Asana
Case Study
“Zuora Billing and Revenue have been the indispensable financial backbone that empowered Asana’s transition from PLG to enterprise sales, unlocking complex monetization and scaling our financial operations for global growth.”
— Sid Sanghvi, Head of Finance Business Applications, Asana
Asana is a leading work management platform focused on enabling human + AI coordination. Operating in the Collaborative Work Management tools industry, Asana provides web and mobile platforms that help teams organize, track, and manage their work through project management, task assignment, communication, reporting, and goal tracking capabilities. The company has evolved into a multiproduct organization with significant investments in AI innovations like AI Studio and Smart Workflow Gallery.
As Asana made a strategic pivot from pure product-led growth (PLG) to a hybrid enterprise sales motion, their existing billing infrastructure became a critical bottleneck. The legacy system, originally designed for simple credit card-based PLG transactions, couldn’t handle the complexities of multi-year enterprise contracts, ramp pricing, consumption-based AI offerings, and diverse payment methods demanded by large organizations.
Asana implemented Zuora Billing and Revenue to create a unified, scalable platform capable of supporting both their high-volume PLG motion and increasingly sophisticated enterprise deals. The solution enabled seamless management of mixed seat-based and consumption-based models while ensuring compliance with complex revenue recognition standards.
– Accelerated time-to-market: Increased new product rate plans from ~10-15 annually to 30+ with the ability to now launch in weeks vs. months
– Enhanced operational efficiency: Reduced audit burden on finance team by 20-25%, enabling strategic focus
– Increased Productivity: Significantly increased productivity of Revenue and Billing Operations team through automation
– Improved billing accuracy: Automated the generation of complex invoices, eliminating manual errors, reducing disputes, and ensuring data integrity at scale
– Strengthened compliance: Improved automated revenue recognition, reducing audit fees
– Increased pricing agility: Rapidly deployed new pricing models for AI consumption offerings vs. months-long manual processes
– Global expansion readiness: Support for multi-country multi-currency, multiple payment methods including Credit Cards, SEPA, Direct Debits, etc. for enterprise clients
“Zuora’s ability to seamlessly blend seat-based and consumption-based billing models, alongside complex multi-year ramps and diverse global payment methods, is truly essential. It’s purpose-built for the complexities of a modern subscription business, giving us the technical capability to monetize our innovations at speed.”
When Growth Outpaces Infrastructure
The subscription economy has witnessed countless companies struggle with the transition from product-led growth to enterprise sales. For Asana, this evolution represented both their greatest opportunity and most complex operational challenge, impacting multiple dimensions of its Order-to-Cash (O2C) process. Their previous billing system, had served them well in the PLG era but became a significant constraint as enterprise complexity increased. “We were essentially trying to fit square pegs into round holes,” Sanghvi reflects. “Combining seat-based and consumption-based charges on a single invoice for enterprise customers was a nightmare.”
The manual processes required for complex enterprise deals created several critical bottlenecks. Multi-year contracts with tiers and ramps demanded extensive manual configuration and tracking. Enterprise customers required specific payment methods beyond credit cards, yet Asana’s existing system primarily supported card-based transactions.
Revenue recognition posed another significant challenge. The complexities of standalone selling price (SSP), allocations, and compliance standards for both seat-based and usage-based models created enormous manual burdens for the finance team. The situation became acute when incorrect bookings of multi-year deals led to data quality issues.
Perhaps most critically, the lack of agility in pricing and packaging hindered Asana’s ability to innovate. “I remember the days we used to manage our pricing and packaging on spreadsheets,” Sanghvi recalls. “It would take us months to really get to the market.” Before Zuora, Asana could realistically only launch 1-2 significant new product plans or pricing models per quarter, with each launch taking 2-3 months on average. In the rapidly evolving AI landscape, this lack of agility could mean the difference between market leadership and obsolescence.
“Pricing flexibility has become a competitive differentiator, especially in rapidly evolving markets like AI. If you’re doing pricing the old way through spreadsheets, it will take months to get to the market and you’ll be left behind.”
— Sid Sanghvi, Head of Finance Business Applications, Asana
Building Enterprise-Grade Financial Infrastructure
Asana’s implementation of Zuora Billing and Revenue represented a fundamental transformation of their financial operations infrastructure. The platform’s ability to seamlessly handle hybrid business models was crucial, as Sanghvi emphasizes, “You cannot ignore your PLG motion, just because you want to pivot to sales-led growth.”
The implementation addressed multiple critical areas simultaneously. For billing operations, Zuora automated the complex calculations required for multi-year contracts with ramp pricing, volume discounts, and mixed seat-based and consumption-based offerings. The platform’s native support for diverse payment methods enabled Asana to serve global enterprise clients who demanded ACH, SEPA, and wire transfer options.
Revenue recognition automation through Zuora Revenue proved transformative for compliance and operational efficiency. The platform automatically handled SSP allocations for multi-element contracts, processed contract modifications, and ensured ASC 606 compliance, eliminating the manual spreadsheet-based processes that had constrained the finance team.
The CRM integration provided sales teams with real-time access to pricing data and subscription details, dramatically reducing quote generation time and improving accuracy. “Sales reps can now create accurate quotes faster and close deals more efficiently,” Sanghvi notes.
“Before Zuora, our finance teams were constantly buried in manual tasks: managing complex contracts, reconciling disparate data, correcting billing errors. The automation Zuora brought has liberated them to focus on strategic analysis and optimization. We’ve seen our automated workflow tasks double.”
— Sid Sanghvi, Head of Finance Business Applications, Asana
Operational Excellence Enabling Strategic Growth
The impact of Zuora’s implementation has been transformative across multiple business dimensions. Operationally, Asana has achieved significant efficiency gains while reducing manual errors and rework. The automation has significantly increased their Billing and Revenue teams productivity enabling the team to do more even with significantly increased transaction volume. The finance team, previously consumed by reactive operational tasks, can now focus on strategic initiatives that drive business growth.
From a product innovation perspective, Asana has dramatically accelerated their ability to bring new offerings to market. The platform now supports launching 30+ new product rate plans annually compared to the previous 10-15 per year, with time-to-market reduced from 2-3 months to just weeks. This agility has been particularly crucial for their AI Studio offerings, where pricing models evolve rapidly.
Audit efficiency has seen remarkable improvements, with the overall audit burden on the finance team reduced by approximately 20-25%. Automated revenue controls have enabled a shift from manual process audits to more efficient system-based audits, providing a stronger foundation for negotiating annual audit fees and achieving long-term cost savings. Looking ahead, “Zuora isn’t just a billing or revenue system; it’s a critical enabler for Asana’s future. As we plan multi-org expansion into new global markets and explore even more innovative monetization models, Zuora provides the flexible, reliable foundation that ensures we can scale efficiently without compromising financial control or compliance.”
“Zuora is the strategic investment that enables growth rather than constraining it. It transforms your finance team from a reactive cost center into a proactive business enabler, allowing you to innovate with confidence and scale globally.”
— Sid Sanghvi, Head of Finance Business Applications, Asana
