/Executive Briefs/

Leveraging KPIs to Maximize Service Revenue Generation Performance

KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are essential for measuring the success of not only your business, but the overall health and efficiency of your operations and sales processes.  A pitfall we have seen in the Service Revenue Generation industry is that companies tend to be too myopic in what measurements and areas they focus on for their KPIs.  Most Service Revenue Generation organizations mainly focus on Renewal Rate to measure the health of the business.  While renewal rate is a critical KPI, it should not be the only KPI used.  Likewise, digging deeper into how renewal rate is calculated will also shed a good deal of light on the state of your Service Revenue Generation business. It is imperative that organizations with a focus on Service Revenue Generation keep in mind that not all KPIs should be company-wide.  It is just as important to create and measure KPIs for each [...]

2018-08-28T13:42:28-05:00Contract Management, IT Inventory Management, KPIs, Service Revenue Generation, Service Revenues|0 Comments
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As IT Revenue Generation Evolves, Outsourcing Your Maintenance Practice May Be the Fast Track to Survival

Despite optimistic IT spending forecasts, IT organizations aren’t immune to turbulence. The rapid commoditization of hardware and software, paired with evolving enterprise technology adoption habits, is taking a toll on profitability. Technology manufacturers faced with shrinking product sales are leaning on their maintenance and support practices to offset the loss. But many are quickly finding that sustaining maintenance revenue with internal resources alone is easier said than done. The Complicated State of IT Revenue Generation Multiple factors have contributed to the diminishing state of tech product revenues. For starters, the profile of the traditional IT buyer is changing. More procurement decisions are being made by line of business managers – not just the IT department. This decentralization of power means each team has a smaller technology budget to pull from, impeding managers’ ability to get approval on big-ticket deployments. At the same time, the industry’s move toward as-a-service subscription models lets [...]

2018-08-02T11:58:10-05:00Service Revenue Generation, Staff Augmentation|0 Comments
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Why Organizations Within the Channel Should Consider Staff Augmentation to Grow Their Maintenance Practice

Once an IT provider sells a piece of IT equipment, it’s tempting to simply close the door and move on to the next sales opportunity – especially when that product is already under warranty. But warranties expire, which quickly leads to maintenance contracts, which can ultimately lead to profitable relationships with customers. And failure to address and nurture opportunities as they expand ultimately results in hundreds and thousands of dollars in lost revenue.  A successful maintenance practice looks beyond the final point of sale and instead focuses on the lifecycle of the contract and the opportunity to build long-term customer relationships. The challenge most channel organizations face, however, is the lack of resources and expertise to create a successful nurture program. Internal sales teams, for example, may not have the marketing and reporting expertise needed to develop a sustainable growth plan or the technology used to manage service lifecycles may [...]

2018-07-31T16:46:59-05:00Service Revenue Generation, Service Revenues, Staff Augmentation|0 Comments
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How Automated Renewal Solutions Can Eliminate Chaos as Sales and Service Teams Merge

Today’s technology companies are caught in a paradigm shift. With businesses competing for the lion’s share of the market, the focus of most IT channel partners is on nurturing high-volume, low-dollar contracts. Relying on a few high-margin deals is no longer enough – renewals are much easier to secure than netting new business and can help businesses grow their bottom line.  Market dynamics and a crowded industry are pushing manufacturers,distributors, and resellers towards an annual recurring revenue (ARR) business model. But adopting an ARR model can be challenging for organizations with internal teams operating in silos. Today, the customer journey is a disjointed process that can leave money on the table. To take advantage of these untapped revenue opportunities, sales and renewals teams need to collaborate with one another to deliver the best customer experience possible.  The need for a unified sales strategy has inspired a movement toward “customer success” – [...]

2018-09-04T12:27:46-05:00Automated Contract Renewal Solutions, Automated Quoting, Building Annuity Revenues, Customer Success|0 Comments
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Why Simple Solutions Can’t Accommodate the Technology Channel’s Complex Service Contract Ecosystems

To put it gently, IT providers have a lot on their plate. From different levels of service to varying contract lengths and unique reporting needs, these companies have their hands full staying on top of service renewal lifecycles. Despite this immense complexity, a surprising number of companies continue to use rudimentary contract management solutions that slow business operations and exacerbate workplace inefficiencies. Managing a multidimensional service ecosystem with disparate data sources can leave IT providers struggling to make sense of their service and product lifecycles. A global hardware manufacturer, for example, will quickly discover that antiquated applications or CRM systems alone can’t process high volumes of data or deliver the business insights they need. Complex problems are rarely solved by simple solutions. Ironically, many IT manufacturers and providers are hesitant to upgrade their toolkits. A recent survey found one in four technology providers don’t have tools to manage their product and service [...]

2018-07-26T14:47:14-05:00Building Annuity Revenues, IT Inventory Management, Service Revenues|0 Comments
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Are Manufacturers Providing the Channel With the Right Tools to Capture Service Revenue?

The IT channel is in a state of flux. New competitors and shifting customer behavior are redefining the game for manufacturers and each of their downstream partners. Amazon, for instance, recently entered the managed services arena, signalling a paradigm shift on-par with what the technology behemoth did to traditional bookstores. As enterprise software vendors trend toward as-a-service delivery models, resellers are shifting their focus from products to services (as well as proprietary IP). Recently, vendors from Dell EMC to Kaspersky Labs and Google have unveiled new or improved partner programs to maximize their revenue potential. Confronted with this widespread change, technology manufacturers are quickly realizing they can’t phone in channel partner relationships. As hardware and software become more commoditized, maintenance and support are one of the few remaining areas that drive healthy margins. For manufacturers to maintain this critical annuity revenue, they need to put the right tools in the [...]

2018-10-02T15:50:26-05:00Service Revenues|0 Comments
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Is Your Contract Lifecycle Management Software Allowing You to Address 100% of Service Revenue Opportunity?

If so, you are definitely in a class of your own! In fact, data suggests that technology providers are missing out on up to 36% of the service contract revenue available to them.  For many manufacturers and their channel partners, this missed opportunity is the end result of failing to properly implement and utilize contract lifecycle management software to manage and renew upcoming (often low-dollar / high-volume) contract renewals. Fortunately, new best practices are emerging centered around utilizing SaaS contract lifecycle management software for more effective service contract management. What is a “Low-Dollar” Contract? A low-dollar contract is typically a contract with a 1:1 ratio, meaning that it represents just one piece of equipment or service per contract. These types of contracts typically come in high volumes, with total contract values of less than $25k. These contracts must be renewed by the customer in order to continue service protection for assets or products that they already [...]

2018-07-26T14:41:42-05:00Contract Management, SaaS Contract Management Solutions, Service Revenues|0 Comments
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How VARs Can Leverage Enterprise Asset Management to Become B4B

In  Reinventing the Customer-Supplier Relationship,authors J.B. Wood, Todd Hewlin, and Thomas Lah describe a fundamental shift in how enterprises do business. Analyzing interviews with more than 300 suppliers, the authors found that increasingly, customers do not want to buy tools: They strive to achieve business outcomes. And they’re willing to share confidential enterprise information if partners can help them achieve game-changing results. Many leading VARs and distributors have already recognized this shift and are working strategically with their customers to address enterprise asset management challenges, such as maximizing asset performance and increasing organizational efficiency and effectiveness. Here is how VARs can take a proactive B4B stance to help their customers drive to best-in-class results. Enterprise Asset Management: a Land-and-Expand Opportunity Managing enterprise assets is a complex, confusing endeavor – even for the teams dedicated to doing so. Asset and part data, warranties, and service agreements are often tracked in Excel [...]

2018-07-26T14:33:44-05:00B4B, Contract Management, Enterprise Asset Management, SaaS Contract Management Solutions|0 Comments
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VARs “Lean” on Proactive IT Asset Management to Increase Agility

For the past two decades, leading companies have leveraged Agile and Lean methodologies to increase value and reduce waste as they develop IT systems. Now, SaaS companies, VARs and distributors are applying the same principles to their businesses as they strive to achieve better outcomes – for their businesses and their customers. SaaS and Agile: A Perfect Match With their shared focus on customer business value, fast development cycles, and frequent software releases, it’s clear that SaaS platforms and Agile methodologies were made for each other. So it’s no wonder that Managed Maintenance, Inc. (MMI) used Agile methodologies to develop its best-of-breed IT asset management portal, ONEview from the ground up. Embedding Agile methodologies into daily business processes and customer interactions has enabled MMI to stay close to changing market needs, rolling out new product and service offerings that provide companies with competitive advantage, when it discovers new opportunities. Most recently, MMI [...]

2018-07-27T17:08:33-05:00Agile, Automated Quoting, Contract Management, IT Inventory Management|0 Comments
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Mayhem or Margin? How Resellers and Distributors Can Turn Big Data Chaos into a Game-Changing Opportunity

Big data is one of the most important issues companies are trying to get their arms around. Every company has a wealth of data at their fingertips, but employees often lack the know how and tools to turn information into intelligence. So what’s at stake? For resellers and distributors, quite simply, it’s the customer relationship. Do they want to be vendors or partners? Hint: There should be only one answer to this question. Resellers and distributors who help their customers gain control of big data mayhem will find that they create the opportunity for significant financial margin, while differentiating themselves from competitors who focus exclusively on the IT sale. And the opportunity is boundless: IDC says the big data market will reach $16.1 billion in 2014 alone, with services accounting for 29% of all sales. So what is big data? It is the unstructured information about company processes, customers, and businesses [...]

2018-07-26T14:20:58-05:00Big Data, Contract Management|0 Comments
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