AI-powered collections in Zuora for recurring revenue

Perfect. Um, well, let’s get, let’s get started. Before I, I jump in, just wanted to put up a precautionary message that our legal team always asks us to do. Um, I’m not gonna read this word for word, but, uh, really just a forward-looking statement that everything that you’re seeing here, um, is functionality that we are coming out with and just making sure that, um, everybody’s just aware. So I’m gonna leave this just for a, a few seconds. (sniffs) Awesome. All right, well, let’s, let’s get started. Um, as we have seen a lot of shifts in the market, uh, there are

a lot of uncertainties, but one thing that is certain that we have heard from CFOs is they’re, they’re focusing on cash. Cash is being prioritized. Cash flow efficiency is being prioritized, uh, more so even over revenue growth. And if you think about the previous transactional model, or the previous collections landscape, it’s really been about an invoice, a customer, and trying to get, you know, an 80 cent on a dollar and counting that as a win. And with the recurring revenue model that you are all very familiar with, it’s not so much about just a one-time transaction. It’s

about a customer that will have multiple invoices, and it’s about increasing their overall customer lifetime value. So when we think about the previous model, where you had traditional collections tool with no really true insight into the customer experience, you’re really just sort of working off of invoices, uh, collections really being on an island which is siloed away from a rest of the org, there’s really no true way to learn about customers’ past behavior. And what that really leads to is missed, missed goals, missed revenue,

um, a disjointed customer experience, missed signals, and so on. So it’s clear that the tools and the methodology that worked in the past does not really quite work now in this environment, especially when you’re in a recurring revenue model. And some of the challenges that we have heard that customers really face is the lack of visibility into the full customer lifecycle. So you’ve got ton of systems that you may be working within, whether that’s a CRM system, you’ve got maybe a renewal or a cross-sell, up-sell opportunity coming up. There is also billing. There is emails going out, and then there is also payment. So there’s a, a

lot of different things going on, but there’s not a holistic view of the customer. Uh, a second challenge is, really, you’re trying to work with customer-facing teams, but on th- being on the collections side, you’re not really sure what is going on. So sales may be excited about a renewal, like I was talking about, or a up-sell opportunity, and the collections team is talking about and concerned about how there are late invoices on this account. Uh, they may be thinking about shutting off service or just doing some escalations. So you could see how that is a disjointed experience, where a salesperson is very excited to go talk about a renewal, but we have collections team which is concerned

about this account. So it leads to this sort of disjointed experience for the customer, and it could actually hurt the customer relationship. I’m sure, uh, this is something that resonates with many of you, and this is something that I hear on my customer calls daily. And last one is really just that one-time payment mindset that’s missing those, those patterns, those predictions that you can get. So keeping all that in mind, not being able to have any sort of forecast and really doing everything manually in different systems, uh, creates a, a lot of pain for, for the customers. So, uh, what we have done is brought Zuora Collections, uh, into the Zuora stack, which is really

reimagining the way that Collections works, and it’s, it’s keeping the modern businesses, the recurring model, and the customer relationships in mind. So we have Collections with context, giving you a full customer 360, focusing on the customer relationship, uh, being able to see that full picture, so everything that’s going on with the customer, uh, whether it’s putting information into different platforms, uh, doing so seemingly, so that means putting information, um, in Salesforce or tagging your sales teams in Slack, for example, so really having that full-picture view, um, and really bringing AI into the platform as well, so looking at, uh,

cash forecasting, uh, making that a AI-based prediction, having health scores, and so on. So the AI is there to, uh, help give you those predictions. Now, for the demo itself, um, I, we’re going to be looking at two key personas. The first one is going to be a collections manager. That’s what we’ll take a look at first, and then we’ll pivot into what we’ll say is a collections analyst or an agent. Uh, the collections manager is more so focused on looking at the…… overall strategy of the collections desk, team performance, focus on just bringing about operational efficiency. And the collection analyst is more so on that

day-to-day execution of collections activities, uh, making sure that they’re responding to any sort of customer inquiries and getting faster payment resolution. So, focusing on the collections manager first, we’ll see the analytics that the collections manager has at hand, along with the, that AI forecasting that I was talking about. We’ll pivot into AR aging and seeing what that report looks like in Zuora Collections. Again, this is something that, uh, customers say they’re putting together in various different platforms. So, what that looks like directly in Zuora Collections, and then looking at the automations and workflows on how the collections manager can help make the help desk or the collections desk

more efficient, more productive, and just really more strategic. So, I’m going to pivot over directly into the demo here. Again, I am in here as a collections manager, and the first thing I see here is a real-time dashboard, uh, that’s centralized all in one place, giving me a holistic view of the colleng- collections landscape. This is data that’s coming in from, let’s say, Zuora Billing, that’s flowing in here seamlessly, um, and it’s giving me the most up-to-date information to work with. So, I can see that mission-critical KPI, uh, such as outstanding receivables, DSO, uh, any sort of overdue balances.

This is easy to filter onto, so if I wanted to go into certain regions or business units, um, or different subsidiaries that I may be working with, I’m able to slice and dice into that data very easily. And going further down, there are customizable aging buckets that I can visualize my data in as well. So, I’ve got aging invoices, I can click and see what makes up this 120-plus category, uh, and really understand what are the accounts behind it, what is behind that data. So, all of these dashboards that I’m seeing, all of these insights that I’m seeing, I can click into it and get, understand what actually makes up and what’s behind that at a granular level.

There is also analytics available in the sense where we have that DSO that’s being… excuse me, the cash flow forecast that’s being predicted. Uh, of course, all of what I’m showing you is demo data, so, uh, some of the numbers may be a little different than obviously what you would see in a production environment. But essentially, with the, um, cash flow forecast, I can see what the actual payments were as well as the predicted cash flow. So, this is going to use a few different criteria in the back to be able to give us that number through AI. So, it’s taking a look at your customers’ past behaviors, their patterns,

which customers pay late. So, if you’ve got invoices for September, um, it’s going to be able to predict, okay, well, s- these customers pay late, these customers pay on time, these customers don’t pay at all, uh, to be able to give you a accurate projection. Uh, this is super helpful for FP&A, for CFOs, uh, to have something like this in their back pocket so they’re not, uh, doing this manually or the teams are not doing this manually. As well as just seeing, um, what’s been collected, what’s not been collected. Especially if you’re managing a larger team, it is really helpful to see, uh, what’s happening in terms of the team’s performance. So, if you’ve got a few people that are doing this, then you’re able to

see which accounts they’re working with, how many, uh, be able to understand very easily at a glance, um, maybe who’s got a lot going on versus people that may be a little bit behind on target, but overall gives you an insight into your, um, team’s performance. The next thing I wanted to go into outside of just analytics is that AR aging report. So, really being able to understand what is happening at a account level. So, you can easily go ahead and configure this and change the columns that are here and even export it out. But I can see this

AI health score that’s there, that we have, uh, some customers that are at a four, so of course, the higher the, the health score, uh, the better their behavior has been. The lower the health score means that, you know, this is tagged as a, at a risky account, maybe they’re not paying, they have a ton of disputes. So, it gives you a quick glance, uh, about your customers, as well as being able to see it, um, bucketed into different, um, aging buckets and understanding when you reached out to them last, maybe, uh, what the last activity was, so you can see that an email was sent out and they actually opened it. So, it gives you really good insight in here, especially if,

um, maybe you’re sending out emails and you’re not even sure if somebody’s receiving it or if somebody’s even opening it. Um, you know, this gives you, uh, that visibility, so you know that somebody’s actually looking at your emails, the dunning emails that are going out. The next thing, uh, I want to cover is the automations that are in place. So, for example, you can create different customer segmentation.So if you would like to divide up your customers into different segments using various attributes, um, I know this is something that if you’re using Zoho Billing today, for example, uh, you’re not able to do. So if you would like to create segments for, let’s say this is a higher risk/higher value customer,

um, and I’ve created this segment with total sales of over 50K and total invoice count to three. Any, any customer that falls in that is considered high risk/high value for me, versus, um, high value/low risk. So you can use these attributes to create different segments. And what that allows, uh, collections managers and teams to do is create strategies, because I want to reach out to my high value/high risk customers differently than my low value/low risk customers. They’re going to be… One group might be higher touch than other groups. So I can then use that to decide what that outreach cadence is.

And this is exactly where you can easily configure what that strategy should be. So for example, we are looking at an invoice follow-up here, and we can easily decide how to set that up. So I want to send an email out ten days before the remi- the due date, five days before, and then every five day af- five days after. These email templates are super easy to set up too. So as a collections manager, I can just choose which template. I can make sure that I’m sending it to the primary contact on the account. And if I wanted to start CCing eventually maybe the account manager or the CSM on the account, I can go ahead and CC

that person in without having to manually type in who that is, since we can integrate with Salesforce. And of course, from the Zoho side, uh, we were able to bring in all that relevant information directly into Collections, as well as any attachments. So we’ve got the invoice file. Uh, this could also have an account statement itself that’s associated with this, so the customers are receiving that directly in their inbox with all the information, uh, that they need. So that decreases amount of time that they follow up with you to get the information that they need, uh, as well as just taking some of that workload off the teams, um, so they can focus on more strategic things. And you don’t have to add more headcount as you continue to scale

and grow your business. Outside of those, um, dunning notifications that go out, there can also be tasks that can be created that are more internal. So first phone call assigned to, let’s say, a collections owner, whoever is assigned to this account on the collections team. Uh, you could get this assigned out to somebody, let’s say, in Salesforce even. So if you want to create this for the CSM or the account manager in Salesforce, uh, with integration, it will create that task directly in their workspace so they don’t have to come into Zoho Collections. Lastly, I wanted to say that, let’s say if the customer responds or they create a promise to pay or they commit to paying,

once that is opened, it will automatically pause the dunning on that. And that again creates a much better customer experience so they’re not getting emails on something that they’ve already committed to paying next month. So there, it’ll pause that, that outreach for them. And this is just how, um, you’re able to configure the outreach. You’re able to set it for different customers and really think about how you would like to differentiate the strategy. Perfect. Um, so just to quickly summarize everything that we saw from the collections

manager’s perspective is looking at an AI-driven cash flow visibility where you’re able to get real-time insight into receivables and forecasts, makes you, um, more confident and helps you make business decisions faster. Uh, really being optimized in your strategy and building that team efficiency, so automating those dunning strategies and workflows, uh, allowing your teams to manage more accounts without having to continuously adding more people as you see growth in your business. Uh, risk management governance, uh, really being able to see those high risk accounts early. You’re able to get those insights with the AI health score, for example, and seeing who,

uh, generally pays, who doesn’t pay, uh, who’s late on the payment, et cetera. Uh, and the goal is to help you reduce the write-off, but also with this, um, automated dunning, um, be able to improve the, the DSO. Now, the next thing that I wanted to focus on is, what does it look like from a collector’s perspective, uh, somebody that’s doing the collection activities on the daily. These are the teams that you have that are working with customers directly. So what sort of visibility do they have, um, as collectors? What does the account page actually look like, and what does that collaboration look like for them? So I will pivot over into that.

Uh, let’s say I’m in here now as more of a collector. My role is really around my tasks, so this is what I can see as I go into the dashboard as a collector is, uh, how much I’ve collected so far this month. It’s a new month, so I haven’t collected anything yet, but I have these tasks that are available. So I can see some responses that I have from my customers. I can see different tasks that are assigned to me. There are some disputes that are going on. If there were any payments, I’d be able to see those here that were done recently. So all of that is available for me in one place, and I can go down and also see, uh, any sort of follow-up stats, any sort of, uh, disputes, anything that’s been escalated. So I work directly from this

one place.Now, I’ll go into, uh, this customer email that came in, and I can see it’s from my account, Top Circuit Tech. I can see which invoice this is regarding. Again, with the integration, uh, with Zuora Billing, that is seamlessly flowing directly into Zuora Collections, whether it’s payment information, credit memos, invoices, et cetera, um, I have all that information coming directly in here. Uh, and there’s also this inbox that’s available to me, so I can see any sort of collections-related inquiries directly in here, so I don’t have to go into a separate inbox for that. I can answer it directly from here. Now let me hop into the Top Circuit

account page and show you what that looks like. Um, I can get that insight, everything about the customer, that full customer 360, all from one place. So I can see the AI health score for this customer, which is at a four, means that most of their payments are done on date. This is, uh, a customer that has a good, uh, behavior pattern in terms of their payments and disputes. I can see their DSO is 41 days, uh, net credit terms, outstanding balance. On the right here, I can see which segment they’re a part of, so they’re considered a high, high value customer. I’ve got a collection status that’s there. Uh, last contact information. So giving me that full insight

at a snapshot. Uh, and then I can also see the invoices at the bottom here. I could even click on it here and, and open it up. Uh, any payments, credit memos. Again, having all of this information in one place saves me a lot of time and effort than I’m going into spreadsheets, going into other tools where this information may be kept. Now, let’s say if I wanted to, uh… That maybe there is an invoice that’s dated that I need help, uh, reaching out on. I can go ahead and send, you know, we’ve got the dunning notifications that are going out to them, but also maybe I want to create a task and assign it to, uh, my sales rep.

(keyboard clicking) I can assign that task owner. Let’s say, um, I’m going to put it to my sales rep with a date. I can choose an invoice that’s in question here and assign that out. What this will do is allow me to collaborate with this person easily, um, in their own workspace, so they can get that task in Salesforce. They can get that task notification in Slack. Uh, really depends on which system they work out of, and it, they don’t have to come into Zuora Collections to see that. So for example, this is the one that I assigned. Uh, it gave me a notification in Slack, and I can also

see that task assigned to me in Salesforce. And as a sales rep in Salesforce, very easy with an integration to see information about this account. So let’s say Top Circuit Tech here had a, a renewal that was coming up or a cross-sell or just a conversation that the account manager was involved in. So they can see that information very easily as to what has been happening and those tasks that they have assigned, they’re able to see that as well. And we can communicate directly on this task. So when I go back to my collections

page, I can see all of those activities and the back and forth that happens on a task. So we’re all able to communicate with each other in our own workspace, directly from our workspace without having to, um, worry about any sort of long email threads and missed context. Perfect. Um, so let’s also say that I wanted to create a promise to pay here. So I reached out to the salesperson, and the salesperson mentioned that, uh, they’re gonna pay on the 15th, so can create a promise to pay

here directly. We’re talking about this first invoice, pulls up the amount, pulls up ev- the invoice balance. So even if they had paid partially or, um, that, that, that payment would have been applied so I can get that information and say the customer has, um, agreed to pay by the 15th. And I can even set a reminder, so once they, um, are past that date, I can maybe then reach out and see what’s going on. So this helps me manage all that information, all that context, uh, all in one place. And this is helpful for collections managers,

as they see, uh, any sort of escalations or dated invoices, they’re able to come in at a customer account level and see that full, uh, full log and audit log of the activities that have happened. All right. Um, so just to quickly summarize everything that we saw from a collector’s perspective is…Really around boosting the productivity, being able to reduce some of those manual tasks, and having that full customer 360 view so they’re not having

to go in different places to get the contacts, it’s available on that customer account page. The emails are available there as well, so everything is there in one place, and really streamline that collaboration so they can reach out to customer-facing teams in the spaces that they work out of, uh, and they don’t have to have this learning curve of trying to get into collections. They’re able to get that information in Slack and Salesforce, um, which is where they spend most of their time. Now as I’m going through, um, just a reminder to please use the Q&A to type in any questions that you’re seeing here, and we’ll make sure that we will answer as many as we can.

Okay. Gonna start going through those, and one thing that I also wanted to call out is, it’s not, uh, just what I showed you. There’s also proof in the numbers. So we get asked a lot, is what are some of the- the success that we have seen? Um, generally we have seen a big reduction in time to collect, a reduction in bad debts, obviously the- the, uh, collection task automation has been huge, those efficiency gains, and the accuracy in cash flow forecasting. We also have our customer Vimeo that signed on, and they have been able to see a ton of

gain from, um, Zuora Collections as well. Another thing is, we have implemented our own product ourselves, and, um, our teams have really seen a ton of gains from that too, so we are huge on, you know, believer of our own products, so, uh, we really try to use it ourselves and our team loves it. They’ve seen a ton of- of automations and a reduction, uh, in DSO so far, even just by a couple of days. It’s been, um, hugely helpful there as well. Okay, I’m gonna go through and, um, try to answer some of the questions that I’m seeing.

Um, there’s a question around functionality to build customized assignment strategies, uh, based on geo for example. Yes. So, you can assign customers to different collections, agents, or analysts, based off of, uh, some of the criteria, so yes, you can- you can assign that under automations very easily. Uh, yes, these, uh, d- can the dunning collections emails be set up automatically? Yes. These will go automatically, uh, once you set up that cadence, it’s sort of a self, uh, functioning engine. Uh, does Zuora communicate with CRM?

Yes. So I showed you Salesforce for example. Um, all the information such as the- who the sales rep is on the account, all those fields, uh, that comes in from Salesforce, so yes. Uh, let’s see. Can data come in from other tools? Yes. I do want to call out, um, if you were not using Zuora Billing for example, uh, we can integrate with any other tool that’s there to bring in the relevant information, um, that’s necessary, so it- you do not have to be using Zuora Billing for that. Looking through, anything else? Um, is Zuora… Yep, looks like Zuora Collections connected to Zuora Revenue

or independent? It is on the S- Zuora platform, so, uh, whether you’re using Revenue, whether you’re using Billing, um, any information that needs to come to Zuora Collections can flow in- in seamlessly, so it is a part of the Zuora stack. See if there was anything else. If I am missing, um, anything, please, please click on talk to an expert button for more information, and we will also make sure that, um, if there’s anything that’s unanswered, we get with the team to- to answer that. Um, yeah, so there’s a- another good question there

around the previous legacy collections product. Um, that was a different module, and I know that it only served certain functionality, just like the dunning and billing only gives you so much functionality, so with this, uh, we’re happy to talk more in detail, sort of one off on, um, what that- that looks like, and we’re happy to help you with any sort of workflows that, uh, you may already have and getting them over into, um, Zuora Collections. See what else there is.

And please keep sharing your questions in here. And one more thing that I, when we talked about the automations, uh, let me jump back over in here, is assigning the collections territory. So, when I jump in, I can say, uh, customers that are this size and are based in this region, please assign to Z-This customer, or sorry, this, um, analyst. So that’s how easy it is to create that segmentation, and anything in here, there were some questions around how easy it is to set up certain views and do certain things. The, the platform is very easily configurable, so you are able to, um,

make changes with very easy point and click, uh, methodology instead of having to have some sort of a, um, admin, for example, to make those changes for you. Even for the email templates that somebody had asked about, uh, it’s super easy to make changes to those templates as well, so if I go back and click on it, you can see that it has placeholders. It has invoice ID information. So very easy to manage those templates. You can see we have them available in different languages, because, of course, we want to be able to help you serve your global audience, so you can have them be in different languages and, um, be able to pick and choose between the different templates as they’re available.

Okay. Um, awesome. One thing that, um, I wanted to call out that we are very excited about is actually what we’re launching soon, which is Zuora Cash Applications. So to really kind of help complete that AR subledger and redefining what cash application looks like, uh, for the era of total monetization and modern businesses is really helping you, um, use AI to, when you get those payments via, via ACH, et cetera, matching them to the invoices and using AI to do that, and speeding up that cash flow. So that’s something that’s coming up next as well that we are

super excited to, um, talk about and, of course, we’re happy to give you more information as we release it. Uh, we’re in the Q&A part. We’ve kind of been going through and answering some questions, but if you would like, uh, more information, uh, if you would like to talk to someone, if you would like a follow-up meeting, uh, please use the, the poll, and that will give us, uh, the answer on if you would like that. So if you would like more information, please fill out the poll. If you go on your messages and your chat tab, you’ll be able to see a, a poll in there, uh, so if you give us that insight, we will take action accordingly.

Awesome. Um, we are just a little bit away from the session being over. I will hang out here for just a little bit more for any other questions that may be coming in that I can answer. Otherwise, I am so glad you could join us and a little bit of time of your morning with us, uh, learning more about Zuora Collections, and, um, super glad that, that you could join. Uh, and just so you know, the recording, uh, will be available to you about an hour after this is done. There is a doc section as well, uh, that has some great information in there too. Uh, to answer another question, yes,

uh, we can leverage APIs to connect with other tools, uh, including ERP. And there is an option to segment, uh, by products that are on the subscription so we can, if you have different product sets, you would like to bring in product as a field into Zuora Collections, you are able to do that, yes. Perfect. Thank you again so much for, for joining today. We’re so glad you were able to join, spend some time with us this morning. I’ll keep hanging out here for just a little bit longer for any other questions as they trickle through.

Thank you. Glad you enjoyed it. Thanks so much everybody.