Cloud billing company leads SaaS innovation with monthly releases designed specifically around customer feedback

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. — Feb. 19, 2010 — Zuora, the subscription billing company founded by veterans from Salesforce.com and WebEx and backed by Benchmark Capital and Marc Benioff, today announced their February ’10 release. Over the last 14 months, Zuora has committed to a monthly new feature release schedule that delivers an unprecedented pace of innovation, even by SaaS standards. “Our customers know that this means they are not just subscribing to our product but to an ongoing relationship with the Zuora team.” said Tien Tzuo, CEO and Co-Founder, Zuora.

Every release is designed based on guidance from customers — world class companies like LiveOffice, Reed Business Information, InsideView, Box.net, and over 100 others. And best of all, with the SaaS model, all of the new functionality is available to customers, instantly, and fully documented in the Zuora Knowledge Center.

New Feature Facts

Zuora’s February ’10 Release includes:

Custom Roles & Permissions — this new feature allows administrators to design and assign users to custom defined roles, enabling them to control what each user can do in the system. Roles can be created, for example, for Customer Service Reps (CSR), accounting clerks, or billing operations specialists.

Auto-Renew in Advance — the new Auto-Renew in Advance feature allows companies to early invoice their customers for a new subscription term, in advance of the renewal date. Companies can use this to collect cash faster, or drive higher renewal rates.

Account Key Metrics — Zuora is now the only billing system that automatically calculates customer value in terms of monthly recurring revenue (MRR) or Contracted MRR (representing all MRR under contract, including those that take effect in the future), two metrics that standard for measuring the health of a subscription business.

Multiple Merchant Accounts or Payment Gateways — Zuora customers can now set up multiple payment gateways or merchant accounts. Each Billing Account in Zuora can be assigned to a particular payment gateway configuration, providing maximum flexibility to support things like white label/partner selling, and international payment optimization.

Support for Paymentech — In the February ’10 release, Zuora has now added support for Chase/Paymentech. With this new integration, Zuora customers can now process recurring and one-time payments through one of the largest payment processors in the U.S.

February ’10 Case Studies

Custom Roles & Permissions: Jessica Huber, Controller at LiveOffice says, “I love the additional control and security that comes with Zuora’s Custom Roles and Permissions. I can tailor the access level to the different roles on my team and enforce my policies.” Jessica uses Zuora as a full revenue sub ledger. When it came time for year-end audits, she needed to lock down sensitive financial operations, such as the ability to delete accounts or cancel posted invoices in order to prepare for an upcoming audit. With the new Custom Roles and Permissions feature, Jessica was able to create a roles specific to different members of her team, consolidating control and authority to a trusted few members of her team. In fact, Jessica was even able to create a custom role for the auditor to use while performing the audit!

Auto-Renew in Advance: Lisa Bailey, VP of Business Operations at InsideView likes to bill her customers 15 to 30 days before the end of their subscription term, which allows her sales tem to start the renewal process early. It also ensures that her customers do not have any uninterrupted service from any contract renegotiations. “Auto-Renew in Advance allows us to use billing as a tool to help grow our business by maximizing revenue, improve forecasting of cash flows and collecting cash faster.”

Account Key Metrics: For Jason Seed, CEO of Codesion (formerly CVSDude), this is huge. “Zuora’s key metrics are tailored for exactly how I measure and run my subscription business — I can tell at a glance exactly how valuable my customers are.”

Multiple Merchant Accounts or Payment Gateways: Zuora’s customers will use this capability to support white-label resellers. Payments on products sold by a partner go through a different payment gateway than those sold direct, allowing payments to be distributed to the appropriate parties. Several international customers will use a different gateway for European customers vs. U.S. customers in order to maximize the types of payments they accept and optimize processing fees and acceptance rates.

Support for Paymentech: An early user of this capability had a corporate-wide contract with Chase/Paymentech for preferred rates on processing payments. By seamlessly integrating Chase/Paymentech into Z-Payments, Zuora can now process payments through all the major payment gateways.

Supporting Resources:

• For more of Zuora’s latest features visit: our New Features Section
• For more on how InsideView uses Zuora see our Customer Portal
• LiveOffice and Beagle Research reveal Cloud Billing as a Strategy
• Zuora Knowledge Center
• Follow Zuora on Twitter
• More on CVSDude’s transformation to Codesion

Technorati Tags:

Zuora, Subscription Billing, Cloud Billing , Recurring Billing, SaaS Billing, Cloud Computing, LiveOffice, Reed Business Information, InsideView, Box.net, Codesion

About Zuora, Inc.

Zuora’s subscription billing and payments platform changes the way subscription businesses manage and sell to customers, allowing them to bring new products to market in less time, with more flexibility and less hassle. Zuora’s customers are up and running within 90 days and generally recognize 200% ROI within weeks. Zuora is built from the ground up by SaaS industry visionaries and veterans fromsalesforce.com, WebEx, Accenture, Google, eBay, Oracle and Vitria. The company is based in Redwood City, California. To learn more about Zuora, please visit zuorainternprd.wpengine.com.