How Zuora powers accurate, auditable usage monetization

And assuming everything is going OK. It looks like it, looks like it. Right. I can see the header slide and looks like we’re good. Perfect. All right, we’ll give it maybe another 1 minute to 90 seconds as folks are joining.

As folks are joining, be sure to let us know where you’re joining from in the chat. And we’ll get started here in about another 20-30 seconds. All right, welcome to our live demo webinar. Today we’ll be talking about how Zora supports accurate and audible usage monetization for finance teams. Uh, before we get too far into this presentation, I did just want to flash up our forward looking statement. Essentially, um, I won’t read this word to word, but. A precautionary measure our legal team

asks that we share on all of our presentations, essentially, since we will be directly discussing our product today, there’s a possibility we may discuss future releases, timing of those releases, descriptions of certain features in the product, and this is just a disclaimer disclaimer that those elements could be subject to change, um, again, read through this at your own pace, but yeah, just say forward looking statement legal disclosure before we hop into everything today. Um, again, before we jump right into the content itself, introduce yourself in the chat tab on that right-hand side. Um, keep in mind there are a few resources linked in the docs tab. Um, if you have any questions, we are going to reserve a few minutes at the end for Q&A, but as we go throughout this presentation today, you

can use the Q&A tab for any questions. Um, also, if anything you see today, uh, prompts more interest, if you want to speak to Um, a member of our team, there’s a talk to an expert first button that’ll get you set up with one of our team members, and we’re we’re happy to follow up with you. Um, and last, this is a recorded session, so about one hour after the session wraps, you’ll be able to use this exact same link, um, and check out the recording. So first and foremost, a few introductions. My name’s Katherine. I’m on our product marketing team here at Zora. I’m specifically looking all at over our staff solutions for finance, and I am joined today by Greg Gam. Greg, would you like

to quickly introduce yourself? Hi Gregory Gam. Uh, I’m principal customer solutions engineer for Zora. I’ve been here, uh, almost about, what is it, 10 years at this point. Uh, so I’ve worked with a lot of customers doing a lot of different things. Excited to talk to you about that usage today. Excellent. So, uh, really quick short agenda that we have today, um, I’ll quickly overview a lot of the challenges that we see finance in particular face, um, as they are, um, introducing usage, incorporating usage models or maybe even are already facing if you currently have a usage model in place, um, Greg will take us through that live demonstration that you all came here to see, and again we’ll reserve um a few minutes at the end for any questions.

So jumping right into it, uh, first challenge here is that manual usage contracts and uh need more and more resources to support different commercial models. So modern finance and accounting teams are more and more being to encourage these strategic partners to sales teams. But when deal desk billing ops are met with contracts and orders that include non-standard elements like negotiated usage volume discounts, special usage tiering. Customized usage drawdown models that leads to a lot of manual work on a deal by deal basis that really isn’t scalable for those teams. Um, one reason finance teams often say no to certain usage structures is because of that amount of complex manual work involved with that. Um, for example, there is a company I was speaking with and they wanted to,

you know, they had this uh credit drawdown model and all of that was completely tracked in spreadsheets for them. Um, that created a ton of work, uh, for the, the teams managing that. But it, but it was great for their sales teams. It was great for Go to Market, it was able to unlock huge amounts of ACV up front for these deals, but their finance team could really only support some of the largest accounts there since it was manual to track each and every drawdown, each and every true up across those balances for every single period. Um, second, all around customer experience, um, usage actually presents a couple of unique challenges around the visibility and consistency of usage data. So customers really expect a level of transparency when it comes to how they’re built and invoiced,

but for usage data that’s Likely living in a completely separate system owned by a team outside of the core of finance order to cash org, you know, usage data might not be consistent with what customers see in the product platform. It might be delayed, inaccurate, or not calculated correctly and that creates this discrepancy on invoices. And if customers don’t have the exact same usage data that they’re built on. That they see in their product platform, they could also be met with things like surprise overages, unexpected charges, ultimately leading to disputes that finance teams are left reconciling. Again, thinking back to, you know, one of the companies that we work with, uh, their CFO and finance teams were quite literally having to take several days out of each billing period just to go and have conversations with

customers to justify charges on invoices. So that means they had to go and hunt down their data engineering partners to get an explanation on how usage was calculated, priced, all to keep customers happy, happy, and sometimes that meant actually having to write off some of those challenges leading to revenue leakage. Um, moving into the third set, uh, usage data just adds another set of data to reconcile across finance teams, and from an internal perspective, this is really similar to that visibility and consistency of data that customers are challenged with as well. This can cause a mismatch between the actual usage of its, how they were booked and the contract structure they were booked on. How they were billed and then ultimately how the revenue is recognized. So for many usage models that B2B companies leverage, think

like prepaid usage, credit rate based structures, volume discounts that compound over time or committed usage models, they introduced this concept of needing to track. Unbuilt usage. So that means the usage events themselves have gotten rated and applied to a customer’s account, but aren’t always invoiced and billed immediately. Think for something like a volume discount or a tiering structure, that means having to have sort of the granular backwards looking detail to be able to apply the correct price to it. And all of this trickles through to revenue accounting. For example, depending on a company’s particular revenue policies, a prepaid model would require an accounting team to validate the unbuilt usage versus the actual delivery of the service. So when the usage was actually

used by the customer in order to reconcile Revre timing for that, and that usually requires things like accrual assumptions and revenue to ups that are really hard to manage when that data is spread across disparate systems. Um, luckily we get to preview how Zora handles a lot of these challenges today. So with that, we’ll jump right into our demo, and I’m going to actually pass it over to Greg to kick us off and take us through how Zora not only solves this for, uh, you know, those finance teams, but across the entire quote to revenue process. So Greg, I will kick over the screen sharing to you. Great, thank you. Uh, while I load this in, when we’re starting to talk about uh how you’re going to manage and do a lot of these, a

lot of these different elements, um, Zora looks at this from a holistic standpoint, going all the way from end to end. So starting with uh something like uh Salesforce using Salesforce as CPQ engine allowing your sales team to quickly and easily add that quote into that into the system and then pass that automatically down to the down to the system, not having to require manual intervention. We’ll then talk about how that lives in billing, how you’re able to upload usage, pull that information in. And then finally, how does that get to revenue? Automatically as we put in these orders, we’re able to push that over to revenue and then as we’re pushing in, pushing in the usage, that’s also passing into revenue automatically for you, making this a seamless end to end solution,

pulling that all the way across. So starting off with that, that sales viewpoint in terms of where we’re, where we’re looking at, these are the guys that are gonna have to do this every single day. They’re, they’re bringing in that revenue and pulling that in. So they’re going to be living in Salesforce, uh, pulling all this information in, I could take a look at it. Zora enhances the information that’s available. within that account level by providing you a number of different things. Uh, the standard opportunities are there, everything’s there, but we’re adding in some, some information about what subscriptions are currently there. When is that next renewal happening? What is the current TCV and what do we need to do about that? Any, any particular products and charges and details about what information is available there? Um, but then also including things about like the the current invoices.

Is there an outstanding balance? Do I need to, do I have the salesperson, need to hunt down that customer so I can get my commission paid and make sure that all that’s all that’s being handled? And the finance team appreciates that cause they always love getting that cash in the door and making sure that that’s lightened up for them. As well, so I can see the different things, see all the different elements of the account quickly and easily, and then if I’m looking at a particular opportunity, I can see that I’ve, I’ve actually gone through this process with our unique quoting system, being able to pull that, pull that in. I’m able to see the different elements of what that quote is, what the prices that we quoted, and then I’m also able to uh bring in a new opportunity into the, into this uh. Into the into the selection, uh, being able to do additional upsells, changes and things and

different elements like that. So jumping into a particular quote, Zora is going to uniquely go out and grab the information directly from billing as to where you are in that account, meaning that you have full omnichannel capabilities, being able to actually make changes, be it a self-service system, be it directly within the Zora UI and that. Information is going to pull up into the system allowing me to be able to go and edit any kind of any existing subscription with the current prices. So being able to amend, renew, or cancel if that’s the unfortunate situation. But let’s talk about the happy part where we’re going to do an upsell and be able to do that as, as, as an amendment to the contract. So right now it’s going through, it’s pulling in the exact information that is directly associated with that account. You can see that I’ve got a whole bunch

of, I’ve got a bunch of details here. Uh Uh, in terms of being able to, so I’ve got general details in terms of what this effective date is, uh, what we’re actually doing in terms of the existing subscription. You see that it’s pre-filling in, pre-filling in the dates from, from before. I can actually have a start date for when this thing is. I’m going to submit and uh when I do this quote and I finally sell this deal, I’m gonna submit an order that’s gonna make a change effective of that date, allowing me to be able to adapt and change. You see that I can see the existing products that are there. I understand what, I understand what’s going in. I’m gonna just quickly browse for say a new, one of our new SAS products. They want to add it, they want to add in our, our new annual plan. So I’m able to

add that selection in there and you can see that I, I’ve got the still have the original information, but then I I now effective June 25th and I’m gonna co-term all of this information all together easily. And I’m also getting metrics around what this is, what the impact is directly to that contract. I’m increasing, I’m increasing my, my charge and I’m having an increase in that part of it. easily being able to take that, add that information in there. And now I’m going to actually create a, create that quote and send it out to the customer being able so that they can see the different elements of what the deal is, how everything is being, how everything is being set up and configured, and making sure that everything is, is

looking good before we send that into Zora. So you can see that I’ve got the I have the general details on what’s going through. I do have the ability to be able to make sure that I’m approving this particular, this particular quote. Uh, going through the salesforce approval process. So if there are certain conditions around discounting and I need to escalate, I can quickly and easily do that, make sure that that’s applying to our policies, uh, within the company, and you can see that I’m providing a ton of different metrics around what’s going to happen because this is an upsell and this is a change to the subscription. I’m seeing delta metrics. If I was, if I was doing this as a new quote, I would be seeing the main, the main metrics associated with it, but I’m also able to see. Uh, very easily what I’m at, what, what the original contract was, but then

also what is the, what are the changes to the existing contract. Now, finally here, I’ve got the, I’ve got this sendazorba. This is directly for your rev ops team, your deal desk, to be able to make sure that once I’ve, once I’ve approved this quote, I’ve sent out the contract, received it back from the customer, and it’s signed. That I’m going through a final review, and this is designed to make sure that all the contract terms and, and what we actually sent through on the quote are matching up in terms of what the deal is and how the different elements are and then being able to actually send that, send that off uh directly into that system and this then pushes that change down into down in down into our system. Uh being able to pull that in. And Greg, for the folks watching,

you not only made a change to the subscription, but you’re also combining elements of, you know, a recurring component. I think I saw a prepaid component on there all within, you know, a single quote, a single order that’s all being sent to Zora that sort of encapsulates this and makes sure that data flow is seamless down to the finance team, is that right? Exactly. So, so in this, in this particular the original quote was a prepaid drawdown where I’m going to charge them $1000 a month. I’ve got some 22 elements of this where I’ve got my API that’s going to draw down at 1010 cents per use, um, and we’ll see how that feeds into that usage component. Also, there is prepaid storage that’s gonna charge 150 per uh per gigabyte, and you can see all of those details directly within that model. We’re adding in a

new reoccurring uh reoccurring charge. It’s gonna be 550. Uh, per per annual, being able to blend the mix of uh monthly and annual charges quickly and easily on that, on that particular, uh, on that, uh, through on that deal. So that’s gonna, this, this then pushes forward and is able to go through into Zora. Um, allowing me to be able to see everything that’s going on in terms of that account. So this is our, this is our view inside of Zora. So I’m taking a look at that account. I maybe able to see all the general information. I can see my current contract at MRR. I can see if there are any changes. Um, I can see billing and payment information. I can also see, see the general information around that subscription. So the idea around that first version of that subscription

where we were, anything, any orders that were creating it. So this is, this is the thing driving that subscription and the, the key parts of this. You can also see the general transactions that are going on. So you can see that I’ve had the the the flat fee that was being charged for the $1000 and I must have had some kind of overage situation going in because I now have an additional $64 here um that will get into. As we’re as we’re going through and reviewing that subscription, but I can also see payments, credit memos, debit memos, getting a holistic view of where that customer is. When we’re taking a look at the subscription itself, I’m able to see the different elements of that subscription. Um, being able to see the general terms, think of it, uh, these are your contractual terms,

this is the term, this is when, when everything’s expiring. Your payment information in terms of where that’s going through. You can see that we’re pulling down quote information and deal and information directly from Salesforce, allowing us to be able to see the different information that’s available. Also, as, as we are generating subscription history changes, think of the subscription a lot like a contract. We’re gonna have some changes. They’re going, those changes are gonna impact directly into the, into the different solutions and I’m able to see that through that history view here. Additionally, we have a couple of different elements here. So this plus sign says this is the actual payment charge. So that $1000 a month we’re going to charge for that prepaid drawdown to be established. And then I’ve got two different charges that are going to draw down on that particular charge

separately at different rates, allowing me to be able to do a number of different elements. Within that prepaid balance each month, I’m able to see the actual things that are going the different elements that are going on in terms of that charge and what’s drawing down so quickly and easily being able to see every single aspect of what’s going on and be able to justify that to the customer. So I can see the transactional information that caused that overage balance to be able to happen. And I could see the trend going through that they, they went in overage on the, in the first month. They were below below utilization in the, in the second month and they went above again in the 3rd month. And that’s driving a lot of the information in terms of what’s, what’s actually viewable on that invoice. So I can see that information and summarize,

summarize that information on that invoice, being able to push that through. Directly as part of that prepaid, that prepaid API went over in terms of that amount, I can see the full charge and everything that’s going through with that. Additionally, I could see that that that invoice actually got paid, so the customer was happy and, and, and sufficient. And if I’m looking at the account, if I want to get into the details of exactly what that, what that transactional usage is, I can see the usage that’s there, but also when I’m looking at the subscription, I can see anything that’s still, that’s still remaining to be billed. So being in that unbuilt condition. Um, so they yet hasn’t been put on an invoice, but these are things that are going, that, that are potentially going to be charged in the, in the future.

You can see that currently in our current period this month, I’ve got an outstanding, I’ve got an outstanding balance that’s gonna be $514. I can put threshold notifications. On this, I can send out emails. I can send out notifications to our sales team. They’re going into overages this many times. This is where they are. Have the customer prepared to either pay that bill and make sure that that that bill’s going to be acceptable to them, or maybe they want to increase the service and do an upsell and be able to push that forward. Um, and that really kind of drives the whole element of making sure that we’re automating this process all along, making it freshless, allowing you to communicate, uh, quickly and efficiently, efficiently with the customer along the way so that there’s no surprises, there’s no, no drawback, there’s

no fighting, fighting over that particular invoice. And all, and of course all of this pushes over into that revenue product, making sure that we’re actually pulling each and every, every parts of this element directly into the system. So when I’m looking at revenue, and this is, this is the revenue side of Zora, pulling that stuff in, but one of the big highlights here is that is our closed process dashboard. We’re giving you the highlights in that summary analysis of exactly where you stand in terms of that particular, uh, in terms of operations, in terms of your finance views, making sure that each each particular element there is available, um, knowing where you are, knowing if there are any outliers. You can also take a look at the trend analysis here. This is going to give you a view of where you stand

in terms of any particular changes, things that have, things that have changed, what your revenue recognition plans are, see if there’s something that you need to take a look at, uh, review, pull all of that in. And then of course all of this is available and and being pushed directly from billing as those events happen. So we have this staging environment, we have this staging event where we’re gonna pull each of these events in once a, you know, once a day automatically, but you can see that I’ve got that initial sales order from, from cloudstream and then I’ve got the invoicing information directly available and I’m not having to enter this in. This is Being pushed automatically as a seamless transaction all the way from beginning to end. So we’ve shown you the capabilities to be able to go from Salesforce into

billing, into, into revenue, making sure that we’re holding and managing all of that information and pushing that information across, making sure that all this is seamless from end to end. Um, so, I think one of the last aspects I think that we need to, that we should probably talk about is, is really specifically around, you know, how does usage get into the system. I think one of the, one of the, one of the big elements, and this is part of, part of some of the, some of the struggles that people have is that a lot of this lives on spreadsheets or they’re pulling data raw data out of their systems and being able to do some of the, some of the challenges that we have in, in. Accumulating that data and making sure that that’s processed through. So within our usage tables, we allow you to be

able to pull in various sources of data, customize it directly to your, to your particular needs, and make sure that everything is, everything is as appropriate for what you, what you’re looking to do as, as part of this, uh, program. We have a couple of different ways to bring this, this usage in. I can bring this in using uh. I can bring this in using, uh, you know, some kind of API script. So if I’m using, say, for example, I’m using Postman scripts to be able to demonstrate this out, I can send in, uh, send in a particular uh particular usage, pulling that stuff in, that’s a quick way, that’s a quick and easy way to directly integrate that with your systems. It is a little bit more complicated and you need some kind of metering and transformation

capabilities. We do have, we do have within our system, we have a mediation platform that allows you to be able to directly set up additional meters, bring information in from, say your say from say. Your streaming APIs from an S3 bucket, being able to pull this thing in. This is stuff that all of your, your technology teams are gonna really love. This is the stuff that we, that we like to push forward. So being able to actually map out the particular data so that you’re not having to conform to any particular standards or different elements. We can pull in different, different elements, send things to a usage record, also send things back out to your reporting systems, pushing that back out. So this really is a holistic end to end solution that allows you to be able to do some pretty

powerful things in terms of all of that information. And that really kind of summarizes a lot of the, a lot of the things that we do to be able to go from beginning to end within, within that usage scenarios. And I can pop the screen share back up. Yeah. So Greg, thanks, thanks for taking us through that. And it seems like, you know, we, we touched on quite a few topics there in terms of CPQ to billing and revenue, you know, those are places where finance teams usually live and thinking back towards, um, you know, all of our capabilities around usage ingestion, providing these two different options like one with an upload via

API if that data is already prepared for billing or two, our, our mediation platform and. The the value for finance teams really with that mediation platform is the fact that all those transformations are living within Zora. You’re no longer having to, you know, swivel chair to your engineering team to understand how something was calculated or worry about having to get the data into the right format to upload into Zora. So being able to provide, you know, both options on the table for um finance teams to be able to have accurate usage that they’re ingesting into the platform, um, really feels like a value here. Yeah, exactly, yeah, and, and it does provide transactional audibility from all the way from beginning to end. You can see the raw data that was pushed in to be able to make sure that that’s pushing down into down into that solution to really

provide you that, that single source of truth that scale, um, and making sure that that’s, that’s happening and, and it’s repeatable events. So you’re cre you’re taking some, you can take even high volume. High level, high levels of data aggregate that down into uh usage elements directly that feeding into billing, making sure that that’s passing through directly into revenue recognition, being able to have my unbilled position, being able to see where I am at any time during the month. This is continuous rating, this is continuous uh revenue recognition. Yeah, and, and to, to bring it to life for folks on the kind of summarizing everything that we just saw, you know, being able to quote in CPQ and being able to take all of those combination

of recurring charges, the typical staff services, the prepaid drawdown, the usage-based charges, have that all consolidated into a single quote, into a single order that a sales rep can not only negotiate with us. Customer, but also it’s the exact same information that they’re being billed on the orders getting seamlessly sent into Zora for billing, being able to rate those usage charges accurately aligned, the exact contract terms that were quoted with the specific charges that were on the order. We saw how usage was ingested again, the two options that we outlined were completely feeding Zora raw event. Data into our mediation platform or having the option of uh sending us directly meter data for billing purposes, billing and rating purposes and then

tying it all together through revenue recognition and having sort of that red thread throughout the entire quote to revenue process um is just a huge value to have that single source of truth for finance teams. Um, as we’re working with the last few minutes here, uh, I’ll open it up for Q&A if there’s any questions. Again, there’s a Q&A tab in the, uh, right-hand panel that you’ll see there, um, or if you want to throw it in the message tab, uh, we’ll hang on for the next few minutes if uh you have any questions. And of course, Greg, any, any closing thoughts or remarks from you? I, I think that the, the power of this system to be able to really truly

automate every single part of the solution is part of the keys here. And, and that we, we support within our own CPQ the capability to be able to do a number of different charge models that are, that are out of the box for us. So doing that prepaid drawdown, doing some kind of minimum commit, being able to have all those different pieces pulled together, being able to do different, different cadences where I have monthly, quarterly, uh, annual all mixed together within the same, same solution. Um, is really powerful as you’re trying to drive your product solutions and decide how you’re going to want to grow your company in the future. Yeah, just managing all that change at scale, all the change, you know, I think increasingly sales teams are wanting to negotiate these, these different

usage deals, slice and dice it different ways, upsell customers if, you know, if, if there is a downsell, you can keep that continuity throughout the entire quote cash process and and and have that in an automated fashion. As well, so it’s low touch for finance teams, so they can partner with sales more in terms of, you know, the, the 10% of the most complex deal structures and, and have the bandwidth to be able to support, you know, more complex deals rather than being bogged down with just the, uh, the operational aspects of the day to day. All right, I don’t believe we have any questions coming through. Again, this recording will be available about an hour after uh we end this here. Again, some resources in that docs tab,

um, and as always, if you are looking for a follow up here, there’s that talk to an expert button. Um, really appreciate everyone joining us today, uh, and enjoy the rest of your day. Thanks a lot, Greg. All right, thank you. How do I