Transforming SaaS Businesses with AI Native ERP

Cameron Ackbury: Thank you, Franz, for joining me today. My name is Cameron Ackbury and I'll be moderating this discussion. The purpose of our conversation is to help viewers understand how native AI ERP applications can benefit SaaS-based and AI-native organizations, specifically regarding automated subscription and usage management, cloud and AI cost controls, and SaaS business metrics.

Let's start with introductions. Franz, can you tell us about yourself?

Franz Faerber: I'm Franz Faerber, one of the founders and co-CEO of Everest. Looking at my business career, it was mainly focused on SAP for more than 25 years in different roles. I think my biggest achievement there was leading the SAP HANA team and serving as the architect delivering SAP HANA integration.

We started the journey of building a completely new ERP system, which has been the challenge of my lifetime. Having the chance to build what I've learned over 25+ years at SAP, but from scratch, has been a really exciting and challenging journey.

Cameron Ackbury: You're truly accomplished. Thank you for sharing that. 

Understanding AI-Native ERP

Cameron Ackbury: Let's begin from a CFO's perspective: What does it actually mean that an ERP is "AI native"? How does that impact automation, accuracy, and speed in finance operations?

Franz Faerber: Many companies today talk about AI and what they're doing with AI. A lot of functionality gets incorporated into systems that are essentially add-ons to existing functionality.

When you say you're truly AI native, that means AI operations and functionalities are built into the system's core. You're looking at the deep processes and functionalities that really change the game for different roles in the company.

This means helping business users do their jobs better and more independently. It means building extensions much more easily in the system. It means upgrade processes and lifecycle management become much cheaper, and you can optimize your existing processes.

It's not just one feature or a list of functionalities – it's transforming your ERP from standard software that nobody likes and everyone thinks "I have to use my ERP system" into something likable that actually helps you do your job.

Cameron Ackbury: Fantastic. 

Built for SaaS from Day One

Cameron Ackbury: Now, SaaS billing can get messy fast – subscriptions, usage, discounts, renewals. How does your system simplify this complexity without requiring custom workflows?

Franz Faerber: The key is thinking these processes through from the beginning. When you look at existing ERPs, they weren't designed with SaaS in mind because SaaS didn't exist when they were created. They had standard processes for contracts and execution that were appropriate for that time.

We did it differently. We started with the assumption that SaaS is normal – it's not the exception or something you layer on top. The whole process of being a SaaS company with SaaS products and all the associated complexities is naturally built into our offering.

Since it's natural to our system, we don't have to extend it when someone wants a new subscription model or pricing approach. It's the natural way we handle contracts, processes, and integrations. This eliminates a lot of the pain customers normally experience, like integrating with CRM systems – that's out of the box for us, making it much simpler for our customers.

Cameron Ackbury: I understand – it's a holistic approach rather than piecing together individual processes, making end users' lives much easier.

Real-Time Cloud Cost Management

Cameron Ackbury: Moving on, cloud infrastructure spend is a major line item for subscription-based organizations. How does your platform help CFOs actively monitor and control these costs in real-time, not after the fact?

Franz Faerber: Exactly as you said – cloud infrastructure is a major line item these days. When you look at software costs for companies, including other software companies, cloud costs, AI costs, and subscription costs play a much bigger role than before. In my SAP days, travel costs were a big concern. That's changed dramatically. After personnel costs, cloud costs are often the next biggest expense.

We offer a specialized cost management system where we can carefully analyze and compare costs from a financial perspective. We see many cloud cost offerings out there that focus on helping technical people optimize costs, but they're not really integrated to help financial decision-makers look at these costs or bring these financial numbers into the deal-making process.

That's what we call our cloud cost management, which we offer as part of our solution because it's becoming so critical for our customers.

Cameron Ackbury: And it's included as part of the subscription, not a separate add-on, correct?

Franz Faerber: Exactly, it's included. We don't just see the invoices coming in – we actually connect to the systems and monitor what's happening in real-time. This allows financial decision-makers to react as soon as costs are rising, just like they would with any other cost category. This was a problem in the past that we've solved in our solution.

Cameron Ackbury: Excellent. Now let's talk about scalability and growth:

Dynamic Pricing and International Expansion

Cameron Ackbury: As SaaS companies face several key challenges: evolving pricing models, launching new products, and expanding internationally. How does your platform support these changes without massive reconfiguration?

Franz Faerber: This is a crucial point for software companies. There's a clear path to expand beyond local markets, beyond single products. You have to consider which components are fixed price, per-user price, consumption-based, or usage-based. This is constantly changing.

From a pricing perspective, there isn't one single solution you'll have over time. Therefore, it's really important that dynamic pricing, internationalization, and new product launches are part of the system's core design.

Let's look at internationalization first. If you don't think about internationalization from the beginning and try to build it later, that's extremely expensive and complex.

We had the advantage that we started our company internationally from day one. We began in Germany and now operate in Brazil and the UK. Even as a small company, we're already in four locations, running our own operations using our own product. Running internationally is already challenging, so we built international capabilities from the beginning because we use it ourselves.

This is our biggest proof point that it really works and that we're truly international. This helps our customers because they can expand with us.

Cameron Ackbury: That's what we call "eating your own dog food" here in the US. Does Everest actually run its own financials on the Everest system?

Franz Faerber: Yes, we run everything on our own system. We do monthly closing in every country using our system. We handle HR, finance, procurement, and of course, cost management all on our platform.

Cameron Ackbury: Excellent.

Purpose-Built Data Architecture

Cameron Ackbury: What's different about your data model that makes it purpose-built for recurring revenue businesses versus being adapted from traditional ERP logic?

Franz Faerber: The key is that we designed it for recurring revenue from the beginning. The problem with existing systems is that when you have fundamental changes over time – and I know this from my past experience – what do you do? You have many customers already using the existing data model. How do you easily adapt to new requirements without massive upgrade processes on the customer side?

When you can design from scratch, you can design it to really fit the processes you're targeting. Everything fits the problem we're solving, which makes our lives much easier. It's built for the new world, and that's really helping us significantly.

Cameron Ackbury: Fantastic. Everyone's talking about AI these days. Can you give us a specific example where you use AI in a way that directly reduces manual finance work – like reconciliations, forecasts, or approvals?

AI in Action for Finance

Cameron Ackbury: Everyone's talking about AI these days. Can you give us a specific example where you use AI in a way that directly reduces manual finance work – like reconciliations, forecasts, or approvals?

Franz Faerber: We use AI throughout our system with many practical examples. Looking at our own processing within our company, it helps tremendously that we have OCR and document extraction everywhere. We can generate emails and responses automatically. We can generate invoices automatically and adapt them as needed. These are the foundational capabilities we provide.

We also use AI to recognize outliers and identify incorrect data. What's equally important is that when something isn't available out of the box, we provide an easy way for business users to build it themselves. If they need a forecast, they simply put a prompt into the system, they have the data at their fingertips, and they can create what they need.

This is the powerful aspect – enabling users to do what they want. We try to build as much as possible out of the box, but for the rest, business users can handle it themselves without IT support or consultants.

Cameron Ackbury: What I really appreciate hearing is that it's not only making things easier for end users, but it's also a holistic approach. As subscription-based companies expand internationally, they can automate reconciliation processes, consolidations, and I imagine currency exchanges as well.

Franz Faerber: Exactly. All these processes can be easily automated, either because we already deliver the functionality or because business users can implement it themselves.

Built to Scale from Day One

Cameron Ackbury: Speaking of growth, rapid expansion creates operational complexity. How does your system scale with high-growth SaaS companies while keeping finance teams lean and in control?

Franz Faerber: This reflects our company's history. We built the system to scale from the ground up. How did we do this? Unlike other companies, we knew from the start that we wanted to build a comprehensive ERP system.

We didn't start with one application and say, "We'll build for small companies and see if we're successful." Instead, we began by saying we're building a very serious platform for these types of applications. We're doing it for small companies, mid-sized companies, and eventually large companies as well.

The system is already there and scalable today. We don't have to make changes because we built it that way from the beginning – that's one of our major advantages.

It took us longer initially, and we invested significantly before reaching our first customer. I think it's exceptional to wait four and a half years before going to the first customer, but now we have a very solid platform for everything we need: extensibility, auditability, multi-tenancy, multi-entity, multi-currency – you name it. We can scale to any size because the architecture supports it.

Enterprise-Grade Compliance and Security

Cameron Ackbury: The best part, as we discussed in our previous panel, is that ASC 606 and IFRS 15 are very challenging regulatory requirements for revenue recognition, and you started with the hard problems first.

Enterprise CFOs demand strong compliance, auditability, and data security. What have you built into the platform to deliver that from day one?

Franz Faerber: All of these capabilities are implemented from the beginning. We're auditable by design. Here's an example of our auditability: we never delete data in our system. Instead, we use data versioning – we just create a new version. From a business user and process perspective, it's not even possible to delete data. Even when you logically delete something, it's still there in the system. This means we can always audit everything.

We have complete audit trails in place, plus our versioning concept allows you to put the system back in time. You can see the status of the system as it was weeks or months ago.

This temporal functionality and versioning are available because all data stays in the database. We can restore the system to any point in time. Therefore, we're fully prepared for compliance and auditability requirements.

We also have our live sandboxing concept, which allows us and our customers to do everything within one system. We don't have to copy the system and give it to someone for development or testing. We do everything in a single system.

This means the audit trail and audit log we maintain is comprehensive for everything in the system. You don't face security risks by going outside the system where we don't know what happens to the data. Whether you're doing development, testing, or trying new approaches, you're always staying within one system, maintaining consistency.

Cameron Ackbury: And any changes you make are migrated to the production system, correct?

Franz Faerber: Yes, exactly. Our live sandbox concept works through logical branching within the system. The changes we make in that branch can be merged back into the main system. We essentially have the development process that many people know from GitHub, but within the ERP system.

The advantage is that it's all consistent, all in the same structure, all compliant, and all auditable.

Cameron Ackbury: And it's deployed with one button.

Franz Faerber: Exactly – it's really simple and business-user ready. It's not just for hardcore developers. When you use Git through command line interfaces, who can do that besides technical experts? But with our approach, everyone can do it.

The Key Architectural Advantage

Cameron Ackbury: You've seen how legacy ERPs try to retrofit SaaS capabilities. From your perspective as CEO and co-founder, what's the one architectural decision you made that sets you apart for finance leaders?

Franz Faerber: I think the major decision was the end-to-end approach we mentioned. This is incredibly helpful because it enables us – and business users – to make changes in the system easily.

For SaaS companies specifically, business models change and pricing models evolve. You don't want to make these changes in a production system, but you want to test them with your production data – otherwise, how can you evaluate what a pricing change really means?

Our early decision to build in the live sandboxing approach really helps us now. We can simulate all processes, allow multiple pricing configurations in one system to compare them, and implement business changes much more easily, faster, and without risk – all within one system.

Cameron Ackbury: That's fantastic. 

Looking Ahead: Product Roadmap

Cameron Ackbury: Final question: Let's look ahead. What's next for Everest's product roadmap beyond core finance automation?

Franz Faerber: We're heavily investing in AI development, which is significantly accelerating our internal development capabilities. This means we're delivering much faster than our early projections this year and next year.

Looking at the applications we'll deliver: In Q3, we're launching Professional Services Automation (PSA) for service companies or service divisions. We're also delivering the first version of inventory management.

We'll also be delivering planning capabilities and quoting functionality within Everest. Beyond these new applications, we're continuously extending our current applications. We'll have major releases with many new applications that are deeply integrated and built using our development process with all the capabilities that our other applications provide.

Cameron Ackbury: Fantastic, Franz. Thank you for helping our viewers understand how native AI ERP applications can benefit SaaS-based and AI-native organizations, specifically regarding automated subscription and usage management, cloud and AI cost controls, and SaaS business metrics. Thank you for your time.

Franz Faerber: Thank you for having me.