The Customer
OCTO is a leading global provider of telematic services for the Connected Vehicle industry. They research, develop, and manage telematics applications, systems, and advanced data analytics for Insurance Telematics and Mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) businesses — including vehicle sharing, ridesharing, rental cars, and fleet management. They either build or integrate other software to offer end-to-end solutions to their customers.
The Challenge
OCTO’s telematics solutions produce large amounts of data through intelligent services in every imaginable aspect of vehicle usage, and to allow the end user to benefit from these services, OCTO needed a billing and payments platform that could handle incredibly complex usage-based pricing metrics. Building a payment and billing platform in-house was an inefficient use of development resources, so they were looking for a best-in-class solution that could fit into their existing technology stack.
The Solution
The Zuora platform provided OCTO with the flexibility to handle an unlimited number of usage-based metrics and accommodate tax regimes, government regulations, and currencies for multiple countries. OCTO was able to integrate Zuora into their existing technology stack that they re-sell to other MaaS businesses.
The Benefits
Despite lower vehicle utilization during the pandemic, OCTO’s customers have continued to show steady growth with their users, with more than 5.5M active users, 400,000 monthly rentals, and more than 4.5M managed connected cars and scooters.
OCTO is a technology service provider and advanced data analytics, for smart mobility enterprises, offering end-to-end shared mobility and fleet management solutions for insurance companies, fleet managers, car makers, car sharing operators, and corporate car sharing. OCTO runs more than 15 sharing and rental services across Europe and the Americas, providing more than 4.5M connected vehicles to more than 5.5M registered users and has the largest global telematics data database, with over 280 billion miles of driving data collected and 480,000 insurance claims and events analyzed.
OCTO’s core competency is telematics, which includes connected sensors that enable the monitoring of vehicle usage, and the platform used to manage and make sense of the data generated. For example, an OCTO system might capture a vehicle’s location, speed, idling time, harsh acceleration or braking, fuel consumption, and any mechanical faults or failures. These streams of data are vital for companies looking to efficiently manage their assets.
But simply having the information is not enough. The question is what to do with it to produce desired outcomes for customers, and monetize this value by turning the data into recurring revenue.
To monetize connected vehicle data, companies need to be able to price and bill based on usage-based data. This data is highly variable from driver to driver and vehicle to vehicle as it’s tied to each individual user’s experience. In addition, connected vehicle pricing also has to account for all the services their drivers need, like roadside assistance, insurance, and financing. OCTO needed an end-to-end solution that was agile enough to handle and automate this incredibly complex billing paradigm.
“For usage-based billing, it came down to a question of make or buy,” explains Tina Martino, Head of Market Strategy and Intelligence at OCTO. “It made more sense to deploy a solution that was already working well in the marketplace, that could grow with our evolving needs and integrate into our tech stack. And that solution was Zuora.”
The Zuora platform is so agile it can calculate extremely complex, recurring transactions like those used by connected vehicle companies that are focused on the user’s experience. With Zuora, creating pricing packages based on custom variables like type of car, miles driven, time used, discounts, deposits, and extra fees for out-of-country driver’s licenses was no problem for OCTO.
OCTO quickly rolled out Zuora to its mobility customers. For traditional mobility companies looking to transition to a data-based, recurring revenue model, having a single solution that delivered state-of-the-art telematics AND the latest tech for billing and pricing made the new business model less intimidating and more agile.
The proof is in the adoption: Zuora has proven popular with OCTO’s customers — new packaging and pricing options up 40% in 2020. And, by adopting Zuora, OCTO’s customers are future-proofing their businesses, because they have the flexibility to experiment with new recurring revenue strategies around usage and iterate pricing models as conditions on the road change.
“A one-size-fits-all approach wouldn’t work for our customers. Zuora has helped us meet the different needs of our diverse customer base and grow our business,” says Edwin Colella, Chief Marketing Officer at OCTO. “We are able to offer customers complete freedom to tailor packages to meet the unique needs of their drivers’ experiences.”
“Zuora has helped us introduce usage-based pricing and charge models, so we can tailor packages to meet the constantly changing billing and invoicing needs of our diverse customer base — which has enabled us to grow our business.” – Edwin Colella, Chief Marketing Officer, OCTO
“Zuora has become part of our journey and our customers’ journey towards usership — it allows us to offer an end-to-end billing and pricing solution with the flexibility to customize as needed.” – Tina Martino, Head of Market Strategy and Intelligence, OCTO
Source: zuora.com