb in just a couple of months, ensuring the platform’s accuracy before finalizing the rollout. 
• Orb provides accurate, accessible data for the entire team, helping them make more informed business decisions and stay ahead of the rapidly evolving market with billing flexibility.

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Moving from an in-house build to a new solution

Pinecone’s original billing system was built in-house, not supporting multi-product billing and complex metering. In some cases, the team still had to calculate invoices manually and the system didn’t allow for more sophisticated features, like add-ons, discounts, or custom plans. With dozens of plans configured differently, this made managing plans difficult for the team. Billing and usage were a black box, and every team saw different data, meaning engineering, customer success, and finance each saw a different picture of billing and customer data.

The team’s real need for a new billing solution emerged when the company was planning the initial product launch of their serverless infrastructure. They needed a solution that would consolidate all costs into a single source of truth, provide accurate data, automate invoicing, and help them stay nimble on feature requirements to stay ahead of the market. Pinecone chose Orb because of its export features, easy-to-use API, and ability to act as a single source of truth for usage and billing. 

Focus on accuracy for a rapid and smooth implementation

After an initial test period to ensure the data in Orb matched that in their existing system, they compared invoices across the two for a month, finally making the full transition to Orb. The entire process took just three months. 

Elevating billing for scalable growth

The team at Pinecone now uses Orb as its source of truth for all usage data and to automate invoices. From an engineering perspective, using Orb saved Pinecone from having to hire a team to build a new in-house solution. 

With Orb, cross-functional team members have visibility into customer data—everyone can see the same information in one place. This visibility, coupled with reporting accuracy and the right level of granularity, allows the team to regularly present the best data to executive leadership. This information sharing helps everyone understand the business’ health and make informed decisions with customer data at the forefront. 

Since launching Orb, Pinecone can experiment with and launch new products while trusting in the accuracy of the data as they make changes. Given the company’s growth and expansion into more enterprise accounts, their focus is on being best in class, which their billing must reflect. With Orb, they can trust that billing is accurate and that the customer’s experience is seamless as the company grows.

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