FOSTER CITY, Calif. – May 20, 2015 – Zuora today announced at Subscribed the launch of Z-Insights, a subscriber experience analytics solution that will help businesses design an engaging, memorable and compelling subscriber journey. Combining Zuora’s leading subscription commerce, billing and finance system with the expertise and technology obtained with the acquisition of customer usage analytics provider Frontleaf, Z-Insights will enable companies to connect vast amounts of subscriber data from multiple sources in order to better understand their subscribers and take concrete actions to improve the subscriber experience.
Seven years ago, Zuora predicted the shift to the subscription economy. Led by the likes of Salesforce, Amazon and Netflix, the first phase of the transformation was based on building and monetizing subscriber relationships instead of shipping and selling products. This customer-driven transformation to subscription-based business models led Zuora to create Z-Business, the first Relationship Business Management (RBM) platform to help organizations establish and build long-term relationships with subscribers.
Businesses across the globe and from every industry have adopted Z-Business to meet the operational demands of a subscription business model, including pricing and packaging, subscriber acquisition, subscriber retention, and subscription business metrics. But perfecting the strategy and operations of a subscription-based business is not enough. Now a second wave of the transformation is underway, where the most successful subscription businesses are those that pair the right business model with a compelling subscriber experience. Zuora created Z-Insights to marry these two critical processes as companies move to a subscription economy. Together, Z-Business and Z-Insights will power the next enterprise leaders.
“Z-Business is powering the best subscription businesses in the world, but in order to build compelling subscription experiences, our customers have told us they need better tools for gaining subscriber insights,” said Zuora CEO Tien Tzuo. “Today, Zuora has unveiled Z-Insights in what is to be a series of exciting new capabilities that will enable subscription-based businesses to create and capture meaningful insights about their subscribers and then act on those insights in a structured and consistent way.”
“In the era of digital disruption, the companies that are winning have shifted from selling products to delivering experiences and outcomes that are authentic to their brands,” said Constellation Research Principal Analyst and Chairman R. “Ray” Wang. “Businesses must operate with a digital DNA and an intention-driven mindset to collect meaningful insights that help predict and deliver on subscriber needs. Zuora has led the way in enabling companies that are making this shift and the introduction of the Z-Insights will further help the winners create the best subscriber experiences and keep their brand promises.”
The first set of Z-Insights modules includes:
- Subscriber Identity – A real-time view of subscribers, derived by aggregating subscriber demographic and attribute data from multiple sources. Examples of identity data include account balance, company data, demographics, recurring revenue value, social data, and user counts.
- Subscriber Moments – A live window into what subscribers are doing, derived by capturing subscriber events from multiple sources. Examples of moments include cancellations, new sign-ups, offers accepted, sent email, service usage, tickets filed, upgrades, and consumption patterns.
- Subscriber Segments – Dynamic subsets of the subscriber population that enable companies to identify and take meaningful action on those segments. Examples of segments include add-on targets, companies with more than 5,000 users, free users likely to convert to paid, high-volume users, new subscribers, population at risk of churn, upsell targets, and users with declining usage.
- Subscriber Triggers – The ability to trigger engagement with subscribers through multiple external channels and applications. Examples of engagement capabilities include email campaigns via email marketing or customer success tools, in-app messages, mobile alerts, and tasks assigned to account managers in a CRM system.
- Subscriber Dashboard – A command center view of an individual subscriber’s profile and status, including key identity attributes, active segments, moments timeline, usage and other activity metrics. The Subscriber Dashboard is portable and can be published to external systems, such as a CRM application.
“Schneider Electric is passionate about changing the way the world manages energy efficiency and sustainability, and our partnership with Zuora enables us to deploy highly efficient subscription-based services that are more cost-effective for customers and create new revenue streams for partners,” said Schneider Electric EVP Digital Services and IoT Cyril Perducat. “We are thrilled to see Zuora take this next step of investing in a new product that will allow businesses like Schneider to learn more about how our products and services are being used, and to use that knowledge to design new experiences for our customers.”
Z-Insights will be rolled out through a limited pilot program during the fall of 2015.
Zuora Acquisition of Frontleaf
Zuora acquired Frontleaf on May 18, 2015. Frontleaf provides customer analytics software that helps subscription-based businesses drive customer adoption, retention, and growth. The company and employees will be fully integrated into Zuora’s engineering and sales teams. Founder and CEO Tom Krackeler will join the executive team. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
“Frontleaf’s technology will enable Zuora to provide subscription-based businesses with the comprehensive analytics they need to understand their user base in a far deeper and more meaningful way so they can design truly compelling subscriber experiences,” said Krackeler, Zuora’s new VP, Subscription User Experience. “I look forward to the opportunity to continue enhancing this technology with the strategic, operational and visionary support of the Zuora team.”
Partner, Customer and Analyst Commentary
“Falcon Social has seen the benefits of Z-Insights in action as a customer of both Zuora and Frontleaf,” said Falcon Social Founder and CEO Ulrik Bo Larsen. “We believe companies today need a strong data-driven approach to truly understand their subscribers’ behavior and build rich experiences around it. Z-Insights will help us design even better subscription experiences and deliver them even faster.”
“The ability to connect customer insights across the entire enterprise to drive meaningful interactions is critical to building life-long relationships with customers,” said Marketo Senior Vice President of Product Strategy and Partnerships Steve Sloan. “Together Z-Insights and Marketo’s rich marketing data help companies take a powerful, data driven approach to deliver an engaging customer experience.”
“The community of joint Gainsight and Zuora customers will benefit from the rich subscription analytics delivered by Z-Insights,” said Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta. “We are excited to see Zuora launch a new product that will complement Gainsight’s customer success solution.”
“Improving the customer experience has become the number-one driver to improve customer engagement in 74 percent of organizations, according to our next-generation customer engagement research,” said Ventana Research CEO and Chief Research Officer Mark Smith. “Zuora’s introduction of Z-Insights will help organizations provide the best possible subscriber experience and journey, which is essential to engaging and retaining subscribers. Through the use of analytics to improve customer experience and satisfaction—which is the top benefit 55 percent of organizations realized—Zuora is taking the subscription economy to the next level. Congratulations to Zuora for advancing the subscriber potential for every organization.”
Additional Resources
Z-Insights Product Information
“The Subscription Economy: A Business Transformation” by Tien Tzuo, CEO of Zuora
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About Zuora Inc.
Zuora’s solution allows any business in any industry to launch or shift products to subscription, implement new pay-as-you-go pricing and packaging models, gain new insights into subscriber behavior, open new revenue streams, and disrupt market segments to gain competitive advantage. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, Zuora also operates offices in Atlanta, London, Paris, Munich, Beijing, Amsterdam, Vienna, Sydney, Copenhagen and Stockholm. Zuora clients come from a wide range of industries, including media, travel services, consumer packaged goods, cloud services, and telecommunications. Clients include Financial Times, Schneider Electric, Box, Honeywell, NCR, RTL, lynda.com, The Guardian, YP.com, BlueJeans, Shutterfly, TripAdvisor, Vivint and Trulia. To learn more about Zuora, please visit zuorainternprd.wpengine.com.
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