Day 2 of Subscribed San Francisco 2017 was kicked off by David Gee, CMO of Zuora, welcoming a massive crowd and sharing some of Zuora’s recent successes including:
– Our 100th release
– Averaging $5B invoice volume each and every quarter
– 28,000 accounting periods closed
– 5.5 million data points in our Insights product
– Our recent acquisition of Leeyo to provide a comprehensive rev rec solution
– Worldwide expansion with 35%+ of our customers currently existing outside of the U.S.
– Our first industry analyst summit with Gartner, Forrester, IDC, Ventana Research, Constellation Research, MGI, and Beagle Research Group
– New board members: Ken Goldman and Magdalena Yesil
– And the numerous company, team, and individual awards that Zuora has piled up this year
After indulging ourselves a bit with this public pat on the back, Zuora CEO Tien Tzuo took the stage to share some incredibly inspirational transformation stories from Caterpillar, GE, and Ford — and some incredibly adorable pictures of puppies (totally not gratuitous!). Stay tuned for the replay!
In our on-going quest for business freedom, Tien then announced the launch of Zuora Central, a new hub that orchestrates the entire quote-to-cash process for dynamic subscription businesses. (Read more about that announcement here).
The opening keynote was followed by a Disruptor Panel moderated by David Gee with Nutanix, MJ Freeway, and Inspirator. The theme underlined by this panel was that disruption isn’t just for large, industrial companies; it’s happening every single day across all industries.
After a delicious lunch break, the crowd scattered here and there to attend their breakout sessions of choice across four tracks: Enterprise Transformation, Finance, Technology, and Growth. Industry leaders from Crunchbase, MJ Freeway, Slack, DataBricks, New Relic and more shared their insights on a range of topics from How to Achieve Super-Grower Status with Strategic Pricing & Packaging to Turning Customer Data Into Winning Subscriber Experiences, Transitioning to ASC 606 and IFRS 15 with RevPro, the Power of Payment Versatility and more.
Here are just a few of the many highlights from today’s killer content:
“Remember when you had to try hard not to miss your favorite TV show and then you forgot to set your DVR? The old world sucked! Thankfully we don’t live in that world anymore. Now we live in a world of freedom! Freedom from products, freedom from obsolescence. We are free from barriers of time and location. Now we can get what we want, when we want it. On a beach on a plane. Freedom from one size fits all!” – Tien Tzuo, CEO Zuora
“For us subscriptions are pretty significant because it keeps us honest. We have to earn our customers’ business every year, versus selling a perpetual license the old school way. It also keeps customers tethered to the company on a more regular basis.” – Sunil Potti, Chief Product and Development Officer, Nutanix
“One of the biggest things we’ve noted in the market: the old way of growing strictly through acquisition is dead” – Patrick Campbell CEO & Founder, Price Intelligently
“If you’re going to give something away for free, think hard about the value you’re giving to that user and the value you’re getting back — and be very deliberate about that.” Neal Patel Head of BD and Sales, Crunchbase
“Companies want to adopt what their customers want. They also need to focus on the bottom line if they ever want to be a public company. That bottom line are the users you can focus on to land and expand.” – Hatim Shafique, CIO Databricks.
“Stay tuned in to your customers when they ask you for a faster force and then have smart people on your team who can figure out what that means. Pay attention to what your competitors are doing. When they start imitating you 6 months after the thing you were doing, you are leading the disruptive cycle.” – Amy Poinsett, Cofounder and CEO, MJ Freeway
“We use behavior, funnel metrics and pick what behaviours we want the team to pay attention to. You need to train your entire team. The tech is easy to solve; the gap is actually training the rest of the organization.” – Morgan Norman, CMO, DialPad
“Data is becoming more important now. The traditional systems work for workflow perspective, but the part missing from the tech stack is analyzing the data.” – Sunil Madan, Head of Business Ops and IT at Zoom
“When you’re stable, why rock the boat? But now we have a compelling reason to want to upgrade. The new order functionality. We’re very excited about this feature that is going to improve our implementation and our process dramatically. “ – Jennifer Cruz, IT Senior Business Systems Analyst, Zuora
“Consumer demand is going to drive what you’ll be implementing in terms of payment solutions.” – Jim Cho, Executive Director Business Development, JP Morgan Chase
“Being able to see into your customer lifecycle and predict when they’re going to churn or when they’re due for an upgrade gives your business the predictability it needs to grow.” – Gregory Gamp, Senior Sales Engineer, Zuora
“Customers will undeniably move to payment methods they trust and understand with business relationships that mirror these qualities.”- Robert Whiteside, Technology Executive, Go Cardless
“ASC 606 and preparing for a new accounting standards is the #1 priority for CFOs in 2017.” – Kathy Pearson, Director Technical Accounting, Zuora RevPro
“Going international is nuances, not only compliance, but also currencies, SKUs. If you don’t have Zuora you will not get adoption. Zuora helps companies go International.” – David Frechette, CRO, Gloo
See you tomorrow for the third and final day of Subscribed San Francisco 2017 featuring our Power UP Networking breakfast, our product keynote, and finishing with our closing session with IDEO and Fender!