Zuora Helps Worthpoint Accelerate its Growth Annually and Get to Cash Flow Positive

Zuora, Inc. (NYSE: ZUO), the leading cloud-based subscription management platform provider, today announced that its customer Worthpoint was able to accelerate its path to becoming cash flow positive, growing nearly 40 percent in one year, with the flexibility and reliability of Zuora® Billing.

 

It’s no secret that growth rate is one of the most decisive indicators of success for a SaaS company. According to a recent McKinsey study “Grow Fast or Die Slow,” growth yields greater returns and matters more than margins or cost structure. Organizations like Worthpoint, with the goal to become multi-million dollar SaaS companies, must make difficult decisions, weighing the cost against the value of operational expenditures.

 

Since its launch in 2007, WorthPoint’s Internet of Stuff™ has been a treasure trove for collectors to identify, research and value antiques, art and vintage collectibles. As their digital commerce business grew to more than 1 billion images, 500 million web pages, 400 million unique visitors per month, and more than 15,000 paid users, its billing needs became more complex.

 

An early decision on an insufficient subscription management platform put Worthpoint’s business at risk. The company suffered from an overallocation of refunds, unmarked bills, irreconcilable billing periods, inconsistent revenue numbers, and a terrible user experience. Worthpoint had to completely rebuild its customer base and relaunch the business after the first two years.

 

“We knew Zuora was the best solution for us, but we chose another company and that decision cost us dearly. The other company didn’t do what they promised, and we ended up losing 40 percent of our business in the first month. We almost went out of business and it cost us $1 million to come back from that. It was the worst decision in the history of WorthPoint,” said Will Seippel, CEO and Founder of WorthPoint Corporation.

 

Worthpoint implemented the Zuora platform to fix the damage and get back to cash flow positive. Four years later, with Zuora as its central system of record, Worthpoint can manage $80,000 of transaction volume per month. Today, the $5 million business manages subscriptions, billing, finance, and revenue accounting on the Zuora platform with a staff of just one. The simplicity of the Zuora platform helps enables Worthpoint to run all financial operations without delays or dependencies on the on the IT team. With minimal staff required to bill and collect revenue, the company can focus on strategic initiatives to scale the business.

 

Neal McAtee, CFO of WorthPoint Corporation said,It is so fundamentally important to our business to get billing decisions right. Zuora helped us discover that we were undercounting revenue and enabled us to understand why cash outpaced revenue so drastically. WorthPoint grew revenues 37.5 percent in one year — and we were equipped to handle this exponential growth — with the support of Zuora.”

 

Worthpoint’s use of the Zuora platform helped the company achieve the following business goals:

  • A cash flow positive business – Worthpoint was able to increase revenue by reducing time spent on billing tasks and complex account updates with automated workflows through the Zuora platform.
  • Operational maturity to scale with growth – Worthpoint is able to automate complex billing processes for multiple products, high web traffic, and add-ons. Using the flexible bill run capabilities of the Zuora platform, the Worthpoint F&A team can apply late fees to accounts, calculate usage by unique devices, and preview future invoices.
  • Faster close periods – The Worthpoint executive team now has a full view into their business and can maintain a faster time-to-close each quarter. The Zuora platform’s metrics engine accurately computes key financials, giving the Worthpoint CEO on-demand daily sales summaries, billing statistics like failure rates and average revenue per bill.

 

Read more about Worthpoint in the company case study here.

 

About Zuora, Inc.

Zuora provides the leading cloud-based subscription management platform that functions as a system of record for subscription businesses across all industries. Powering the Subscription Economy™, the Zuora® platform was architected specifically for dynamic, recurring subscription business models and acts as an intelligent subscription management hub that automates and orchestrates the entire subscription order-to-cash process, including billing and revenue recognition. Zuora serves more than 1,000 companies around the world, including Box, Komatsu, Rogers, Schneider Electric, Xplornet and Zendesk. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, Zuora also operates offices in Atlanta, Boston, Denver, San Francisco, London, Paris, Beijing, Sydney, Chennai and Tokyo. To learn more about the Zuora platform, please visit zuorainternprd.wpengine.com.

 

Press Contact

Jayne Gonzalez

press@zuora.com

408-348-1087

 

© 2019 Zuora, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Zuora, Subscription Economy, Powering the Subscription Economy are trademarks or registered trademarks of Zuora, Inc. Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others. Nothing in this press release should be construed to the contrary, or as an approval, endorsement or sponsorship by any third parties of Zuora, Inc. or any aspect of this press release.

 

January 15, 2019