This MGI 360 Rating™ is designed to help buyers, suppliers, and investors assess the product functionality, management teams, channel breadth, marketing strategy, and financial positioning of Zuora‘s Configure Price Quote (CPQ) tool.

Zuora receives an MGI 360 Rating of 50 and a Neutral analyst outlook in the Configure Price Quote (CPQ) market. Zuora, best known for its subscription billing and revenue recognition software, offers a monetization suite that also includes payments, metering, subscriber management, and analytics built around a common monetization platform. Zuora CPQ is primarily aimed at quoting in the recurring arena and is sold exclusively as an add-on to new and existing Zuora Billing customers who rely on Salesforce for sales automation. Compared to other Zuora solutions, the CPQ product is aimed more at the basics and has gotten relatively less attention and innovation investment than other parts of the platform. Zuora CPQ can handle a long-enough list of requirements, including ramp deals, product bundles, and complex mid-cycle amendments, capabilities that many other basic quoting products struggle to support. The product is best suited for medium-to-large size enterprises who need a basic quoting tool that integrates well with subscription management tools within a Salesforce.com ecosystem.

*This graph highlights how CPQ vendors, including Zuora, compare with one another across a combination of key factors. Zuora’s go-to-market and solution strength are broken down in depth in the report. A fully labeled version of this graphic can be found inside the CPQ Top 25 Buyer’s Guide.

Who Is Zuora?

Founded in 2007 by former Webex and Salesforce execs K.V. Rao, Cheng Zou, and Tien Tzuo, Zuora is widely credited with naming the subscription economy. It is the most visible and discussed company in the Agile Monetization market and has raised nearly $650 million in combined private and public funding. Zuora sells its solutions via a direct salesforce and leveraging partnerships with companies such as Salesforce, Accenture, Deloitte, Cognizant, and PwC. Zuora’s brand visibility, breadth of offering, funding, subscription billing heritage, and channel reach distinguish it from the rest of the next-generation subscription billing solutions. Zuora is in the process of once again becoming a private company as it is being acquired by private equity firm Silver Lake and Singapore investment fund GIC. The transaction is aimed at gaining management flexibility in repositioning and restructuring the company for its next stage of growth.

What Is Configure Price Quote?

Configure Price Quote (CPQ) is a software discipline that enables companies to automate complex sales processes. It is typically packaged as a mini-suite of related capabilities enabling precise product configuration, accurate pricing, and rapid quote presentation across all types of channels – direct, indirect, partner/reseller, self-service, guided e-commerce, and OEMs. CPQ is a key element of the agile monetization platform.

CPQ solutions promise a smooth end-to-end customer experience, reduced friction in the sales process, and improved precision and accuracy of product combinations, pricing, terms, and conditions. When properly implemented, CPQ reduces the possibility of quote rejection due to human error. It makes the sales channel smarter and faster, and makes the sales process and downstream outcomes more predictable.

CPQ allows mass customization of relatively complex product lineups, enabling channels to sell complex products at scale. This applies to a broad range of product types – from digital subscriptions and financial services to cars and wind turbines. CPQ has applications in a broad spectrum of industries and business models across a range of stages of maturity: B2B and B2C, physical, digital, and hybrid combinations of goods and services, across myriad channel combinations.

What Are MGI 360 Ratings?

MGI 360 Ratings™ are a comprehensive structured system for evaluating technology companies. The MGI 360 scores reflect analyst opinions based on a scale of 0 to 100, combined with an analyst outlook (Positive, Negative, or Neutral). The 360 Rating system is comprised of 149 unique data points across five pillars:

  • PRODUCT: How strong is the product’s competitive position?
  • MANAGEMENT: How competent and experienced is the management team?
  • CHANNELS: Does the company have a sales capability and channels needed to bring products to market?
  • STRATEGY: Does the company have a realistic view of the opportunity and a compelling strategy for success?
  • FINANCE: Is the company growing and profitable?

 

360 Ratings in Configure Price Quote condense hours of research and customer references into simple, easy-to-understand ratings and recommendations to clearly demonstrate strengths, weaknesses, and differences among CPQ software vendors. All 360 Ratings in Configure Price Quote are available in the CPQ Top 25 Buyer’s Guide.

MGI clients can download the report below to find out how Zuora compares to peer averages in the CPQ market.

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