Cloud computing is most often discussed through the prism of the technology innovation that enables on-demand infrastructure consumption at scale, but it’s first and foremost a business model. And every business model requires a way to charge customers, which is what Zuora Inc. is trying to address with the new analytic functionality added to its namesake billing platform.

Z-Business has quietly catapulted the company to prominence on the back of the explosion in demand for subscription-based cloud services in recent years, attracting big-name clients such as Dropbox Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. as well as a hefty amount of funding along the way. Zuora is now marking a new milestone in its journey and moving beyond managing subscribers to helping brands understand them.

​To that end, the newly introduced Z-Insights analyzes metrics collected through the platform to group subscribers based on criteria such as payment status and the total number of end-users associated with a certain account to allow for the isolation of specific segments. Marketers can take advantage of that granularity to monitor how a particular subset of the install base is behaving and react accordingly.

Z-Insights provides a wide range of options for going about that, according to Zuora. The service offers capabilities for engaging customers through external channels in the form of email campaigns, in-app notifications and other common automated targeting procedures along with the ability to alert account managers if a more specific action is needed.

They can act upon such directives based on the information in the centralized subscriber dashboard at the heart of the new analytics service, which enriches upon the basic demographic data with details such as what groups are at risk of leaving and potential upselling opportunities. The console also incorporates insights gleaned through the usage monitoring service that Zuora is obtaining as part of the acquisition of Frontleaf Inc. announced in conjunction.

The purchase also buys the company the six-man team behind the technology. No financial terms were disclosed for the transaction, but Zuora did say that some of the funds came from the $115 million investment it raised two months ago.
Photo by LoggaWiggler via Pixabay