Zuora
Case Study
“There’s no way we cannot be using the same technology that we have successfully implemented across our customer base. We had to walk the walk and become a lighthouse account ourselves.”
– Todd E. McElhatton, Chief Financial Officer, Zuora
Zuora is a software company that provides the monetization technology and expertise companies need to build, run, and grow a modern business. The purpose-built Zuora Monetization Suite offers flexible software solutions spanning pricing and packaging, billing, payments, and revenue accounting — all designed to help companies around the world evolve monetization strategies rooted in recurring relationships. Founded in 2007, we are headquartered in Silicon Valley and currently operate in the Americas, EMEA and APAC.
Zuora faced a long revenue close process of at least 15 days, which often resulted in team members working long hours and weekends. The Revenue Accounting team also experienced increasing costs due to manual processes and audit fees. In addition, a decade of accumulated technical debt made our system less scalable while making it difficult to obtain real-time numbers for forecasts and adjustments. The old system also led to an increasing need for customization, which complicated commercial deals and slowed down the go-to-market motion.
Zuora’s Revenue Accounting team embarked on a journey to become the first to upgrade their implementation with the powerful real-time data capabilities available in Zuora Revenue. Zuora was able to streamline billing and revenue operations to ensure data flows seamlessly across systems, leading to an optimized quote-to-revenue process. The improved system also removed the need for customizations and enabled us to quickly adapt to new business models and pricing strategies.
Zuora’s Revenue Accounting team surpassed original efficiency goals and reduced close time to 4 days—over a 70% improvement. Manual work and associated errors were minimized, helping reduce audit risk and costs, which also lowered employee stress and improved job satisfaction resulting in no employee turnover in 2023. The upgraded implementation enabled real-time data sharing between Zuora Billing and Revenue, which equates to support for more contract structures, as well as enhanced support for complex revenue streams. With a best-in-class revenue subledger, Zuora now had added real-time visibility and improved forecasting for more variable revenue models.
“As a Chief Accounting Officer, I want to be able to say ‘yes’ to things that make sense commercially, so we have to be able to handle new business models, products, and offerings. With Zuora Revenue, we’re able to be more agile to support the business so we can evolve with customer demands and go to market quickly.”
Modernizing Zuora’s Revenue Accounting
For all SaaS companies, the ability to streamline, innovate, and scale revenue accounting operations is not just advantageous—it’s essential. That’s why in 2017 Zuora acquired Leeyo RevPro, to create a one-stop shop for automating financial operations.
Zuora’s Revenue Accounting team, recognizing the importance of a future-proof strategy, embarked on a journey to become the first to upgrade their implementation with the powerful real-time data capabilities available in Zuora Revenue.
With an upcoming IPO and the advent of ASC 606, this modern revenue subledger—offering increased automation, greater controls, and more accurate reporting and forecasting—would be pivotal to our future success.
More than just upgrading our systems—this endeavor was about transforming our approach to revenue management to support our dynamic business models and evolving demands.
The results? Our Revenue Accounting team was able to streamline operations, improve efficiency, and enhance visibility and support for more variable, complex revenue streams—a win for the entire business.
A major improvement with Zuora Revenue was the decrease in manual work and associated errors, which helped to reduce audit risks and costs. “While most costs continue to increase in the current inflationary environment, we were able to decrease our overall audit fees by 7% working with our auditors. This is the first time in my career that I’ve seen a reduction in audit fees,” says Matt Dobson, Chief Accounting Officer, Zuora.
By upgrading our Zuora Revenue implementation, the Revenue Accounting team was able to streamline operations to support more business models and contract structures, which was crucial for adapting to new pricing and packaging strategies, all while adding real-time visibility and improved forecasting
Out-of-the box improvements
- Easily adopted variable considerations
- Redesigned account subscription structure
- Restructured product catalog and implemented pre-calculated list prices
- Improved support for ramp deals
- Added support for non-standard deals on the fly
- Added 100% support for bundling and unbundling
- Automated multi-order actions and contract modifications
- Improved revenue reporting and analytics
“With the real time order to revenue processes, we now have more reliable data, better waterfalls, better visibility, quicker close time—and fewer people working on it. As a public company, this is absolutely crucial and it helps me sleep better at night.” – Todd E. McElhatton, Chief Financial Officer, Zuora
