July 29, 2014

Zuora powers Atmail’s new subscription experience by enabling the company to provide flexible and tailored pricing & packaging, seamlessly roll out promotions, streamline new customer acquisition, and measure the health of their customer relationships

Sydney – July 29, 2014

Zuora, the global leader in subscription billing, commerce and finance, has announced that Australian-headquartered Atmail, one of the world’s leading messaging platform for mission critical deployments, has leveraged Zuora’s Relationship Business Management (RBM) solution, Z-Business, to rapidly scale as its businesses and customer volumes grow.

Headquartered in Queensland, Atmail is one of Australia’s most successful technology companies. The company pioneered one of the first commercial webmail applications in 1998 and has been an innovator in the email industry ever since. The company’s cloud billings have increased by 900 per cent in the past 12 months. Offering email and collaboration solutions to thousands of service providers and enterprises globally, Atmail supports tens of millions of paid mailboxes around the clock.

One year ago, Atmail migrated from a perpetual license sales model to a subscription SaaS platform and assessed what it required from an e-commerce and billing platform. Atmail’s customers were demanding a new subscription experience in which they could rapidly sign up for the service, manage their subscription plans and be billed on a monthly basis. Furthermore, Atmail was looking for a solution that could enable them to forge more intimate, ongoing relationships with its customers along their subscription journey and to measure the health of those business relationships. Zuora’s Relationship Business Management solution met those requirements.

“We are constantly on the lookout for new, emerging technologies as this improves our way to interact and communicate. Previously, we had been handicapped by being unable to change pricing, manage recurring billing, invoice in multi-currency options and roll-out marketing promotions in a timely fashion. What we required was a platform which would enable the business to transition from an annual, upfront billing cycle to monthly billing which in fact was what our customers were demanding,” said Zach Johnson, CEO, Atmail.

“What appealed to us about Zuora was that the company had essentially been built for addressing the business issues we were facing – providing e-commerce functionality for a fast growing business rapidly on-boarding new clients and requiring predictable recurring revenue models. At the same time, we also appreciated Zuora’s historic relationship with salesforce.com and benefits of the technology integration between the two companies. We also had a very positive experience with the Zuora sales team in Australia who were very proactive, knowledgeable and took a partnering approach to the overall relationship.”

From a broader perspective, today’s consumers are more informed and demanding by an order of magnitude. They have the world’s store of knowledge at their fingertips. They expect ongoing value and unique experiences as part of their Subscription Experience. And they’re not as interested in methods as they are outcomes. Zuora is at the forefront of helping innovative companies like Atmail deliver these consumers a personalised, instantly accessible service featuring the latest available intelligence and functionality.

Zuora is now being deployed to underpin Atmail’s strategy in providing consumers with a tailored product and pricing plan which can be easily and flexibly created. For example, Atmail’s SaaS Cloud offering can be priced with a minimum monthly fee with included usage and additional billable usage. These features were not previously available. In addition, Zuora’s ability to price and invoice monthly is expected to improve customer acceptance.

Another major benefit is Zuora’s PCI-complaint platform which will allow Atmail to rapidly onboard customers through facilitating the placing of orders directly with Atmail’s storefront via self-service functionality. Customers requiring product bundling and customised quoting will also be managed through Zuora enabling Atmail to unlock its product catalogue and allow it to quote and sell software functionality at a component level.

The ability to revise pricing and packaging in Zuora also allows Atmail to adapt and grow with the market. Atmail will simply be able to create offers in Salesforce bundling multiple products and rate plans corresponding to specific promotional campaigns and offerings.

“Ultimately, we’ll now be rapidly turning inbound leads into sales on each and every occasion. Useful features include the generation of PDF invoices and email communications related to payment cycles which will improve business processes by reducing manual task and follow up. Email alerts and reminders for renewals supports will support the sales process and improve customer service,” said Johnson.

Last month, Atmail’s first payment run was readily executed 30 days after the first account was added to Zuora. In a second stage of deployment later this year, Zuora will be used to improve product packaging and bundling via an online quoting and acceptance process. Atmail’s reseller partners will also have visibility of the company’s product catalogue as well as their customer volume and can see all the latest product offerings and bundles available.

In addition, the Zuora subscription business platform will also provide Atmail with insight on customer growth, revenue, collection, churn and financial reporting. Financial information pertinent to performing month end procedures produced within Zuora will be integrated to the Xero accounting system at the general ledger summary level.

“Zuora will bridge the gap between our customers, the webstore and salesforce.com enabling us to rapidly account for subscription revenue on an accrual basis. Zuora’s ability to support various pricing models is key the success of our business strategy moving forward. However, managing Pay-As-You-Go is a paradigm shift for mail service providers. As a rapidly growing ISP market software provider we can now invoice on a monthly subscription basis. At the same time, our resellers can also invoice their customers with the same frequency and thereby match costs to revenue.

“Zuora will give both Atmail and our partners the flexibility, agility and dexterity to adjust with regional pricing and provide a white label store for partners. As we scale, we have total confidence in Zuora’s ability to provide a high value-add customer experience and conversation,” said Johnson.

About Zuora, Inc.

Zuora is the global leader in Relationship Business Management (RBM) solutions, helping companies in every industry transition to the Subscription Economy. Enterprise leaders and high-growth companies alike use Zuora’s multi-tenant cloud platform to launch, scale, and monetize their subscription services. Zuora’s applications work where traditional ERP applications fail: Subscription pricing, quoting, orders, billing, payments, and renewals. Built from the ground up by SaaS industry veterans from salesforce.com , PayPal, and Netsuite, Zuora services innovative customers like Informatica, Tata Communications, Box, Xplornet, Ustream and Reed Business Information. To learn more about Zuora, please visit zuora.com zuora.com