Technically, this isn’t a CRM company. But it is a SaaS-based billing and payments service developed by Tien Tzuo, the former Chief Strategy Officer at salesforce.com. So, after consultation with a team of lawyers and engaging a research team of hundreds, I’ve concluded that its within my rights to focus on them as one of the companies to watch in 2009. What they do is something that has even more value in a recession than it did prior to that recession. They provide billing (Z-Billing) and payment (Z-Payment) services to companies that have recurring payments models, whether that company is large or small. Currently, they are integrated with salesforce.com. But they’ve allied with Boomi On Demand, which has a technology that provides a pre-integrated capability with CRM and financial services packages done with one click from the web. Needless to say, (so I’ll say it) that pre-integration simplifies things - which then increases the speed of Zuora product enablement in situations when integration is needed. A smart technology partnership, and reflecting multiple smart moves that Zuora is making. Zuora is also well funded - recently getting a second round of $15 million, bringing their total funding to $21.6 million - with both Marc Benioff and Benchmark Capital among the funders - great names to have in addition to the money. They have a solid model, priced to go, fill a market need, are as easily integrated with other SaaS apps as can be and a great CEO who knows how to be one. I hope that they become a little more active in figuring out how to integrate with some of the SMB CRM vendors SaaS apps and I even have a thought for a new service related to it, but that’s left to another day. This day, I’m saying watch Zuora in 2009.
Source:blogs.zdnet.com/crm
