As your company continues to grow, you may find that you have acquired a varied collection of licensing systems.  Each product line has its own registration process, and its own set of problems. This may be manageable for awhile, but eventually multiple product lines affect almost every department within your company, and the repercussions are reaching your customers. A disparate licensing system can hinder internal communication and wipe out resources.  Your staff is no longer focusing on your core competencies, but rather spending all of their time on your licensing system.

With an entitlement management system, streamline your back office and create one cohesive licensing system to maintain. Here are the 5 ways that an entitlement management system can help you empower your employees to work smarter, not harder.

1. Streamline Your Back Office

Multiple licensing systems can place stress on every department in your company.  Customer service fields more calls concerning licensing than your actual product.  Your IT department is bogged down working on licensing management, and cannot work on core competencies. Sales is frustrated with the registration process, knowing how complicated it is for customers. You need a corporate standard for maintaining one back-office system that can handle the licensing needs of all products. With an entitlement management system, you can streamline your back office incorporating any ERP and CRM system to fully manage all software licenses. Internal communications will improve, and less time and effort will be spent trying to maintain a broken system.

2. Gain Better Customer Insight

With your current system, you have no visibility into customer activation or buying patterns. Your sales team is missing out on the ability to up-sell and cross-sell current customers. Project management spends vast amounts of time creating product road maps, many times guessing which products should evolve. Give your teams the tools that they need!  By implementing an entitlement management system, project management has better insight into which products, as well as the features within those products, are being used.  This allows them to create product road maps more effectively. Sales is able to view customer buying patterns and can take advantage of up-sell opportunities.  Your team will also be able to customize product packages on the fly, increasing sales and customer satisfaction.

3. Faster Fulfillment

Let’s face it, everyone makes mistakes.  Orders are entered multiple times into multiple systems by multiple people, increasing the possibility of human error.  Even when your customers finally receive their registration information, its complicated, time consuming and not user friendly.  Customer service is fielding so many calls about registration and license management that they forget what their core competencies even are.  And don’t even ask your operations staff how they feel about the fulfillment, registration and activation process.  The implementation of an entitlement management system provides increased accuracy of customer orders and faster turnaround times.  A growing customer base with multiple product lines available requires an easier registration process.  With an entitlement management system you have one easy way for registering all products that is automated and customer friendly.

4. Focus on Core Competencies

Here’s the thing… you aren’t a software licensing and entitlement management company.  While it is an important part of your business, it’s not your ‘sweet spot.’  With a third party entitlement management system, tech support and customer service can spend less time helping customers with licensing inquiries, and more time working on addressed product support issues. An easier registration process for customers and a more efficient process for fulfilling products means less time assisting confused customers. Sales should be out in the field hunting for new customers and converting prospects. Once your company can focus on core competencies, you are able to allocate employee time and internal resources, pushing you ahead of the competition.

5. Greater Customer Satisfaction

A disparate licensing system affects everyone, including your customers!  An entitlement management system can allow your sales team to customize pricing and packaging, giving them all of the tools that they need for that big sales win.  Trialware allows current customers and prospective clients to try your products, increasing your market penetration and accelerating the sales cycle.  Product alerts remind your customers of upgrades automatically, ensuring they are always up to date.  Implementing an entitlement management solution is sure to enhance your customer experience and improve customer retention.

What’s your take on entitlement management?