Ever-tighter reseller margins and the shift toward subscriptions as the main business model for selling hardware and software is putting additional pressure on IT providers to invest in diversifying their range of services and payment options.
Here are five reasons why IT providers should migrate their customers and expand their product and services portfolio in Cloudmore.
Any product or service can be showcased and sold in Cloudmore. This includes one-off buys, as well as subscription services. IT providers can add their own managed services and combine this with other services available instantly through our distribution partners.
The wider the variety of products and services offered, the more business problems an IT provider can solve across their client’s organization, and the more a client buys, the less likely they are to switch to other providers.
Processing a single order can be a very drawn-out process of back and forth exchanges between people (customers, internal teams and vendors) and different business management platforms and systems.
Cloudmore helps by bringing vendor information into the platform and eliminates protracted and error-prone activities by streamlining order management, from storefront viewing and self-service, right through to billing.
Vendor pricing is automatically updated, and Cloudmore makes purchase costs and sales revenue easy to reconcile. Pricing of all products and services can be set ‘per deal’ or ‘per customer’, and billing breakdowns are available to internal teams and customers in reports that are clear and simple to understand.
Next year, all new entrants to the software market and 80% of historical vendors will offer subscription-based business models. A big plus for IT providers is that existing offers can be sold as a subscription in Cloudmore.
Subscriptions can be difficult to process manually if a business’s goal is to operate at automated scale. A typical subscription has a larger number of order transactions because customers (or internal teams on behalf of the customer) can typically upgrade, downgrade, renew or change SKUs. Keeping track of all of these changes requires machine-driven wizardry.
Cloudmore automatically tracks, calculates and records every add, move and change in the system. Notifications can be set up to remind customers and internal teams that renewals are due which means that no revenue is leaked.
Subscriptions don’t only offer the comfortable advantage of a predictable recurring revenue stream. The subscription model also delivers a committed customer base with regular touch points, not just for renewals and upgrades, but to sell entirely new products and services.
Because the Cloudmore platform is for everyone (customers and internal teams (finance, accounting, provisioning, IT, …), sales have the added benefit of being able to log in and get a unified view of every transaction in the system, including clear snapshots of what’s happening on an organizational or individual level.
This single pane view means that important information isn’t being left in data silos across the organization. Sales can therefore more easily negotiate things like software upgrades and service-level agreements.
Today customers expect flexible pricing and user-friendly self-service. They also want quick team responses and secure, efficient, quality service delivery. Cloudmore helps IT providers to manage the dynamics of these evolving demands.
The platform, if used to its full potential, promises more share of the customer wallet, and the release of more resources for you to invest in differentiating and expanding your services.
Learn how to make the most of your cross-sell and up-sell strategy using automation