About
Unify (the newest member of the Atos family) is a leading brand in global communications software and services, providing integrated communications solutions for ~75% of the Fortune Global 500.
Industry:
01
The Challenge
Unify needed the right business model to support very flexible per user/per month billing processes for multiple Circuit subscription packages.
02
The Solution
Unify wanted to alter its business model for Circuit to get into the public cloud business, not just put a “subscription face” on their existing technology platform.
03
The Benefits
Zuora helped Unify to go straight to proof of concept, and quickly see value, leading to a growing base of 500,000 paying users on Circuit, its subscription offering.
Unify “had so many processes and people that were already optimized for the historical business model but…didn’t have a business model or processes that were optimized for this new cloud subscription model.” – Paul Cunningham, CMO of Unify
The Unify brand carries with it a strong heritage of product reliability, innovation, open standards, and security. As one of the world’s leading communications software and services brands, it provides integrated communications solutions for approximately 75% of the Fortune Global 500.
Circuit is a solution for cloud-based enterprise collaboration and communication. It unifies multiple communication channels, interfaces, and applications into one easy-to-use platform that allows teams to engage in rich and meaningful conversations. With increasingly remote and mobile workforces, teams need to keep engaged and productive. Unify saw an opportunity to develop technology to address these needs.
For Circuit, Unify needed an order to cash system that supports multiple service packages, monthly billing, ecommerce, and free trials to enable a “land and expand” strategy and move the installed base from hardware maintenance contracts to more flexible consumption, based on changing business needs.
Unify “had so many processes and people that were already optimized for the historical business model but…didn’t have a business model or processes that were optimized for this new cloud subscription model,” according to Cunningham, Chief Marketing Officer at Unify.
So they researched the market for order-to-cash solutions to support their SaaS business model and found Zuora: enterprise-ready and flexible. As Philipp Bohn, VP of Circuit noted, “It was clear that Zuora would be the perfect partner for us.”
With Zuora, Unify was “able to circumvent changing the existing way of doing things and go straight to proof of concept,” according to Cunningham.
Unify now uses Zuora Insights for real-time subscriber reporting and Zuora Central to manage the entire order-to-cash process for Circuit. Says Bohn, “We wouldn’t have been able to migrate to a monthly billing cycle and subscription business without Zuora. There was no other option for us.”
Circuit has been on the market for about for four years now, and has been growing rapidly. Says Cunningham, “The SaaS trend is a global phenomenon. And we’re using our positioning with Circuit and what we’re doing with the subscription model to help us penetrate new and emerging markets much more quickly.”
In short, according to Cunningham, “We believe that Zuora will allow us to put that subscription face on more and more of our solutions. As other parts of our technology model evolve and become more cloud-based, and software-based, subscriptions will absolutely be at the heart of what we’re doing.”
