By Tina Lux-Boim

To succeed in the next decade, channel partners must deal with the emerging trends of increased priorities in solving business issues, and streamlining processes rather than adding technology solutions.  Business owners and their leadership teams have steadily shifted focus to replacing capital expenses with operating expense.  This allows cash to be controlled and costs can become variable and manageable.

Understanding this culture shift, and making the necessary adjustments to the business MMI  built to support and enhance the channel, has allowed me the opportunity to be considered a 2013 Channel Chief.
MMI has chosen to lead with value recognition within the channel rather than volume sales.  We accomplish this by:

1.  Designing services and software programs that will scale to meet the ever changing demands of the industry;

2. Offering an elegant and comprehensive portfolio of related software modules that are easy to use and lend themselves to the ease of doing business models for the client;

3. Ensuring we are focused on best practices within the industry, and are designing solid business processes to anchor and leverage our software solution;

4. Building a strong sales, consulting, and services organization with over 100 years of combined industry-related experience and knowledge;

5. Being open to change and the demands of the market, and moving quickly to solve any related problems that arise from those changes or demands.

Helping customers leverage automation to decrease cost and increase annuity revenues is a key opportunity for MMI.  Our customers demand a platform that can accommodate the replacement of archaic revenue procurement processes related to annuity renewals.

Any level of distraction or inattention may result in a lack of customer satisfaction required for relationship maintenance, can slow down or  stop the flow of ideas, and ultimately result in degradation of our most important resources  – an innovative spirit and associated intellectual capital.  Having dedicated services resulting from our need to support new industry initiatives, and designing relevant business processes that support our valued offering, the ONEview platform, ensures long-term valued relationships and success.

In a world where technology continues to become a commodity, MMI strives to become our client’s strategic partner by leading the channel in our knowledge base and the ability to react quickly, delivering improved new software enhancements faster and with greater agility.  Learning is an essential piece of the equation for MMI; and based on learning the lessons presented to MMI each day, in order to succeed we assume full responsibility for customer support, market development, and the cultivation of long-term customer relationships.

If you haven’t already, I encourage you to come learn with MMI, and help us successfully LEAD the channel into the next decade and beyond.

Filed under: IBM, IT Asset Management, Maintenance Contract Management, Maintenance Renewals, Tina Lux-Boim | No Comments »

The world of technology is constantly evolving. Things that were once only imaginative items in the realm of science-fiction are rapidly becoming realities in our everyday lives. One of the latest is the Google Glass.

The Project Glass is a research and development program by Google to develop an augmented reality head-mounted display (HMD). Google Glass, will be a head-mounted, Internet-enabled display (shown in picture). Early this year Google should release a US-developer version at a price of $1,500 USD and a more polished consumer version late 2013-early 2014.

The lightweight browband, which looks like an
ordinary pair of reading glasses minus the
lenses, connects to an earpiece that has much
the same electronics you’d find in an Android
phone. That hardware lets Glass record its
wearer’s conversations and surroundings and
store those recordings in the cloud; respond to
voice commands, finger taps, and swipes on an earpiece that doubles as a touch pad; and automatically take pictures every 10 seconds. Prototypes connect to the Internet through Wi-Fi or through Bluetooth and a smartphone. Future versions will likely include a cellular antenna.

Babak Parviz was a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Washington when Google recruited him to work on wearable-computing technologies and lead its Google Glass project. He provided this update on Google Glass in an interview with IEEE Spectrum in mid-December:

IEEE Spectrum: What is Google trying to accomplish with Google Glass?

Babak Parviz:We wanted to have adevice that would do two things that we think would be useful for a lot of people. One is to have a device that would allow for pictorial communications, to allow people to connect to others with images and video. Right now, we don’t have any devices that are specifically engineered to connect to others using images or video. So we wanted to have a device that would see the world through your eyes and allow you to share that view with other people. The second big goal was to have a technology that would allow people to access information very, very quickly. So when you have a question, you can very rapidly get to the answer.

IEEE Spectrum: Has anyone on the team written any apps for Google Glass?

Babak Parviz: This is a complicated thing. This is not a laptop or a smartphone. It’s an entirely new platform. So how people interact with it and what people do with it is totally new territory. We’ve explored multiple things. We’ve taken pictures and done search and other things with this device. But we hope that when we ship this to developers, other people will also figure out what this very powerful platform is able to do.

Read the full interview HERE

And so, very soon, you will be able to share your “eye view” of the world, literally, with anyone you choose. We wonder what this new technology will enable us to do in the business arena. Stay tuned.

Content of this article thanks to “Google Glass Features and Apps Still in Flux” and “Google Gets in Your Face” at http://m.spectrum.ieee.org

For more information about Managed Maintenance and its contract management programs visit http://managedmaint.com

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Keeping equipment under warranty is increasingly becoming big business. Is your company taking full advantage of this opportunity?  Service maintenance contracts, which protect the customer’s valuable equipment after the initial warranty expires, is one way to increase your company’s bottom line. These contracts, properly managed, are a continued source of revenue for your business – long after the equipment has being sold to the customer.

Did you know that:

-  Approximately 2% of every sale goes to warranty spending.

-  Warranty spending occurs at a rate of $1 million a day at nearly a dozen US manufacturers.

-  One-third of new products are not covered by contracts and one-half of original maintenance contracts are not renewed.

-  Market research show 61% of companies have no knowledge of their asset base, or use spreadsheets and rudimentary discovery tools to track the information.

The final session of MMI’s four part Executive Webinar Series shows you how to build an annuity stream with this expanding market. This session covers how to:

1. Maximize warranty and contract expiration tools
2. Manage and understand renewal billings vs. warranty expiration billings vs. customer billing cycles
3. Teach your customers to provide you actionable data that leads to new opportunities on un-owned renewals.

The strategy to building an annuity stream involves people, technology and process, such as:

-  A sales force that is focused on maintenance and are trained to teach the customer to provide actionable data

-  Ongoing, proactive asset and inventory management to identify additional maintenance opportunities

-  Processes for transaction tracking

-  Customized reporting

-  Proactive notifications of current and future opportunities

You can increase revenue by consolidating future contracts and post-warranty agreements into a master, long-term contract. Also, consolidation
of pending warranty items with future dates into long-term master contracts enables management of all assets with less support costs and potential break-fix support gaps.

These long term contracts mean renewal dollars for your business. Additionally, by conducting a regularly scheduled, complete inventory of your client’s assets, you can identify more maintenance opportunities. Also,
completing a quarterly warranty exit assessment proactively capture items set to expire that can be placed on a master contract or new post-warranty
maintenance agreement.

Effectively managing your maintenance opportunities gives you not only increased revenue, but enables you to forecast your net new/renewal maintenance. It makes your company a more valuable business with guaranteed annuity revenues.

Filed under: Customer Contract Management, IT Asset Management, Maintenance Contract Management, Maintenance Forecasting, Maintenance Renewals, Renewal Management, Service Contract Management, Service Renewal Management | No Comments »

As a solution provider, your goal is to gain not only the business, but the trust of your clients. You are their trusted adviser. So, what do you do if you find unlicensed software in their equipment? Are you obligated to report it?

In a world where most businesses use computers in their daily operations, software piracy is an all too common problem. Research has found that half of the world’s computer users admit to using unlicensed  software. Major software manufacturers, such as Microsoft and Adobe, claim millions of dollars in losses due to software piracy; worldwide the amount is in the billions.

Unlicensed software is found in small companies to large Data Centers. The larger the enterprise, such as Data Centers, the more difficult it is to locate the pirated software and who is using it. Illegally downloading software from the web and installing a single legally licensed software to multiple machines is common practice in many companies – it saves money.

Many businesses don’t understand the intricacies of software licensing and the End User Licensing Agreement (EULA). They believe they have purchased the actual software. To compound the problem, EULAs are constantly changing.

As a trusted adviser and solution provider, what do you do when you find unlicensed software in your customer’s business? Informing the company management can be an uncomfortable conversation. Reporting it to the manufacturer or government agency makes you no longer a trusted adviser.

The provider’s obligation is NOT to install nor service pirated software. Provide the client with a complete report of your finds and make them aware of the problem. Piracy can be very costly and is a security risk. Ensure you act as an information source on the consequences of having unlicensed software, such as:

• Getting all the missing licenses at one time, to
  be compliant, is expensive
• Free software often contain viruses
• Federal penalties can be up to 150K for each
  pirated or copied software

By educating and making them aware of the problem, you retain you status as a valuable trusted adviser. Most often your customer will be grateful and comply by purchasing all the required licenses to stay compliant, as they will be eager to avoid the legal problems.

To find out how Managed Maintenance can help you provide a comprehensive analysis of your client’s enterprise visit Managed Maintenance, Inc.

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As a Business Partner you want your customers to be successful; their success is yoursuccess. Helping your customers write effective maintenance and support Request for Proposals (RFPs) will help you become a trusted advisor in closing the sale.

The third part of MMI’s Executive Webinar Series addresses the components involved in writing winning RFPs. It shows you how to:

A.  Position yourself to help your customer

• Know the facts
• Qualify the Opportunity
• Understand the client’s pain points, requirements, processes and time frame

B.  Suggest the best questions and RFP criteria in order to have a competitive advantage. Questions should be targeted to:

• Identify possible solutions favored by the client
• Develop potential winning themes
• Define what will make your organization unique
• Uncover your competitors’ weaknesses

C.  Think strategically when answering the maintenance/support RFP. Some of the answers should:

• Identify key features and benefits to the customer and highlight what makes you unique
• List any wins or client solutions relevant to this one
• Have graphics, illustrations or diagrams highlighting key processes
• Identify potential key risks and how to prevent or mitigate them

The information required is gathered through a series of conversations with the client, prior to preparing the RFP. The key to winning the proposal is to sell the customer first and then develop a winning theme for maintenance/service. Winning themes include:

1. Cost Savings
2. Dedicated Specialist
3. Free up valuable IT Resources
4. Flexible Billing and Invoice Management
5. Contract consolidation
6. Dynamic Inventory Reconciliation and Credit
7. Warranty management
8. Web Portal based system and tools

The successful RFP addresses all the client’s needs and concerns, with solutions custom made specifically for them. It also shows the customer why your solutions make your company unique and have an edge over your competitors. In helping your customer write such a winning RFP, you become not only a Business Partner but a trusted advisor, while your customer gets more business and increases your company’s bottom line.

To see a copy of this Webinar Presentation, please CLICK HERE

To register for our MMI’s upcoming Webinar, How to Build an Annuity Stream and Create Solid Maintenance Forecasts, please CLICK HERE 

For more information on Managed Maintenance contract management solutions CLICK HERE or visit us at www.managedmaint.com

Filed under: IT Asset Management, Maintenance Contract Management, Service Contract Management, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Service contract renewals is one sure way to maintain the revenue stream of your company. Increasing your renewal rate will provide an immediate cash boost and, managed properly, those maintenance and service contracts can lead to repeat business turning your customers into the kind of repeat buyers that are the backbone of any sound business enterprise.

In order to grow your renewal rates, it is valuable to understand the components that will make those rates go up:

 1.  How well does your team identify all available opportunities, reach the buyers and obtain a resolution

 To ensure you identify every possible opportunity available within a sales cycle, 30% of time needs to be allocated to researching and analyzing each customer’s quarterly opportunity. Once identified, every effort must be made to reach the appropriate contact to discuss upcoming warranty expirations, items exposed, etc. Using today’s available technologies, like MMI’s ONEview contract management tool, you can notify your customers up to 90 days before contract expiration, giving them ample opportunity to take action.

 2.  What is your ratio of up sale

To maximize the value of every opportunity, work with your end users on identifying additional assets that can be added to the contract. Ensure all of their assets are covered. Also, review their existing contracts to see where service level upgrades can be applicable. Remember to show how multiyear contracts and extended contract terms can lock down pricing and save money over the length of the contract.

3.  What is your closing ratio

To boost your closing ratio, you need to communicate successfully the support value of having maintenance contracts. Make sure your sales team is knowledgeable on the various types of support offerings available and their benefits and educate your customer on the risks of having unsupported equipment.

 In short, to increase your renewal rates

• Research and analyze to discover all opportunities and make every effort to reach the appropriate contact
• Use technology to notify your customers in advance of their upcoming expirations
• Grow the value of the opportunity with service level upgrades, addition of assets to the contract, extended contract terms and multiyear contracts
• Communicate the support value by being knowledgeable and educating the customer

For more information on how Managed Maintenance can help you accomplish your service revenue objectives, please contact : Claire Millsap at cmillsap@managedmaint.com

 Visit our website

Filed under: Customer Contract Management, IT Asset Management, Maintenance Contract Management, Maintenance Renewals, Renewal Management, Service Contract Management, Service Renewal Management, Warranty Management, Warranty Renewals | No Comments »

Managed Maintenance, Inc. is proud to have its CEO and President, Tina Lux-Boim, selected by CRN Magazine as one of the top 100 Women of the Channel for 2012. This is Tina’s third consecutive year in this list of exemplary women, who are chosen based on their achievements as executives, and the degree to which they influence the technology channel. It is her first year as one of the top 100.

Since co-founding the company five years ago, Tina has used her extensive experience in the industry and expertise in hardware service and maintenance, and software licensing, to lead the MMI team down a path of innovation and expansion. We have grown from a small start-up to a well-known, highly respected SaaS specializing in building annuity business through consulting and outsourcing.

Under her leadership, the team at MMI is focused on growing the business, increasing profitability and introducing new offerings for technology manufacturers, distributors, and value-added resellers and their customers; as well as continually improving MMI’s signature contract management software, ONEview.

We congratulate her on the well-deserved recognition, as she continues her efforts to bring MMI to national, and eventually, international prominence.

To view our press release: MMI News in Business Wire

To read more in CRN Top 100 Women of the Channel: CRN Online

To learn more about MMI and its products, visit: Our Website

Filed under: Customer Contract Management, IT Asset Management, Maintenance Contract Management, tina lux, Tina Lux-Boim | No Comments »

 This past June 13, MMI conducted the second segment of its four part webinar series. This session educated our business partner community on how MMI, by analyzing the client’s enterprise and addressing their pain points, can increase business partner’s revenue from warranty and maintenance contracts.

There are some interesting facts to note pertaining to technology products maintenance and service, such as:

• Market research found that 61% of companies have no knowledge of their asset base or used spreadsheets and rudimentary discovery tools to track the information
• 1/3 of new products are not covered by contracts and 1/2 of original maintenance contracts are not renewed.
• Research on Service Revenue, showed that existing service contracts drive 31% of overall service revenue, with new contracts and warranties making up 15% and 7%, respectively.
• Annual maintenance contracts contribute to 1/3 of technology OEM’s overall revenues, generating 70%-80% of manufacturer gross margins.
• 80% of total annual maintenance is from channel-driven sales.
• Market for technology maintenance products and services in the US is $38 billion with annual growth of 6%. Worldwide it exceeds $140 billion.

To get your company to cash in on the potential revenue that exists in maintenance and service contracts you have to create intelligent views of your client’s enterprise, design multiyear contracts suited to the client’s needs and leverage amortization and revenue recognition strategies to build your company’s value. Some of the steps MMI follows to help business partners accomplish this are:

Discovery – it includes, among others, client’s business processes, maintenance/service contacts, pain points, expectations

Data Collection – study of their contracts, items on warranty, assets, contracted software

Analysis / Impact – covering contract design and impact to the client, service level options, potential risks, financial liabilities

Recommendations and Proposal – provide an executive summary of key observations to increase recurring maintenance revenue growth

These steps result in the ability to design contracts that offer solutions to the pain points of the client, as well as on-going consulting with the customer, continued process tuning and improvements, and continued education on new sales initiatives to be added to contracts.

The benefits to the business partner are in the increased value of the company to the client, decreased liability for the company, and an annuity stream that is guaranteed revenue on long term basis. For the sales force the annuity revenue becomes guaranteed income even on slower sales cycles, which can ensure longer term retention of top sales people. Additionally, there is less commission exposure when sales people leave prior to a contract end and renewal sales cycle begins.

In short, using MMI’s systematic approach to finding hidden money in your contract renewals will help you build a more valuable business with guaranteed annuity revenues.

To get more detailed information, click here to VIEW PRESENTATION

To learn more about Managed Maintenance and its many services click here to visit  OUR WEBSITE

Filed under: Customer Contract Management, IBM, IT Asset Management, Maintenance Contract Management, Maintenance Forecasting, Maintenance Renewals, Service Contract Management, Service Renewal Management, Warranty Management, Warranty Renewals | No Comments »

Not properly managing the maintenance on network equipment is rapidly becoming one of the major downfalls for many businesses, and a major cause of customer dissatisfaction for Business Partners. Because of lack of resources, knowledge or maintenance planning, end-user equipment is sometimes left without hardware and software maintenance coverage. In fact, in a survey conducted by IT solution provider Softchoice, the results showed that 36% of the equipment in most companies had no vendor maintenance coverage and 23% were at or approaching “end of support” – devices in use but no longer supported by the manufacturer.

Lack of maintenance management exposes the end-user organization to outages, increased costs and decreased business performance. When there is a malfunction, repairs or replacement can take days and can be expensive. If the equipment is no longer supported by the manufacturer, no replacement options nor on-site support is available.

Additionally, the survey found that, without maintenance management, companies were paying for maintenance on devices that were no longer being used or no longer existed in the end-user environment. This is money that the companies could be savings – an average of 10 to 20K per year.  Managing your network’s maintenance ensures the equipment is under warranty or covered after the warranty expires, and that software licenses are current. A contract management, or maintenance management strategy can help a company to save money by eliminating increased or unnecessary maintenance costs, and by having minimal or no operational interruption in daily business operations.

More and more, end-users are expecting help from their business partners to assist them in the management of their maintenance and services contracts and renewals.  As a business partner, this is a valuable opportunity to not only increase customer satisfaction, but to find new revenue opportunities within your customer base and ensure you are capturing 100% of the renewal opportunities in a specific account.   Business Partners that are not pro-actively assisting their customers are not only leaving revenue on the table, but are leaving the door open for competition from partners that do offer these value-added services.

At MMI, we help Business Partners to develop maintenance contract strategies that work for them.  With our ONEview contract management portal, Business Partners are given the tools they need to not only manage their customers hardware and software maintenance, but also provide them with sophisticated reporting tools, pro-active notifications, and one place to make requests, and manage their maintenance and warranty information.

To see a quick demo of ONEview Version 2.0, please click here.

To learn more about MMI, and our offerings, please click here.

Survey information from “The Neglect of Corporate Networks”, ChannelPro – The Insider Guide to SMB, June 2012

Filed under: IBM, IT Asset Management, Maintenance Contract Management, Maintenance Renewals, Renewal Management, Service Contract Management, Warranty Renewals | No Comments »

The business world of today is more technology oriented than ever. Top management is recognizing the need to incorporate the available technologies in the everyday operations of their companies. In a recent study conducted by IBM, more than 71% of CEO’s worldwide, in various industries, regarded technology as the top factor in drawing meaningful customer insight from available data. More than half of those surveyed plan to use technology to collaborate with other organizations and promote better internal collaboration. “Companies are turning to technology and social media to create more profound relationship with their customers, employees and their partners” states the news article in IBM’s PartnerWorld.

In spite of these findings, not enough companies are using internal tools and processes to help manage their customer data. In the hardware and software contract management and renewal business, many dollars are left untapped because of lack of an effective system to manage this revenue enhancing information. At MMI we have created ONEview to manage this valuable data with a contract management web portal for our partners and their customers. ONEview enables businesses to capture renewal rates and new maintenance opportunities with a very easy to use interface and robust data management capabilities.

Using technology such as ONEview enhances not only better communication and collaboration, but also enables businesses to create better customer relationships while increasing revenue.

Survey information obtained from “IBM 2012 CEO Global Study finds CEOs adapting to a new era of leadership” at IBM’s PartnerWorld  - 2012 CEO Global Study

For more information on ONEview click here More on ONEview

Filed under: Customer Contract Management, IBM, IT Asset Management, Maintenance Contract Management, Service Contract Management, Service Renewal Management | No Comments »