Architecting Your Business For Success
An organization's collection of internal processes essentially serve as its internal bone structure providing a support framework for the organization -- it is not the strength of one, but the collective strength of all. In today’s market, the success or failure of an organization is greatly dependent upon its ability to implement cohesive ‘process methodologies’ to achieve its desired goals. This also holds true for solution providers as they must define how they will develop processes to provide their customers with the highest level of support and service. One such process is the ongoing accountability and management of customer annuity agreements, often regarded as the “lifeblood” of a solution provider organization and its recurring revenue streams.
Most process methodologies involve the interaction between people, process, and technology to deliver business outcomes. The success or failure of an organization is greatly dependent upon how these three areas interact to achieve desired goals. Annuity agreement management is often approached with little regard to all three components, and is frequently handled from a people perspective with little regard to process and tools. As the business grows, the volume and complexity of the agreements quickly overwhelm the ability to address the problem with people alone.
To help close this gap, solution providers rely heavily upon on distribution and OEM organizations to provide some of the process aspects of annuity management, such as expiration notifications. However, because they lack the controls necessary make minor adjustments to the process, gaps still exist. The policies and procedures will vary based on provider, and the ability to scale will be inhibited by these inconsistencies. On the other hand, organizations allowing internal processes to be developed by individual sales teams risk creating inconsistent customer experiences, which can be devastating to the long-term sustainability of high-value customer relationships.
Organizations proactively pursuing annuity agreements as a business focus are taking an approach that covers all three aspects of process development.
People – They are dedicating teams that sole purpose is the growth of annuity contracts
Process – They are defining repeatable processes to guide how renewals are executed, and creating metrics that measure effectiveness.
Technology – They are implementing a tool set that is purpose built for contract management, and allows them to systematically measure their process execution
A well designed annuity management program, coupled with defined internal processes and quality people, guarantees activities are accomplished in the correct order, inter-dependencies are considered, and the data is accurately maintained and updated. Continued process improvements coupled with an effective management platform advances a solution provider’s ability to orchestrate customer data in a reliable way -- ensuring tighter customer connections and improved annuity growth.
Leveraging a purpose-built tool set allows solution providers to identify key business metrics such as revenue, close performance, on-time renewals, and up-sell /cross-sell performance to manage how process effectiveness is measured specifically around time, efficiency, and cost savings. Such a solution can also be leveraged to ensure that the appropriate person is assigned the appropriate tasks based on pre-defined criteria such as skill and availability. It is then brought all together within a single pane of glass showing the key metrics driving the outcome.
If you are interested in wrapping a process-based solution around your annuity management business, and turning the contract management headache into a revenue/profit growth stream for your organization, please contact us below. Helping our partners create a differentiated approach to annuity management is what we do.
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