ConnectAndSell vs. Zuora

If your organization relies on outbound leads through cold calling, this is a great tool for you. ConnectAndSell definitely made the associate's jobs easier at our company and allowed them to produce greater output than they could have done manually without such a tool. This tool is less appropriate if cold calling isn't a big part of your company's lead generation efforts.

Incentivized

Zuora is great for smaller subscription businesses that have a limited number of simple or basic products. As more products are added to the catalog, the ability to report on specific product performance has become more challenging. Similarly, as our number of customers has grown significantly over the past few years, the extraction of data through export files is more of a challenge to capture all data points.

Incentivized

• Builds lead lists.
• Maximizes connections with prospects.
• Provides guidance for how to approach future prospects.
• Leaves strategic voicemails for prospects.
• Sends emails based on programmable metrics.

Incentivized

• The implementation of Zuora is very helpful. Their interactive training guides are one of the best I've used. It is very thorough and any salesperson can learn how to use it very quickly.
• Their subscription management offers many ways to sell a subscription. These subscriptions can be evergreen (renewing every month) or termed subscriptions. The subscriptions can be amended to add/remove products very easily.
• The ability to quickly pass through large amounts of usage data for our clients is allowing us to perform billing in a time-effective manner. Once usage data is loaded, a few clicks and all of the invoices for our client base can be generated. Invoices are clean and detailed which help us maintain a good customer experience even with our somewhat complex billing model. The reporting is extremely helpful in calculating the end of month commissions, recognizing and deferring revenue, and overall bookkeeping.

Incentivized

• One thing that's been difficult about Connect and Sell is some people can tell you've been patched through so if you can work past the initial conversation it ends up working great.
• The system has worked great with outreach which we've integrated our contacts directly into the system. Because of this the connection between outreach and connect and sell don't always communicate calls and metrics which are crucial for us to know conversion rates.
• We had a hard time getting the system implemented quickly and working the way we wanted it to. Because of the implementation specialist we were working with problems weren't solved quickly rather they were worked through quickly however they were solved.

Incentivized

• User Interface - Zuora's UI is still a weak point, however, this is negated through the use of its API's. Zuora has done a lot of work in releasing new products to limit its UI experience and the addition of Orders allows for more functionality to reduce the UI issue.
• Complex system - This is both a pro and a con, but in this instance, it is a con because we may not have taken the time to truly understand the implications of all the options that were available. the Flexibility is great however if you do not take the time to understand the product and what problem you are trying to solve, you can make life difficult for yourself later down the track. Take the time to map out your approach end to end and ensure your assumptions at the start are robust.
• Reporting - reporting is weak as such we have moved away to our own reporting data warehouse.

For the right reps who are good at talking to prospects who aren't expecting their call, this is a no brainer.

Our business is now, more than ever, focused on our core business rather than homegrown support tools for quoting, contracts, billing, invoicing, payments and the rest of the subscription economy. We evaluated other solutions and found this the best and most viable solution given the strong ties to Salesforce and it's integration. Zuora works, and it works well.

I had 20+ years of accounting experience before taking on the revenue role. I had several things to [learn] but was able to easily master the software in a matter of weeks. Zuora is our preferred billing platform that we currently use - very efficient and much more automated than our other platform/process.

Incentivized

There have only been a few days/instances in the past 2.5 years of using zuora that I, personally have had issues or been notified of issues relating to Zuora.

Incentivized

Zuora does a superb job for all the tasks I use it for. Billing - it is trustworthy and accurate. Customer data- it holds it and keeps past records for even cancelled accounts, and subscription builds - it has the ability to make very difficult subscriptions seem easy.

Incentivized

I have had a few support calls with their people. They are totally reachable and helpful, sharing screens, controlling my screen, showing why things happened, not just correcting it. If you have an issue with the software, let them help. They are there for you, and they are friendly, accessible, and happy to do their job.

Incentivized

A support request is emailed to their support team, then an automated response is sent to you in a couple hours saying "Hey, someone will take a look at your support request soon". Then somewhere around 12-18 hours later, an actual support member responds with "Have you checked out our tutorials? Here's one that sounds like it might help you". I don't want a tutorial given to me that I've already read through that only exists because of the terrible user design of Zuora's user interface

Incentivized

The onsite was so helpful and worth the hours spent. All three people that came to represent Zuora had a lot to offer.

Incentivized

It was reliable.

Incentivized

I think Zuora did a great job. However, they could have provided more guidance on how to deal with out Payment Gateway and Processor provider, as well as guidance around providing a Mobile Responsive experience for sites using the Zuora HPM.

Incentivized

We have moved to Salesloft. Salesloft gave us greater visibility into performance metrics and integrated with more software which in turn helped streamline our business.

Incentivized

Zuora provides way more functionality than Recurly or SaaSOptics as a billing engine. However, it is not a general ledger system like NetSuite ERP, it is still designed to be primarily a billing function that feeds into a general ledger via automated general entries. It has simplified our invoice management and automated billing while connecting with Salesforce for high-powered reporting and cross-departmental collaboration. The automation of revenue recognition has the potential to significantly reduce the time spent on accounting close by a few days.

Incentivized

The product is capable of a lot, small companies and large companies can utilize it with ease

Incentivized

• It gives you greater potential to lock in a client, but I'm not sure from my end if this ROI is worth the headaches. It has a lot of work before it can become a truly reliable source for outbounding.

Incentivized

• Poor support has slowed down our implementation of features and resolution of issues
• Lack of flexibility has led to some complex and unwieldy workaround solutions
• No useful built in AR reporting so we had to come up with our own solution
• Challenges with finance due to unreliability of Salesforce sync