Zuora: transforming the European ERP market
In an exclusive chat with BusinessCloud9.com editor Stuart Lauchlan, Tien Tzuo, the CEO of Zuora, reveals the company’s mission to surpass the traditional European ERP market and create a new system of record for 21st century business models.
Tien Tzuo has long focused on the need for an on demand subscription management service, but with enterprise customers that include the likes of Dell, Box.net, Reed Business Information and News International, the company is broadening its ambitions.
Tzuo explains: "We are still about billing at the core, but our vision for the future is to transition into billing, commerce and finance. From a positioning standpoint, this is about a much broader footprint to take on Oracle and SAP.
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Glad it's not just me
@JC
I'm glad it's not just me. I have huge respect for Dave Duffield, so if he is a personal investor in Zuora there must be something to it. However, it doesn't come across in this article. They can say they want to be the system of record for the 21st century as much as they like, but without explaining how they are different, as you say, it's just hype.
David Terrar
D2C and Cloud Advocates
Sorry but...
David - I disagree, the concept that I believe Tien is trying to get across is that Zuora (and it's competitors Aria, Vindicia etc) are focused on forward looking customer management and retention - let's call it forward looking revenue lifecycle management.
ERP on the other hand is primarily backwards looking, yes it can give me lots of reporting stuff but it's primarily about looking backwards and reporting on that. I'd suggest you spend some time sitting down with Tien to talk through this,the differences become clearer once you do
The've connected, so we'll see
@Ben
Maybe it's me, but I didn't get that message from Stuart's article or Tien's quotes.... particularly the one about ordering pencils. However, their VP of Marketing has spotted these comments, contacted me and we are arranging a 1:1 briefing. I look forward to hearing more, and I'll report back here when I do.
...and pardon my asking Ben - is Zuora a client of yours?
David Terrar
D2C and CloudAdvocates
Sorry, but I don't get it!
This is a great headline, but I really can't see the innovative approach in what Tien Tzuo actually says in the interview. You can say you are more innovative and you've got a broader footprint than an Oracle or an SAP as much as you like, but where is the evidence? He says:
"We have a different customer master: how many customers did you acquire, did you lose, what’s your customer churn rate, what’s the monthly recurring revenue and so on. That’s completely different to an order management system or an ERP system that knows how to order 230 pencils"
Yep! Managing customers is definitely different to ordering pencils…. Thanks for explaining that Mr. Tzuo. Are you seriously expecting me to believe that I can't get customer acquisition, customer churn or monthly recurring revenue from my Salesforce CRM or my Business ByDesign system. I welcome another Cloud ERP entrant in the marketplace, but sorry, I don't get how Zuora is going to be any different from this article. I just don't get it.
David Terrar
D2C and Cloud Advocates