Zuora Central Upgrade Further Attacks the ERP Market

June 05, 2018

New Subscription Order Management Capabilities Fuel Revenue Growth for All Companies in the Subscription Economy

SAN MATEO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Zuora, Inc. (NYSE: ZUO) the leading cloud-based subscription management platform provider, today announced at Subscribed™ a major upgrade to the Zuora Central Platform with the addition of Zuora Orders. This new upgrade leapfrogs all existing capabilities, giving subscription companies unlimited order flexibility, a new set of metrics, and complete order-to-revenue automation.

The upgraded platform will function as the system of record for Zoom Video Communications, Inc., helping the company build upon its triple-digit year-over-year revenue growth rate.

According to the Subscription Economy Index™ (SEI), Zuora’s proprietary index that tracks the growth of the Subscription Economy, subscription revenue is growing faster every year across all industries - from 13.8 percent (2012-2015) to 17.2 percent (2015-2017) and now at 22.6 percent (2017-2018). Sustaining growth is becoming harder and harder, as customers demand control of how they manage their own subscriptions, by upgrading, downgrading, changing usage, and adding users.

Insights from an upcoming SEI report include:

  • Companies that make an average of at least 1 change order per subscription grow 3 times faster than companies that don’t offer product changes
  • Giving the option for a customer to suspend and resume a subscription prevents one in six churns
  • For a typical subscription business, 70 percent of revenue comes from the existing customer base through renewals, upsells, and cross sells

“Seamlessly managing customer subscription changes is essential to continued growth. This requires businesses to have a fundamentally different order management solution that is able to handle mass volumes of complex order changes that traditional ERP systems can’t. That’s why we launched Zuora Orders,” said Zuora SVP of Product Tom Krackeler.

Cloud-based video communications company Zoom, for example, has hundreds of thousands of customers who at times need to expand or change their deployment, which is processed through Zuora Central. Before Zuora, Zoom’s finance, sales and IT teams faced challenges with supporting multi-year contracts, generating accurate order metrics, and seamlessly managing the order-to-revenue process. With their land-and-expand strategy, subscription order management is critical to Zoom’s revenue growth.

“Zoom has experienced triple-digit YoY revenue growth over the past several years. We needed a solution that could help us scale our entire business operations and deliver a personalized experience to our valued customers. Zuora has proven to be a trusted partner and a true system of record for our subscription-based business,” said Zoom CFO Kelly Steckelberg.

This Zuora Central platform upgrade makes Zuora the first and only complete subscription order-to-revenue solution on the market. Companies can rapidly acquire customers across multiple channels, seamlessly manage the entire customer lifecycle, and automate revenue recognition, in a single solution.

  • Subscription Order Flexibility: Enables teams to book multi-year expansion contracts upfront and make unlimited subscription changes
  • Order Metrics System of Record: Provides out-of-the-box change order metrics like Monthly Recurring Revenue, Churn Rate, and Net Retention all fully visualized on a configurable dashboard
  • Order-to-Revenue Automation: Aggregates comprehensive order and change order data required to recognize revenue

“The significant growth in TAM for cloud-based order management solutions - from $1.07 billion in 2018 to $3.351 billion in 20221 is due to the rise of new digital business initiatives. To meet the demands of these recurring revenue opportunities, organizations are increasing their investment in agile cloud-based solutions for subscription order management,” said MGI Research Managing Director Igor Stenmark.

Beyond the office of the CFO, IT and business operations can take advantage of the Zuora Central platform upgrade to support revenue generating business growth.

“In order to scale our business, we’ve had to master order-to-revenue automation and churn reporting. We are excited about the latest Zuora Central platform upgrade, which will enable us to control business behavior through systems, allowing sales to have the freedom to focus on growth, while we get complete and accurate revenue and churn reporting,” said Zoom Head of Operations Sunil Madan.

About Zuora, Inc.

Zuora provides the leading cloud-based subscription management platform that functions as a system of record for subscription businesses across all industries. Powering the Subscription Economy®, the Zuora platform was architected specifically for dynamic, recurring subscription business models and acts as an intelligent subscription management hub that automates and orchestrates the entire subscription order-to-cash process, including billing and revenue recognition. Zuora serves more than 900 companies around the world, including Box, Komatsu, Rogers, Schneider Electric, Xplornet and Zendesk. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, Zuora also operates offices in Atlanta, Boston, Denver, San Francisco, London, Paris, Beijing, Sydney, Chennai and Tokyo. To learn more about the Zuora platform, please visit www.zuora.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions, including but not limited to statements regarding the expected benefits of Zuora Central, Zuora’s expectations regarding companies shifting to subscription business models, and the expected growth and trends in the market for subscription businesses. Any statements that are not statements of historical fact may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from those stated or implied in forward-looking statements due to a number of factors, including but not limited to, risks detailed in the "Risk Factors" section of Zuora’s final prospectus related to the initial public offering filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on April 12, 2018, as well as other documents that Zuora may file from time to time with the SEC. The forward-looking statements in this press release are based on current expectations as of the date of this press release and Zuora undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. This press release also includes market data and certain other statistical information and estimates from industry analysts and/or market research firms. Zuora believes these third party reports to be reputable, but has not independently verified the underlying data sources, methodologies or assumptions. Information that is based on estimates, forecasts, projections, market research or similar methodologies is inherently subject to uncertainties and actual events or circumstances may differ materially from events and circumstances reflected in this information.

© 2018 Zuora, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Zuora, Subscribed, Subscription Economy, Powering the Subscription Economy, and Subscription Economy Index are trademarks or registered trademarks of Zuora, Inc. Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others. Nothing in this press release should be construed to the contrary, or as an approval, endorsement or sponsorship by any third parties of Zuora, Inc. or any aspect of this press release.

SOURCE: Zuora Financial

1 MGI Research, Agile Monetization Platforms (AMP) - Total Addressable Market (TAM) Forecast 2018-2022. Published December 9, 2017

Zuora, Inc.
Jayne Scuncio, 408-348-1087
press@zuora.com

Source: Zuora, Inc.