Avalara Uses Sertifi and Zuora to Reduce PCI Scope with Significantly Less Paper

Business Challenge

Avalara helps businesses to better manage tax compliance in an efficient and less stressful way. Their solutions help thousands of customers stay up-to-date with the constantly changing tax rules and rates and maintain compliancy.

Behind the scenes, the Avalara Sales and Accounting teams were bogged down by paper-based processes for executing quotes and securing payments. The Avalara team experienced many hurdles involving:

• A Slow, Paper-Based Process – It would take days to receive a signed quote and payment from customers. The Sales team would use one of their homegrown templates to add text boxes to the document, and then email it to the customer. Customers would have to print, sign, and scan it back to them.
• Time-Consuming Administrative Tasks – By using the traditional pen-and-paper method to execute quotes and payments, the Sales team wasted valuable work time chasing down customers via email or phone.

With a growing Sales team, paper-based processes were no longer sustainable. They needed an automated solution that would make it simple and painless for both employees and customers, all while reducing PCI scope.

The Sertifi Solution

When the Avalara team purchased Zuora, they were able to create rate plans bundled as packages using Z-Quotes, which streamlined some of their manual processes for creating subscriptions. However, they were still missing a seamless and PCI-compliant way of executing quotes and capturing payments. Sertifi’s integration with Zuora was the missing piece.

The Sertifi solution automates the quote and payment process to create a more uniform experience for Avalara and their customers. Sertifi is integrated with Zuora’s hosted payment technology so that Zuora users can easily secure both customer eSignatures and payments simultaneously, anywhere and anytime.

Instead of a messy, paper-based system, customers can sign electronically and submit their credit card information with just a click of a button, using their smart phone or tablet. The payment data goes directly to Z-Quote, which can then be sent to Z-Billing for processing automatically or manually after review.

The Results

Since implementing Sertifi’s eSignature and payment solution integrated into Zuora, Avalara has experienced the following benefits:

• Reduced PCI Scope – Payments are processed in a PCI-compliant manner, eliminating the need to send credit card information via fax machine or by email.
• Curtail Paper Usage – By processing quotes and payments in a unified solution, the Avalara team has cut back on paper significantly. This eliminates the old-fashioned pen and paper method.
• Sign, Send, and Collect Quotes Quicker – Customers can sign and make payments while they’re on the move with just their smart phone or tablet. Quotes are sent and returned much faster.
• Recognize Revenue Faster – It used to take several days to secure a payment, but with the Sertifi and Zuora integration, Sales and Accounting teams now see same-day turnaround.
• Better Customer Experience – With the simple, easy-to-use interface, many of their customers don’t have questions when submitting a payment using the solution, which reduces back and forth conversations between Sales and customers.

We’ve integrated Sertifi with Zuora’s hosted payment technology so subscription businesses can collect eSignatures and payments from customers faster.

With Sertifi for Zuora, subscription-based businesses can collect eSignatures and payments from customers faster. Do you want to learn more about the Sertifi integration with Zuora? Contact us today.