About
Hive is the British leader in smart home technology, having installed more than 660,000 smart home hubs.
Industry:
01
The Challenge
Hive needed an order-to-cash platform to help them launch a suite of services (a shift from their existing product-led solution).
02
The Solution
The Zuora platform enabled Hive to launch and monetize a full suite of services and provides the operational support they need to expand their service offerings.
03
The Benefits
Since partnering with Zuora, Hive has successfully launched and monetized a full suite of services for monthly subscribers.
“The market as it stands is about buying equipment. [Hive] is much more about service provisioning and the constituent parts of our subscription plan. The device is one part of it, but the software and services are the other part.” – Roy Vella, Centrica Connected Home VP
Hive (whose British parent is the multinational utility Centrica, which also owns British Gas) is a leader in smart home technology, making daily life easier by creating the perfect smart home with their family of smart products and services. The Hive smart home brand has installed more than 660,000 smart home hubs and sold more than one million products.
Hive launched their first product, a smart thermostat, back in 2013. In the beginning, they offered a simple product-led solution. But since then, they have gone on to create and launch a full suite of services—including heating, security cameras, sensors, lights, and smart plugs—offered to subscribers for a monthly fee. This has led to a 70% surge in their customer numbers.
As Jo Cox, Commercial Director of Hive, notes: “It’s less about products, and much more about the services that they can enable.” Towards this end, Hive needed a platform that could support a growing number of connected services.
In 2017, Centrica launched its first Hive subscription service, the Hive Welcome Home which bundles Hive products and services for just £5.99 per month in the UK. The Zuora platform gives Hive the ability to offer their customers a self-service system. From one single reliable, secure platform, customers can self-manage sign-ups, upgrades, and downgrades. Giving subscribers the ability to scale up their connected services—when and how they need to—improves the subscriber experience and creates greater opportunities for increased ARPU (Average Monthly Revenue per User/Customer).
Zuora’s flexible pricing and packaging capabilities support pricing experimentation and enable Hive to quickly and accurate recognize revenue for their new “bolted on” services model. New services can be launched quickly without any delay caused by pricing and packaging system obstacles.
Running on Zuora Central also allows Hive to automate their financial processes and bill runs, which frees them up to focus on their core business: expanding their innovative suite of services.
As Hive continues to branch out from the UK market and grow internationally, Zuora’s scalable solution supports a wide variety of global payments across global markets. With Zuora Central as its hub, Hive is succeeding in building a holistic experience that is set to transform the way consumers live their everyday lives.
