CFO Intelligence Magazine – Fall 2021
Todd McElhatton
Zuora, CFO
During a pressure-cooker time, it’s good to have someone like Todd McElhatton by your side. McElhatton demonstrated that when he joined Zuora as CFO in June 2020, right as the COVID pandemic was raging across the globe, and safety mandated shutdowns meant that many businesses were hemorrhaging cash.
The company has a cloud-based subscription management platform that acts as an intelligent hub to automate the entire subscription order-to-revenue process seamlessly across billing and revenue. Zuora counts some big-name companies as clients, including Ford, Penske Media Corporation, Schneider Electric, Siemens, and Zoom.
Still, “It was an uncertain time,” says McElhatton. “Zuora is a growth business and needs to have a steady cash flow, but we wondered if our cash collections would be impacted.”
FIRST TACKLE THE BASIC
“Initially we focused on maintaining communication with customers and ensuring their business could continue to run smoothly,” he says. “We also reduced expenses, but a byproduct of the restrictions on face-to-face meetings was the immediate reduction in travel costs. Thankfully, we were already set up for fully remote work with scalable videoconferencing and collaboration apps.”
Simultaneously, McElhatton and his team worked with other Zuora departments to coordinate a variety of client-care initiatives, including strategies to help retain their own customers. One example was an online learning program for Fender Guitar. “We supported the company’s rollout in a matter of weeks,” recalls McElhatton. “Expectations were for 100,000 downloads, but the final total was actually about 1 million in 2020. The initiative was important because it kept Fender’s name out in the marketplace during a challenging time.”
“The pandemic, in particular, demonstrated how important subscription businesses are,” he notes. “The customer experience is king, so a recurring subscription model is permeating industries across channels. Eight of the top 10 carmakers are now our clients they want to keep in touch with their customers even after the vehicle has left the showroom