Subscribed San Francisco 2017 Customer Awards

There’s just about nothing we love more than to celebrate our customers! So it was a pleasure to wrap up day one of Subscribed San Francisco 2017 with our customer awards. This year’s awards were presented by Rachel English, Director of Customer Experience at Zuora; Robert Hildenbrand, SVP, Global Services at Zuora; and Todd Pearson, SVP, Customer Success at Zuora.

Winners were honored in five categories:
– Supergrower
– Innovator
– Transformer
– Digital Transformer
– Community All-Star

Supergrower – AppFolio
Award accepted by Tim Maskrey, Director of Business Systems

The Supergrower award is intended to recognize a company that has embraced core growth strategies to grow, grow fast, and sustain growth. AppFolio is a long-time Zuora customer, going back all the way to 2011 at which time they were one of the first Zuora adopters in the Santa Barbara area. Since implementing Zuora, they acquired two companies and went public in 2015. Today, more than 19,000 customers use AppFolio software to more effectively market, manage, and grow their own businesses. AppFolio is an inspiration to all SaaS companies looking to effectively scale.

Innovator – Clear
Award accepted by Ken Cornick, CFO

Clear was the clear winner for this year’s innovator award! If you look historically at their subscriber growth, you can see that every point at which they achieved exponential growth was marked by some form of innovation. When they first began, they were essentially a super juiced up version of TSA pre-check. Their first innovation was to eliminate the need for an ID card at the airport and speed up the notoriously slow process of checking in for a flight. Innovation number two was when they moved beyond airport security and transformed into a biometric identification company, taking their core service to stadiums and sporting arenas. As an innovator, Clear has challenged us as a company to innovate as well, educating us on their own unique ways of managing subscriptions and pushing us to build out our products and services to better support them, and innovators like them.

Transformer – Ford
Award accepted by Jamie Allison, MS&S Global Mobility & Connectivity and team!

When we think of our customers, we think of the type of business, not the vertical. We break this down into three broad categories: high volume B2B, high volume B2C, and transformers. Transformers are the biggest, global, multi-billion dollar companies that are making the shift to the Subscription Economy…and for this group of companies, their challenges are multiplied. To enter into the Subscription Economy, enterprise transformers need to pivot, they need to change the whole structure of their business in order to make the shift from products to services.

This year’s award goes to Ford for starting a revolution in transforming the automotive industry. In 114 years, they’ve never had a direct relationship with their customers beyond the credit relationship of selling a car. Now they’re directly engaging with their customers. Ford is a brilliant example of an iconic company that’s evolving into a Subscription Economy player.

Digital Transformer – Dow Jones
Award accepted by Diana Caballero, Program Manager

In today’s world, customers want (and expect) to have the freedom to consume on their terms. Digital Transformers understand this and clearly articulate the vision for driving subscriber growth. Dow Jones exemplifies a direct-to-consumer business that relentlessly pursues growth through the reduction of friction in the buying process. They are streamlining the customer experience to be frictionless and, as a result, building a truly customer-centric business. Their use of multiple channels and brand new payment types (think Apple Pay, Amazon, etc.) to drive subscription acquisition is a lesson in digital transformation.

Community All-Star – Jacob Feisley, Director, Systems and Security at Appspace

We were really excited this year to present our first Community All-Star award. We launched the Community 18 months ago to provide Zuora users with the ability to search and find the information they need, and to collaborate so that all Zuora users could have a connected experience and learn from each other.

Since the Community was created, we’ve come a long way. We’re up to ten thousand monthly user views and tons of Community members who share code and answer questions.

And then there’s Jacob Feisley…

Jacob has provided over 300 pieces of content. He’s received countless kudos, and has even provided solutions that were upvoted by Community members to be the best answers—sometimes even beating out solutions provided by our own product experts!

Jacob is a gem, and we are so grateful for him. And we’re excited to see what the future brings for the Community!

Visit our Community now to start your journey to becoming a Community All-Star!

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