BranchOut, Facebook's Largest Professional Network, Uses Zuora to Decrease Sales Cycle

REDWOOD SHORES, CA--(Marketwire - Mar 29, 2012) -

• Zuora, the subscription billing and commerce leader, today announced that BranchOut, the largest professional network on Facebook, is using Zuora's subscription commerce platform to rapidly grow its reach while reducing both the billing and sales cycles to fractions of their former times. Using the Zuora platform has not only allowed BranchOut to cut its billing cycle to a quarter of its former time, it has also cut the entire sales cycle to a third of its former time. With Zuora's seamless integration with the DocuSign eSignature solution, BranchOut's sales team is able to go from verbal agreement to quote to term of contract in less than six hours.
  
  
• BranchOut, with more than 10 million registered users and 300 million global profiles on the BranchOut platform, helps its users find jobs, recruit talent, and strengthen relationships with professional contacts. BranchOut also operates the largest job board on Facebook with more than three million jobs and 20,000 internships.
  
  
• A recent Jobvite study showed that 18.4 million Americans found their jobs via Facebook as opposed to 10.2 million via LinkedIn. Enterprises and recruiting professionals turn to BranchOut to source talent more effectively, especially as the global employment market begins to recover.
  
  
• Soon after BranchOut launched its first recruiting products, it deployed Salesforce CRM to manage all sales activities. But BranchOut quickly realized that effectively managing its rapidly growing subscription billing needs would be key to its business success. Salesforce.com recommended that BranchOut turn to Zuora because of its expertise in subscription commerce, especially renewals and highly flexible price quote capabilities. BranchOut quickly implemented the Zuora platform because of its deep integration with Salesforce CRM and the customization possible with force.com.
  
  

Simplifying Quotes, Speeding Renewals

• Using Zuora and Salesforce CRM in tandem has allowed BranchOut's billing, provisioning and sales departments to automate billing and renewals while staying in sync. Letting the sales team have visibility into every account -- including comprehensive and coordinated information on all products -- and receive notifications when renewals are coming has made a positive difference in customer retention. The sales team has been able to easily offer custom solutions and quotes to best fit their customers' needs before their contracts expire, greatly increasing the renewal rate.
  
  
• Billing automation has also saved staffing and man-hours for BranchOut since they no longer require billing specialists to send, collect and record invoices. In addition, billing automation keeps customers happy, letting them choose their bill date and make ePayments in a compliant manner via this zero-touch billing cycle.
  
  

Commentary

"Partnering with Zuora has let us simplify our business processes and concentrate on continuing our rapid growth. The support team has been amazing from implementation to customization," said Kai Fortney, Marketing Associate, BranchOut. "I consider deploying the Zuora platform one of the best business decisions I have ever made because as we continue to increase sales volume Zuora will support automated billing and payment collections eliminating the need to linearly scale an in-house billing and collections team."

• "BranchOut is growing rapidly because the company has tapped into the great power of Facebook for professional networking," said Shawn Price, President of Zuora. "BranchOut's use of our platform is also a perfect example of the power of integrating your billing and sales departments via force.com. We look forward to developing more best practices for today's subscription economy with BranchOut as the company continues its meteoric growth."

About BranchOut
Founded in 2010, BranchOut is the largest professional network on Facebook with more than 10 million registered users and over 300 million profiles on the BranchOut platform.

Millions of users in more than 200 countries use BranchOut to leverage their Facebook friend network. BranchOut helps them find jobs, source sales leads, recruit talent, and strengthen relationships with professional contacts. BranchOut also operates the largest job board on Facebook with more than three million jobs and 20,000 internships.

BranchOut offers a suite of recruiting products for both job seekers and recruiters. BranchOut's enterprise products help recruiters and hiring managers source talent more effectively. BranchOut's social job posts are easily shared on Facebook and Twitter, and display inside connections right in the job post. BranchOut's CareerConnect publishes job postings on a company's Facebook Page. For more information, visit www.branchout.com.

About Zuora, Inc.
Zuora is the global leader in subscription commerce and billing, helping companies in every industry transition to the Subscription Economy. Enterprise leaders and high-growth companies alike use Zuora's multi-tenant cloud platform to launch, scale, and monetize their subscription services. Zuora's applications help subscription businesses with pricing, quoting, orders, billing, payments, and renewals. Built from the ground up by SaaS industry veterans from Salesforce.com, PayPal, and WebEx, Zuora services innovative customers like Informatica, Tata Communications, Box.net, Ning, GigaOm, Xplornet Communications, Ustream and Reed Business Information. To learn more about Zuora, please visit www.zuora.com.