Increasing the size of your VAR business

Increasing the size of your VAR business

Given this background of exploding growth prospects, the difficulties for VAR executives become planning for revenue growth while also targeting the greatest profit opportunities-both during the initial sales process and during the lifetime of the customer relationship. Professional services automation software products provide VARs with a competitive advantage and may be the difference between trying to expand and reaping the benefits of the many growth options available to them.

Professional Services Automation Software Benefits for Value-Added Resellers

Executive insight is a term used to refer to a person who has the authority to make decisions.

VAR enterprises are often established by offering a core set of goods and services to their customers. As businesses grow in popularity, they add additional items and services, eventually combining them in ways that customers find appealing. The majority of VARs see their businesses via "business practice" lenses—areas of marketing and delivery that bring together the many disciplines required to provide a customer solution. The traditional start-up system tools are no longer enough; instead, VARs want professional services automation software solutions that manage and report items in the same manner that customers purchase them, via the lens of a practice.

An illustration of how Professional Services Automation (PSA) Software can help improve executive insight.

Consider the case of a network practice that incorporates components of hardware (servers, routers, and hubs) with software (security messaging and e-mail), as well as client education and network monitoring and management. As an example,

A CEO's perspective covers all of the practices and grades them based on important performance factors like revenue, growth rates, and margins, among other things. With drill-down capabilities, practice managers can observe how their initiatives are progressing and discover what is working and what isn't in real time. In essence, VARs may use PSA software to keep their fingers on the pulse of the organization and identify areas where it is increasing or decreasing.

The importance of client visibility is vital since all customers are significant, but in fact, certain customers are more important to your bottom line than others. With the aid of customer relationship management (CRM) software, you may better grasp the lifetime worth of a client-income, projects, bills, and possibilities-and modify your interactions with them.

Attempt to see your situation through the eyes of your customer.

Clients see their connection with the VAR as the aggregate of their contacts with sales representatives, receivables representatives, service issues, and other personnel.

Obtaining such information for even a single customer is often a time-consuming, one-time spreadsheet exercise for a VAR. And after it's finished, the rest of the company isn't generally privy to the newfound information. Therefore, the kinds of successful follow-up actions you want to have on a regular basis, whether it's having an executive make a remedial call or generating an additional sales opportunity, don't happen as often as you'd want them to.

All of it is changed by professional services automation software. It provides executives with a quick snapshot of the most important aspects of a client's transactions: practice revenues and margins, purchasing trends, service problems, and invoice payment, among others. It provides information on the customer's relationship with the VAR and demonstrates the value the client offers to the VAR.

Using this expertise may result in a well-timed phone call from a top executive who will support your stance and help you develop a deeper connection. The data provides you with the knowledge you need to determine priorities, ensuring that you take care of your top customers while also nurturing your most potential prospects.

Keep track of ongoing contacts in order to increase income growth.

Many executives judge the strength of a customer relationship by the number of contacts that occur between the businesses, the frequency with which orders are placed, and the quantity of the orders placed. For example, a growing number of contacts to a support center over a recurring, annoying issue or an excessive number of on-site visits that do not result in any sales are examples of the opposite. Finding fluctuations in purchasing habits with customer relationship management software may serve as an early warning system to assist you in avoiding a good client from leaving and identifying areas where fresh methods may rekindle sales.

Making oneself visible to your customers builds their faith in you.

Clients will consider your capacity to build trust and provide value to their businesses as the final deliverable. Your customers will benefit from your willingness to share their own everyday contacts with them, and you will benefit from the same.

Clients can answer their own questions by logging into the PSA software portal, such as whether their payments have been received (and applied to the correct invoices), which invoices are still outstanding, which orders are still open (and whether any delivery information is available), how many service calls have been placed recently, and how many (which ones) are currently open.

Once an order has been placed, you must set up a project to design, install, and get the system up and running before it can be approved. While the project is in progress, your clients may use the PSA software portal to get an understanding of the project's status, as well as to report internally and communicate with other team members and vendors.

Thinking about the future A professional services automation software package is being used by VARs to monitor the acceptance process and even to assure that a project achieves its business improvement or return on investment estimates. As part of this process, an astute practice manager will be on the lookout for sales possibilities in the aftermarket services sector.

Third, marketing effectiveness is improved when genuine marketing expenses and performance are captured. This helps to increase capture rates while reducing unnecessary marketing expenditure.

We simply don't know which 50 percent of advertising money is being squandered, according to an old marketing maxim. Unfortunately, the same logic holds true for VAR marketing expenses as it does for other types of spending. You can track and analyze the exact costs of all aspects of your lead generation activities, as well as the sales that resulted from those efforts, using professional services automation software.It is this kind of potent information that guarantees that successful concepts are repeated and that less-than-outstanding attempts are thrown out. By understanding the cost per lead and campaign effectiveness, marketing operations may work toward the company's aim of increasing revenue and high-margin business possibilities more effectively.

Keep an eye on pipeline activities to find areas where you can encourage development.

Pipelines are difficult to manage in and of themselves, even if you are not dealing with sandbagging or failed executions. In addition to producing real-time information for sales executives, CFOs, and CEOs, professional services automation software also tracks the progress of proposals through order fulfillment, shipping, and acceptance. Reports that assist you in understanding proposal conversion rates, internal execution, and how effective your staff are when they visit clients on-site are all available to you. The ability to recognize outstanding sales execution, identify areas for improvement in individual salespeople, and determine what has to be done to help solidify a good connection with a customer may be quite beneficial.

Client input should be used to productize possibilities.

Every VAR has a support center to provide ongoing customer assistance as well as project installation services. The information gleaned from these exchanges may be a goldmine of fresh possibilities. PSA software highlights critical call concerns, allowing you to investigate them for potential add-on products and sales possibilities later on. Are you receiving a high volume of calls about start-up difficulties at the end-user level? It's possible that an initial training program on-site is required. Do your customers' information technology departments lack the necessary skills? Perhaps it is time to investigate a managed services option for your company.

Service automation software for VARs may give you the information needed to make educated judgments about whether to productize services for repeatable, high margin sales and can also assist you in identifying developing areas that customers are interested in learning more about.

Improve the efficiency of your upgrade possibilities by gaining information about your customers' installed environments.

The technology business, by its very nature, is constantly on the lookout for the next big thing to come along. Unfortunately, end-user clients will be unable to keep up with the constant adoption of the next great thing in the IT world. In reality, they often do not get the most out of any piece of equipment and may not be aware of the cost-saving potential that may be realized by upgrading some pieces of equipment.

When you understand how and when a customer purchases, selling becomes much simpler. Many information technology directors have a budgeting model that is based on the concept of being completely depreciated. Knowing when equipment depreciation happens might help you plan sales efforts that make use of this built-in financial information you already have. Sales representatives that are innovative will view this as a chance to propose new contractual conditions that go beyond the scope of a specific project or delivery date. Taking a deal off the street, for example, may include replacing all of a company's PCs over a three-year period, as the systems depreciate entirely, and proposing unique payment arrangements to take the sting out of large lump-sum payments.

Fourth, internal operations: Managing technology implementations entails ensuring that projects are completed on schedule and within budget constraints. Real-time awareness helps identify margin leakage before it becomes a significant issue.

Strenuous management over new technology releases can increase income while keeping ramp-up expenditures to a minimum.

Getting a new technology ready for the market is not a simple or cheap job. Employee training and certification, setting up development environments, building up your product distribution network, and other essential ramp-up activities, for example, can be identified and controlled with the use of strong project management capabilities in your PSA software.Technology ramp up is a massive internal project that requires significant capital expenditures. Profitability is typically dependent on effective project and budget management, as well as the prevention of cost overruns. PSA software products provide you with time and cost management information that you can put to use to assist in ensuring that your workforce is prepared and that your project is completed on time and at the cost you anticipated.