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Zuora, a fast-growing software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider that offers cloud-based billing, recurring revenue, payments and billing solutions, on March 15 released a new developer center and added 30 new applications to its Connect platform.
The Connect marketplace now totals about 100 apps created specifically for subscription businesses, including quoting, financial operations, data ingestion, e-signatures and ERP integrations. The apps are built to solve real-world use cases, such as lockbox file processing, custom dunning workflows, discount management rules, and more.
All apps are built by Zuora and its customers or ISV partners and are hosted on the Zuora platform.
The Foster City, Calif.-based company, which coined the term “subscription economy,” built the Connect app marketplace to give subscription businesses access to functionality from across the company’s cloud-based ecosystem so that each business can tailor its own systems for specific use cases.
The Connect management platform currently enables more than 800 companies to design new pricing models; automate downstream billing, payments, and revenue recognition based on subscription charges; and run the business based on industry standard, customer-centric subscription metrics.
New Zuora Connect Applications
New to Zuora Connect are lockbox synchronizations with banks (Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Bank of the West, Commonwealth Bank, City National Bank, Harris Bank), and connectors to data providers (ProfitWell Visualization Dashboard, Amplitude, MailChimp, Mixpanel, WhatCounts, Zendesk), app stores (Amazon and Apple) and tax management solutions (Sabrix, Vertex and CCH).
Five of the most often used Connect applications are:
—Collections Manager: Creates workflows for dunning and invoice collections processes. Automatically suspend, cancel, and/or resume any customer subscriptions, and send email and SMS notifications.
—Advanced Payment Retry: Minimizes revenue leakage by orchestrating retry rules and actions targeting the root cause of the decline for millions of failed credit card payments at a time.
—Developer Tools: Onboards new customers and performs migrations and updates en masse with API loaders that save time and improve the subscription experience of customers.
—Promo Codes: Automates and manages millions of promotion codes without manual intervention. Simplify the customer checkout process with coupons, promotions and incentives.
—Price Books: Simplify the pricing process by integrating to the Zuora product catalog and centralizing pricing maintenance.
Partners developing new apps or customizing existing apps on the platform will see the following business benefits:
—Security and compliance: The Connect Platform is SOC 1 Type 1 and SOC 2 Type 1 compliant.
—Ease of upgrades: Nothing to install, zero down time, and backwards compatible.
—Open framework: Developer site complete with app builder starter pack, Connect GEM and a community board to enable rapid app development by 3rd parties; written in Ruby with full REST API coverage.
—Global support: The service of Zuora’s award-winning Global Support team.
—Partner on-boarding program: enablement process ensures success for vendors that want to build and host apps on the Zuora Platform.
—Monetization models: A monetization framework for partners and developers available to help them generate revenue from apps featured in Zuora Connect.
Zuora Connect is used by global enterprises that include Schneider Electric, CLEAR and NCR, the company said. Go here for more information.