Flowbird Teams up With Zuora to Advance Digitalisation and Growth

For over 50 years, Flowbird has been at the forefront of defining urban mobility. The companies within its family were responsible for pivotal inventions, including the development of the first parking meter. Headquartered in Paris, Flowbird is an established world leader, with a 70% share of the on-street parking technology market.

To help accelerate growth, both in France and globally, Flowbird has called on Zuora®, a leading provider of a monetisation platform for recurring revenue companies. Its objective is to develop monetisation strategies suited to its evolving business model. As Flowbird transitions from being primarily a hardware supplier to delivering integrated solutions and Software-as-a-Service, it is developing an economic structure that’s fit for the future.

Facing the future with confidence

“Flowbird is undergoing an exciting transformation. We want to surround ourselves with partners that can support us in our digitalisation, so that we are in a strong position to meet the needs of our customers, now and in the future,” comments Olivier Bellin, Chief Financial Officer at Flowbird. “Our partnership with Zuora plays a big part in this, allowing us to implement a consistent solution for digital invoicing across our regions.”

A customer-centric approach

“The first step of our collaboration with Flowbird was to set up a billing system adapted to its many types of customers and end users,” explains Romuald Méresse, Managing Director France of Zuora. “We can solve this challenge with our Zuora Billing solution.”

Flowbird is a player in the B2G, B2B and B2C marketplaces. Urban mobility policy makers; city agencies; and parking, transport and mobility operators, are among Flowbird’s thousands of customers around the world. In addition, it has a direct relationship with the users who interact with their payment terminals and mobility apps, using payment, ticketing, information and other services available through these interfaces.

“Our commitment to customer experience means that we want to service all of our customers’ goals in the most efficient way. Our billing methods need to adapt to our guiding principles of speed and simplicity, and this is where Zuora’s support is critical. Zuora allows us to streamline our invoicing and give customers complete transparency on their payment history with our business,” said Olivier Bellin.

A foundation for growth

Flowbird’s footprint is impressive, with systems in 4,350 cities and 80 countries. The business handles more than 350 million transactions per year, and has its own payment gateway for processing parking and transport payments. As the business mobilises for further expansion, it is crucial to establish a flexible, scalable solution for billing.

“The Zuora Billing solution has allowed us to reorganise our teams to create more value for the organisations and individuals we serve. Our quest for effortlessness, replacing manual processes with an intuitive digital system, gives time back to us all. This time and effort can be channeled instead into maximising the customer experience” Olivier Bellin explained.

Keeping pace with change

In a rapidly evolving mobility sector, Flowbird is ahead of the curve. As cities race to meet directives to provide adequate infrastructure for EV charging, for example, Flowbird has already designed a fully-fledged combined solution for public parking and charging.

Similarly, as demand for contactless and mobile payments, and Mobility-as-a-Service apps grows, Flowbird is ready. Removing the complexity of upgrading infrastructure, the company enables customers to move fast to position themselves as ‘poster cities’ for modern mobility.

Future-readiness must be supported by smooth operational processes and financial systems – and Zuora is an important ally. “Flowbird has implemented the Zuora Billing solution in France and has just deployed the Zuora Revenue solution to accelerate its growth by automating revenue-related operations,” explains Romuald Méresse.

“Our platform has the agility and resilience to respond seamlessly to changing consumer habits. It allows companies like Flowbird to not only respond to the influx of invoices, but also to develop new offers and to have the capacity to plan for future commercial evolutions.”

About Flowbird

As the global leader in urban mobility, Flowbird has been promoting a different vision of the smart city for over 50 years. By offering flexible transportation and parking solutions in 80 countries and 4,350 cities around the world, Flowbird deploys an optimized and unique offer to address the specific issues of each territory and make urban mobility simpler, multimodal and environmentally friendly. Flowbird in figures: 2021 revenues: €309 million 1,300 employees - 8 Flowbird offices worldwide - 100 million users.

About Zuora, Inc.

Zuora provides a leading monetization platform for recurring revenue businesses across all industries, enabling companies to unlock customer-centric business models. After starting with Zuora Billing in 2007, Zuora’s award-winning multi-product portfolio now also includes Zuora Revenue, Zuora Collect, and Zephr, all powered by the Zuora Platform. Zuora serves as an intelligent hub that monetizes and orchestrates the complete quote to cash and revenue recognition process at scale. Through its industry leading technology and expertise, Zuora helps more than 1,000 companies around the world, including BMC Software, Box, Caterpillar, General Motors, Penske Media Corporation, Schneider Electric, Siemens and Zoom nurture and monetize direct, digital customer relationships.

Headquartered in Silicon Valley, Zuora operates offices around the world in the U.S., EMEA and APAC. www.zuora.com

Contacts presse | Rumeur Publique zuora(at)rumeurpublique.fr