Zuora Estimates a 30% Time Savings with BetterCloud Enterprise

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Zuora IT runs cloud-based messaging and colla­boration applications as a key part of their infrastructure. Launched in 2007, less than a year after Google Apps’ initial release and while it was still in beta, the technology team at Zuora believed in the Google Apps platform and deployed it companywide.

Having since expanded to over 600 employees in 18 offices across North America, Europe, Japan, and Australia, Zuora has experienced record growth. In parallel, Google Apps has continued innovating and rolled out a massive amount of new apps along the way. With BetterCloud, Zuora has been able to consume the new technology as it grew and scaled its corporate infrastructure without needing to grow FTE headcount.

The Challenge

Successful companies experiencing exponential growth like Zuora operate with business models deeply rooted in the cloud. Google Apps provide the most essential tools for employees, including mail, calendaring and collaboration. Zuora’s empowered employees, known as “ZEO’s,” require immediate access to corporate applications to be productive from Day 1.

Stas Burdeynyy, IT Lead Systems Engineer, has been instrumental in educating new employees about how the corporate infrastructure at Zuora supports their success, and how its cloud-based environment enables ZEO’s to do more.

During the company’s monthly onboarding program, Burdeynyy gives a presentation to new hires–who may have previously used any number of different work platforms at other companies–and explains what it means to run an organization 100% in the cloud. He adds, “It’s a great way to help relate to where they came from, introduce the tools they’re going to use at Zuora, and also explain the type of business we run.”

For Stas, being able to quickly and easily on/offboard accounts and maintain bulk user/group operations is critical to help his internal clients do their jobs.

Before BetterCloud, Stas struggled with on/offboarding of accounts through the Google Admin Console. At the time, some things would take too long and other functions were simply missing. He needed much more granular administration and control over their Google Apps accounts, to exercise policies for example, in case content shouldn’t be shared externally via an app such as Google Drive.

New Tools for a Changing IT Environment

So, what does he cite as the major differences? Well, most noticeably, the tools they’ve used have changed–gone is hardware and the old tools that plugged into servers, and in their place are cloud-native applications (like BetterCloud) that hook directly into cloud office platforms.

In fact, Zuora uses over 30 of these apps across their business, from HR to marketing to sales, for everything from productivity and scheduling to accounting and project management. “You’re no longer buying those systems that you used to back in the day, IT infrastructure is no longer stationary,” says Burdeynyy.

Zuora Estimates a 30% Time Savings with BetterCloud Enterprise

And while the IT team at Zuora spends a chunk of their time trying to manage the dozens of applications and make sure there’s no redundancy, BetterCloud is their “bread and butter” management and security solution.

When the team first heard about BetterCloud–at the recommendation of Google support–they found comprehensive workflows that streamlined their complicated onboarding and offboarding processes.

Additionally, they were able to leverage the BetterCloud APIs to finely control their Google apps.

BetterCloud’s provisioning workflow tool transformed the way new hires were ramped up–the team used to organize onboarding tasks with a physical checklist, and estimated spending over an hour to onboard each new employee. And BetterCloud gathers all of these steps in a comprehensive workflow, meaning the Zuora team could ditch their checklist. “When you’re growing at the pace we are, workflows become essential,” says Burdeynyy, “we really appreciate the iterative and deliberate UI.”

Another big time savings? Using bulk tools to configure groups and memberships–a tedious but critical task–which, with BetterCloud, has helped Stas and his team regain 90% of the time spent managing groups and memberships before BetterCloud. Combined with the other tools the Zuora team uses, including customizable reporting, user and directory management, and email security tools, Burdeynyy estimates a 30% time savings with BetterCloud Enterprise.

“It’s just a good value for the money,” he adds, and, referring to the BetterCloud Customer Promise, “it’s not just the product I’m happy with, BetterCloud focuses on the relationship, too. I get support from sales to support to account management–everyone is very responsive and I have great relationships with the team.”

About Zuora Inc.

Zuora’s solution helps any business in any industry 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, Boston, London, Paris, Munich, Beijing, Tokyo, 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 www.zuora.com. Zuora, Subscription Economy and Subscriber Insights are trademarks of Zuora, Inc. All rights reserved.