Zuora's September 2011 Product Release Delivers Dozens of New Features to Manage Enterprise B2B Billing and Report on Key Subscription Commerce Metrics

32nd consecutive monthly product release offers Zuora’s customers a new level of innovation for the Subscription Economy not found in legacy billing or ERP applications

Redwood Shores, CA — September 29, 2011 — Zuora, the subscription commerce and billing leader, today announced immediate availability of its September ’11 release, enabling companies of all sizes to succeed in the Subscription Economy. New enhancements allow companies to manage even the most complex billing challenges often found when selling to large enterprise customers. Zuora customers also receive more tools to track key subscription commerce metrics that can be impossible to measure with legacy billing or ERP applications.

Zuroa’s 32nd consecutive monthly product release marks a pace of innovation only possible with a true multi-tenant SaaS platform. Every month, Zuora delivers new technology based on the feedback and experience of hundreds of customers who have already moved into the Subscription Economy.

“Managing the growth in orders for our web-based collaborative authoring system, Claro, was quickly becoming a problem, until we partnered with Zuora. Zuora is enabling us to manage our multiple sales channels in a flexible, cost effective and scalable platform, something traditional ERP systems just don’t offer for subscription businesses today. We’re also impressed with the rapid development cycle that has brought key features to us before we knew we needed them”, said Luke Hickey CEO of dominKnow.

“One of the main challenges with adding a subscription service was that ERP was not optimized to handle the 5X increase in billing transactions since we had to account for multiple changes to the initial orders”, said Christian Springhub, co-founder of Jimdo, the world’s leading website builder. “Upgrades and other change orders are a big part of the subscription lifecycle. Zuora, as the subscription commerce platform, was key to our success and was transformational for our company’s recent scale and international growth.”

New capabilities in Zuora’s September ’11 release include:

Enterprise B2B Billing Enhancements: In the Subscription Economy, it’s critical for companies to be able to sell to anyone, from consumers, to individuals or teams within a business, to large enterprises. In the September ’11 release, Zuora customers benefit from powerful new tools for selling to high-complexity B2B customers, including the ability to:

  • Break out subscriptions onto their own invoices or chose to group them together
  • Create hierarchies supporting parent-child relationships across companies and divisions
  • Separate the account that pays the bill from the account that uses the subscription
  • Aggregate usage charges across children accounts and roll them up to parent accounts
  • Keep track of which usage charges are tied to which children or parent accounts

Subscription Reporting and Customer-Centric Dashboards: Subscription businesses require a different set of metrics and reporting capabilities than often found in manufacturing- focused business applications. In the September ’11 release, Zuora customers have new ways to measure the health of their business, including:

  • New “Home” dashboard with key subscription metrics like total active customers, total active subscriptions, and total contracted monthly recurring revenue (MRR).
  • New reporting capabilities with the “Product” data source help track how subscription services are selling.
  • New encrypted data sources allow companies to extract and report on even the most sensitive customer and product details.

All of Zuora’s hundreds of customers automatically received this 32nd consecutive product update with no negative impact to existing configurations and customizations. This is only possible with the modern, multi-tenant SaaS architecture found in Zuora’s Z-Commerce platform.

“As more and more companies move into the Subscription Economy, their need for powerful subscription commerce and billing capabilities only increases.” said Luke Braud, VP of Products and Engineering at Zuora. “Our monthly release cycle allows us to keep pace with these evolving demands and ensure that our customers are successful.”

Additional Resources

About Zuora, Inc.

Zuora is the global leader in subscription commerce and billing, helping companies in every industry transition to the Subscription Economy. Enterprise leaders and high-growth companies alike use Zuora’s multi-tenant cloud platform to launch, scale, and monetize their subscription services. Zuora’s applications work where traditional ERP applications fail: Subscription pricing, quoting, orders, billing, payments, and renewals. Built from the ground up by SaaS industry veterans from Salesforce.com, PayPal, and Netsuite, Zuora services innovative customers like Informatica, Tata Communications, Box.net, Ning, Barrett Xplore, Ustream and Reed Business Information. To learn more about Zuora, please visit zuorainternprd.wpengine.com.

October 10, 2014