Three Ways The Subscribed Strategy Group Can Help Your Company

By Amy Konary, VP of Business Innovation and Chair of the Subscribed Institute

After nearly two decades as an industry analyst, I joined Zuora in 2017 to work with our customers on their business model evolution. Soon after I joined, we launched the Subscribed Institute, a dedicated think tank of Subscription Economy executives focused on the challenges and opportunities of the subscription business model. The Institute collaborates with academics, industry leaders, and independent consultants to conduct both qualitative and quantitative research on business model transformation and key growth drivers in the Subscription Economy. With nearly a thousand executive members from more than 500 subscription companies across the world, the institute has generated original research including frameworks and benchmarks of subscription success.

Now, as the indisputable leader of the Subscription Economy, Zuora has the privilege of working with some of the most innovative companies in the world as well as some of the most successful subscription companies today. Best practices gleaned from our work with over a thousand subscription companies around the world help our customers make critical business decisions, adopt new strategies, and measure their success at regular intervals.

Over the last two years, as we engaged with subscription business leaders across the world at our Global Institute Executive Summits and other events, they also asked us to apply the best practices and benchmarks of the Institute to their own specific business challenges and opportunities and to to help them navigate the ongoing complexities of the Subscription Economy.

The Subscribed Strategy Group (SSG) has been created to work directly with individual companies and help them apply the learnings gleaned from the Subscribed Institute’s research to their specific business needs. The SSG works one-on-one with executives from our customer organizations to chart a strategic path towards subscription success by identifying and removing business obstacles, building internal alignment, and establishing routes to success.

Three Ways the SSG can help your company:

Throughout my career, I have seen first-hand how success in the Subscription Economy requires strategy, cultural, process, and systems transformation.

1) Strategy: Having a north-star strategy is crucial to keep your subscription company on course. What is the customer outcome that your subscription model enables? How does a relationship with your company deliver ongoing value? Personalized experiences? Anytime, anywhere access? Created specifically to help our customers chart a strategic path towards subscription success, the SGG will focus on helping companies hone in on their core objectives and strategize how to get there quickly with subscription services informed by best practices. We will help you identify roadblocks and build alignment to overcome business complexity.

2) Process: Running a subscription business requires a certain amount of reinvention. You have to give up the old ways and bring in new processes and systems to operate your business. The biggest challenge—and greatest opportunity—lies in designing and embracing processes that support the new model. The ever-evolving nature of the subscription business model requires agility at every turn, and every part of the organization needs to be in lock-step to provide the best possible customer experience.

The SSG will work with your organization to help you focus on the roles and functions that most often require change, and to develop an understanding of how they should change, and support a comprehensive approach to change management.

3) Culture: Successful subscription companies are those that have created what we call a “this is possible”, relationship-centric culture centered around a common mission to provide remarkable customer experiences. For companies that were born in the product economy, this requires your employees to step outside their comfort zones and learn what they don’t know, collaborate across silos, share information, and be willing to put the customer at the center of every decision that they make. The SSG will guide you on the primary tenets of subscription culture including subscription values, a focus on customer success, and the role of trust.

Success in the Subscription Economy also requires systems transformation, which Zuora technology helps our customers achieve. While the SSG does not advise companies on technology, business best practices in the Subscription Economy– such as pricing and packaging iteration– must be enabled by systems.

I cannot stress enough the wealth and breadth of experience and data that the SSG team can bring to your organization. As the global lead for the SSG, I am supported by Frank Ernst, VP of Strategy, SSG in North America, and Michael Mansard, Principal, Business Transformation in Europe & EMEA Chair of the Subscribed Institute. The leadership team has a combined experience of over 60 years working with the software technology, media, and manufacturing sectors.

If you’d like to hear more about how we can collaborate, please reach out to us at ssg@zuora.com.

I’d love to hear from you.

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