Avalara’s AvaTax solution is key to Centrica Hive’s seamless customer experience

Centrica Hive (Hive) is a market leading provider of connected smart home devices. Using the Hive app and website, customers can control a range of internet-connected devices in their homes. Customers pay a monthly subscription fee to access and use the company’s services and this model has been fundamental to Hive’s continued growth and success.

Faced with launching an innovative product range in the US, Centrica Hive chose Avalara, fully integrated with Zuora’s subscription management platform, to automate the entire sales tax compliance process. The sheer number of individual transactions makes automation a necessity; manually making calculations could otherwise take hundreds of man-hours every month.

Geraldene Cummins, Finance Business Analyst, Centrica Hive comments: “Our finance team are experienced and highly qualified but keeping track of the changing US sales tax landscape ourselves would have been very difficult. Having looked around for different solutions, we opted for the integrated subscription management and sales tax engine provided by Zuora and Avalara.”

Avalara AvaTax is fully integrated with Zuora’s end-to-end subscription management platform, designed for businesses to automate their order-to-revenue process. Zuora simplifies the otherwise complicated task of managingall interactions related to nurturing long term customer relationships, such as bills and payments, commerce and finance operations.

The platform covers all aspects of subscription administration including the creation of customised product and rate plans, setting up customers and their subscriptions, making amendments to subscriptions and the automation of ongoing billing and payment collections. Geraldene continues: “The fact that Zuora and Avalara could provide a tried and tested solution already used by many companies facing similar challenges to us was highly reassuring to us. We wanted to hit the ground running in the US and we needed to know that the solution would work accurately and out of the boxwithout the need for months of development work.”

“The implementation of the solution went smoothly and as it’s easy to use, we were able to roll it out and begin using it confidently and effectively in a very short space of time.” The fact that the solution can be rolled out wherever we establish a presence and service customers is very important to us. Essentially, this helps minimise barriers for future growth and expansion”.

The combined solution provided by Avalara and Zuora is fundamental to equipping Hive’s customers with the functionality they need for managing their subscription plans and for providing visibility of their payment plans. Freedom from manual administration mean the team can dedicate more time to helping support the growth of the company by channelling their expertise into otherareas of the business to ensure it continues to go from strength to strength.

Geraldene comments: “The solution has been key to Hive’s ability to provide a high-quality subscription service to our customers. It is essential to day to day operations and the fact that it updated as and when tax legislation changes mean that we are always confident that our customers are being billed accurately at all times.”

“The ongoing support we receive from Zuora and Avalara’s technical andcustomer services teams has been great and is an important factor for us. We are very satisfied with the solution itself in addition to the ongoing support we receive.”