Zuora - Subscription Factory

Zuora Integration Platform (ZIP)

Unleash the full power of Zuora, seamlessly integrated into your landscape

ZIP. Powers your Zuora subscription program

with accelerated integration

Some companies try to ‘reinvent the wheel’ when implementing Zuora for their e-commerce and self-service subscription programs. This often makes the process needlessly complex and wastes huge amounts of time and resources. So, together with our strategic partner rb2 we have built the Zuora Integration Platform (ZIP), a stand alone application that simplifies and kickstarts your Zuora implementation.

ZIP is a standardized middleware solution that works with ready-to-use components. It is fully integrated with Zuora to accelerate development and deployment of your subscription e-commerce and self-service portals. ZIP also offers a continuously growing list of integrations with Payment Service Providers, CRM-systems, Identity Services and marketing tools.

Proven usability

Via deep integration with your systems, ZIP solves common technical challenges and presents your data in a tailored UI with a high-level usability. ZIP is the result of multiple iterations of a successful implementation for significant partners like Philips and DAF.

ZIP can be hosted on your own Cloud infrastructure or securely within our default Microsoft Azure setup. The same goes for the code repository itself; you can choose to incorporate it within your own maintenance at any point in time. Essentially, the full IP is transferable at any moment.

Built on proven technology

Seamless integration within your landscape

IP-transferable

Features

Fully customized checkout

Display subscription products, listing all the benefits relevant to your users as part of a tailored flow to acquire their subscription.

Integrated payment methods

Enable your users to set up their billing profile for automated recurring payments. This can be done via a Zuora hosted payment page, or by directly integration with major PSPs like Adyen, Worldpay and Ingenico.

Self Service / My Account

Your users are in full control of their subscriptions via ZIP’s self-service portal. Log in directly or via your own Identity Service. Currently supporting MS Azure Active Directory, SAP Gigya and Janrain.

Multi-lingual, multi-currency

Effortlessly scale up your subscription business abroad. When it comes to content and product management, ZIP offers a setup for any language and currency.

Integrations

ZIP offers out-of-the-box integrations with major CRM-systems, including MS Dynamics, as well as integrations with marketing suites such as Salesforce Marketing Cloud.

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Technical resources

Combined Solution

The accelerator framework template combines different components to
deliver the features mentioned above:

Core packages

Accelerator middleware API

Web-based frontend

Infrastructure Configuration (templates and scripts)

Combined, this a .NET Core 3.x. service, running in Docker containers on Azure Web Apps.
The following Azure components are used:

Azure Web Apps

Azure Application Insights

Azure SQL (for caching purpose only)

Azure Service Bus for queuing

Azure Functions for batch processing

Azure Key Vault for storing sensitive data

Core packages

The solution references an Azure-published library of pre-built and unit-tested libraries interfacing with the most used Zuora APIs, third-party payment providers, authentication providers etc.

New integrations are constantly abstracted and added to the core package library, speeding up integration into existing projects and easing integration and deployment on new projects.

The library set is continuously maintained and enhanced and runs on a versioned CI system on Azure.

Accelerator middleware API

The core of ZIP is the Integration middleware. It streamlines communication between Zuora’s API library, client systems and 3rd party services. Additionally, it uses queues and retry and throttling mechanisms to ensure proper transfer of data. It is only used for data processing and is not a system of record.

REST APIs are used as an interface for the ZIP frontend.

This API also serves as a protection layer to the backend systems, by limiting and throttling high or suspicious traffic. When desired, clients can use their own front-end application to communicate with the ZIP middleware. It utilizes the core packages library throughout. Any additions to the core packages can easily be incorporated into the API using the relevant Nuget package version.

The API is built using Domain-driven Design and CQRS. This promotes scalability, stability and maintainability. The API is also extensible from the pre-built domain to allow for any customizations on the Zuora setup and to incorporate any custom business logic required by the customer. Command, query, repositories and services are loosely coupled, with components built on industry best practice.

Web front-end

The web frontend of the Zuora shop is a modern Single Page Application, built with modern Vue.js 2.x and Nuxt 2.x.

The shop is integrated with the Subscription Web API over https for services like displaying catalogues, creating orders, updating subscriptions, and for several account services like displaying Invoices. By default, the front-end app is hosted on Azure Web Apps with a NodeJS server in a Linux Docker container.

The solution easily integrates with the middleware API through existing, re-usable code sections and API client interfaces. A typical frontend implementation is finished in just a few sprints, without any design limitation or restriction.

Infrastructure and deployment

Resources can easily be setup and deployed through the existing pipeline configuration scripts with minor adjustment to cater for environment specifics.

As part of our infrastructure setup we have continuous integration running on Azure DevOps. In addition, containerized deployment from code to DEV which can be expanded to QA and/or Production based on pipeline releases.

Succes stories

Philips

In 2018 Philips brought subscription products into their Consumer Healthcare domain. Within Philips, ZIP serves a visually and technically integrated part of a user’s subscription journey. This B2C solution is a multi-product solution, rolled out across multiple countries. High traffic, complex product configurations, physical product fulfilment and discount structures made this a typical ZIP case.

Lely

Lely, a leading manufacturer of agricultural robots for milking and feeding livestock, chose subscription billing as their next step in digital services. By using ZIP, Lely had a technically sound foundation on which they could tailor their platform to fit their user’s needs. Within Lely subscriptions are usage based so that billing has a direct relation to the amount of livestock using their services.

DAF

Heavy-duty vehicle manufacturer DAF offers an increasingly large range of IoT-services to their drivers and fleet owners. When they made the leap towards subscription-based billing, they chose ZIP as a driving force on top of their Zuora implementation. Leveraging the strength of Zuora to handle high volumes of new subscriptions and amendments, combined with the proven technological base of ZIP, enabled DAF to quickly get an MVP up and running in ten countries.