Automating Renewals Using an Integrated Solution

ICT Value Added Resellers (VARs) must handle renewals effectively in order to preserve revenue streams and customer satisfaction. Research indicates that poor renewal management can lead to average revenue losses of 9.2% per year due to mistakes and lost opportunities.

The renewal process is a multi-step, time-consuming procedure that is intrinsically complex. In this blog, StrataVAR examines how a renewal and quoting solution – fueled by automation – can simplify this difficult procedure. Quoting and renewal automation guarantees precision, effectiveness, and improved results for VARs and their clients.

The Challenging Process of ICT VAR Renewals

Renewals for ICT VARs involve a series of intricate steps that need to be meticulously managed over an extended period, often starting six months before the EoX of products. To ensure that the scope of renewals is precise, every step needs to be monitored and tracked in order to prevent missing any important details. 

Key challenges of renewal management include:

• Mapping Scope of Renewals Accurately: ICT VARS must be crystal clear on what exactly needs to be renewed. This includes identifying and consolidating all contracts that require renewal, comparing the items in the contracts with the items the end user actually has. This can be especially challenging when dealing with discrepancies due to mergers, acquisitions, or new items added to the portfolio.

• Requesting Quotes from Suppliers: This involves obtaining up-to-date prices for thousands or possibly tens of thousands of items from suppliers, adding appropriate mark-ups, and translating them into customer-facing quotes.

• Updating the Renewal Platform: Once quotes are finalized, the renewal platform must reflect the new state, ensuring all data is accurate and up-to-date.

By diligently tracking the responsibilities of each stakeholder throughout the renewal process, ICT VARs can achieve better oversight and coordination. This enhanced visibility not only helps streamline the entire process but also boosts renewal rates and, consequently, the overall profitability of the VAR.

Bringing Automation to Quoting and Renewal Solutions

The entire renewal process can be made much simpler with automation. An integrated renewal and quoting solution is crucial, as these systems complement each other to streamline the entire process from renewal to final quote. Although the process is often executed on two separate systems, managing renewals effectively over time requires collaboration between both systems. This collaboration of automated quotes and renewal ensures that data is consolidated in both, enabling seamless management and reducing the risk of missed opportunities. By leveraging the strengths of both solutions, VARs can achieve a holistic approach to renewals, ensuring accuracy, efficiency, and sustained revenue growth.

Let’s consider a real-world example involving an ICT VAR that manages renewals for a large portfolio of clients.

• Notifications and Alerts: An ICT VAR manages renewals for over 500 clients, each with multiple contracts. Traditionally, their team manually tracked renewal dates using spreadsheets, leading to missed deadlines and last-minute rushes. With an automated renewal process set in place, the VAR now receives timely notifications and alerts for each contract renewal milestone. For example, six months before a contract’s EoX, the renewal automation system sends an alert to initiate the renewal process, ensuring that no step is missed, and the team can prioritize their workload effectively.

• Data Consolidation and Tracking: Previously, when automated quotes were not used, the ICT VAR struggled with data scattered across different systems and creating quotes in spreadsheets. This made it difficult to get a comprehensive view of each client’s renewal status. Quoting and renewal management automation consolidates all relevant data into a single platform. The system tracks every contract, renewal date, pricing, and supplier information, providing a unified dashboard where the team can easily monitor and manage the entire renewal process.

• Contract Unification and Synchronization: The VAR often deals with multiple contracts. Manually updating and unifying these contracts was time-consuming and prone to errors. The automated contract renewal system now handles contract unification and synchronization. The VAR can identify and resolve discrepancies, ensuring all contracts are accurately reflected in the system.

• Quoting and Pricing Updates: Obtaining and updating supplier quotes was another bottleneck. The VAR had to manually request prices from suppliers, add mark-ups, and create customer-facing quotes. With automated quoting software, this process is streamlined. The system automatically requests and retrieves the latest prices from suppliers, applies predefined mark-ups, and generates accurate quotes for clients.

• Customer Communication and Approvals: Manual communication with clients for renewals often led to delays and miscommunication. Dedicated renewal automation and automated quoting systems enhance customer interactions by collaborating with the customer throughout the renewal and quoting process. Clients can approve the quotes directly through an online portal, reducing the turnaround time for renewals.

3 Benefits of Quoting and Renewals Processing Automation 

Automating the renewal process with an integrated automated quoting system and renewal solutions delivers multiple advantages. 

1. 1. By replacing manual methods with automated quotes and renewal solutions, businesses can efficiently manage the process from end-to-end through timely notifications. Transitioning from Excel files to an automated quote generator with a comprehensive database allows for easy management of large volumes of data, often involving thousands of items, significantly reducing errors and ensuring consistency.

2. 2. By utilizing an all-in-one platform, businesses can leverage sandbox environments to manipulate data and contracts and facilitate seamless customer collaboration within the platform. The platform can help translate supplier quotes into customer-facing contracts, while dashboards keep track of all activities.

3. 3. Convenient integrations further enhance the process. Connecting with suppliers provides current state data, integrating with quoting solutions helps create accurate customer-facing quotes, and linking with ERP and CRM systems ensures comprehensive` management.

Use StrataVAR’s Automated Quoting and Renewal Platform for Your VAR Business

For ICT VARs seeking to streamline their renewal management, exploring automated platforms like StrataVAR’s Partner Renewal Workstation (PrW) can lead to more efficient and error-free processes, ensuring better outcomes for both the business and its customers. For more information about StrataVAR’s renewal automation solutions for resellers, contact StrataVAR.