Zift Solutions Through Partner Marketing Automation Platform is a suite of applications meant to streamline interactions with channel partners, amplify demand, and ease cooperation on co-branded campaigns.
N/A
Zuora
Score8.6 out of 10
N/A
Zuora is one of the best-known subscription billing platforms. Zuora is an enterprise-level product and, as such, provides comprehensive metrics, tax automation, and support for multiple currencies. It also offers Salesforce and NetSuite integration out-of the-box. It often replaces cumbersome ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems that does not focus exclusively on billing.
Very helpful in Marketing Actions, Marketing Decision Support, Sales Action Support, Customer Preference Analysis, Inbound Marketing Strategy Implementation, and Sales and Marketing Tool Integration. It's a comprehensive resource for helping customers make choices. All the years we have used this tool to communicate with our trading partners, there have been zero issues.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Partner tracking and communication - Relayware allows a holistic view of a partner. Since the tool tracks everything a user does, you can easily see when the partner has sent or received emails, participated in trainings, download files, etc. You can also see how and when back-office users such as admins, partner managers, etc. have communicated with partners, updated dashboards, downloaded reports, and much more. The granularity of the history and tracking is exception for seeing how you and a partner are engaging. It's also very helpful for companies who require an audit trail for activities.
Training/eLearning/onboarding - I've worked with a number of eLearning/LMS platforms over the years and I'm stunned by the learning system built into Relayware. It's hands down far and above many existing standalone products and if Relayware was smart, they would offer this as a standalone item. The system supports the typical eLearning/LMS basics- SCORM support, grading, training by module, etc. but it also allows for custom training paths based on learning modules which can be SCORM, video, HTML, files, and any combination of these. The grading system is separated from the training content which allows for highly flexible user cases. You can created quizzes, tests, and certifications based on individual content modules or a full learning path.
Since the LMS is part of the overall Relayware system which is intended for partner management, you can create a range of onboarding processes/paths which are customized to particular types of partners. The system can support both online and offline activities so you can require xxx to be done online, followed by in-person training, etc. It really is an impressive system. I liked it so much, I decomissioned my instance of a Moodle LMS and I now use the Relayware LMS to serve as both partner eLearning and general customer eLearning through a separate portal.
Flexibility - It's hard to believe the Relayware can do so much in a single SaaS. The system allows for connection to SFDC so working leads and opportunities is simple. A manager or admin can add, edit, and remove web pages with ease. Data can be placed on any webpage using a number of "Relayware tags" which are special HTML tags to pull data from the system and use on a page. Customizable workflows for most any part of the system can be handled via a workflow engine. This could be onboarding, partner signup and registration, lead/deal/opportunity management and routing to appropriate users, Legal and Export compliance checking of documents and files, and on and on.
The only real drawback is that the system is so flexible, it helps to have good training and support so you don't get lost. Luckily this is only an issue for those who administer the system and Relayware is keen to provide good support for their product.
Licensing & cost - My observation is that Relayware has several good options for licensing and overall cost. They break the system down into several key modules so if you don't need something, you can remove it and not pay for it. However, that also makes it easy for the product to grow as your needs do. One of their license modules is by back-office users, not front-office. The benefit of this is when coupled with SFDC, you only need a single SFDC license for all of your field personnel and front end users. Since one of the Relayware models is to not charge by the number of front end users, you can save thousands in SFDC licenses. Ie: A user works through Relayware to report/edit/manage leads, deals, and opportunities. The system uses a single SFDC license to connect to SFDC so rather than every front end user needing an SFDC license, you only need one. Depending on the size of your organization, this alone could easily pay for the Relayware system.
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
At the same time that I started using ZiftONE, we worked in a test mode with the GetResponse platform. We select ZiftONE as support on platforms that require content syndication since the information it provides us is more accurate than that of GetResponse. However, GetResponse has a more intuitive sales funnel for a person who has never worked with these types of tools.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
In our personal opinion, we can say that this tool has not generated negative aspects in our work, so we can say that we are comfortable because I can keep all my potential clients organized and make sure that nothing is lost.
