Case Studies

CloudHealth by VMWare Case Study

When CloudHealth Technologies, the world’s most trusted cloud management platform, switched to BlueSnap, they saw a significant increase in the number of card payments and dramatically decreased their payment cycle.

“We must continue to be efficient while we scale; we’ve opened new offices, doubled our headcount, and expanded our global customer base. I have nothing but good things to say about BlueSnap. So far everything has been working incredibly smoothly. I’m a happy customer.”

Eric Goode, Director Of Finance & Controller, CloudHealth by VMWare

Introduction

Who is CloudHealth by VMWare?

We’re known as the most trusted cloud management platform in the world. We cater to 3,000 organizations worldwide and manage about $5 billion in cloud spend. Companies that are trying to build their businesses on any cloud platform, including Azure and AWS, turn to CloudHealth to make it all happen.

What makes your solution unique?

Our cloud management platform optimizes cloud cost, usage, performance and security, while offering the highest levels of data integrity throughout the entire cloud journey. The breadth of what we offer is beyond what others do. We provide a full suite of cloud management services, which covers everything from optimizing companies’ cloud infrastructure to helping with cost management, governance, automation, security, and more. Many of our competitors are decent in one or two of those areas, whereas we excel at all of them. We also have a reputation as being the most trusted cloud management partner in the business. Cloud spend can add up to millions of dollars for some organizations, so it’s important for us to provide accurate cost data they can feel confident about.

Who are your customers and what are they trying to solve with your solution?

We work with companies across all industries, for example Yelp, Amtrak, and Acquia; many of our customers are global enterprises and service providers. All the organizations we work with are looking to build a cloud environment that supports their needs and benefits their business but also optimizes their resources. That’s where we come in—by giving them insight into cost, usage, and performance of their data center infrastructure and crafting strategies that will help them achieve their goals and accelerate their business.

The Challenge

What pain points were you looking to solve?

For a while we were using Intuit’s gateway through QuickBooks, but even when we moved off of QuickBooks (before we started using BlueSnap) we continued engaging that same gateway occasionally for credit card processing. We sent invoices by email, but customers had to contact us with their card information. As a rapidly scaling global company, CloudHealth prizes both security and efficiency. Not only was it a slow process, but we also felt like this system lacked strong security measures; we rarely used credit card billing as a result.

Why did you choose BlueSnap?

Focusing on the customer is one of the core tenets for the business as a whole. When we heard about BlueSnap’s payment gateway features, it seemed like the perfect fit for us. Our number one concern was having the ability to take credit card payments securely, and BlueSnap allows us to send a secure Payment Link to customers via email. We also like the fact that BlueSnap, not us, is responsible for maintaining secure data. Now my team is moving more customers toward credit card payments because it’s so fast, so easy, and security is layered in.

Other reasons we chose BlueSnap: The plugin with Zuora streamlines our collection process. The price was right. It could be implemented quickly. And it’s very easy to use—my team is hardly ever in the BlueSnap platform because things seem to run so seamlessly. All these features plus facilitating faster payment just made sense.

How are you integrated with BlueSnap?

We use a subscription management platform called Zuora. (We recently switched from using our ERP system’s subscription billing engine, which wasn’t sufficient for our needs.) Zuora helps us manage our subscriptions all the way from quote to cash—the “cash” aspect is where BlueSnap comes in. The fact that BlueSnap seamlessly integrates with Zuora made it even more attractive to us as a gateway.

The Solution

How was the integration process?

We had a sandbox environment set up for our ERP as well as BlueSnap, and we were able to test some charges against the test credit card data BlueSnap provided to ensure the charges were being reflected appropriately in Zuora. Then we did a real test when we went live, and I actually charged $1 to my own credit card to see if it would go all the way through. Needless to say, it went well.

What impact did the switch to BlueSnap have?

Being able to send a secure link directly to customers with every invoice has increased the number of credit card payments we process and shortened the payment cycle dramatically. It’s also made life easier for our customers. Before BlueSnap and Zuora we were not leveraging credit card processing—we were doing it for about 1% of our customer base. Now we send out secure links 700 times a month and have 10 times the number of credit card customers we used to have. That means we’re getting paid faster. Our ultimate goal is to have a 60-day payment cycle. When we started working with BlueSnap we were in the high 80s and have since brought it down into the low 70s. I’m a happy guy.