Avoid the Number Three Mistake with IT Renewals Management – A Spreadsheet

If you missed the first two posts in this blog series, check out 4 Reasons Why ERP Systems Can’t Process Recurring Revenue and Avoid the Number Two Mistake with IT Renewals Management – Your CRM. Once you're caught up on these first two, let's wrap up this topic with the last common mistake in IT renewals management: a spreadsheet.

You may have read the title to this post and thought, "We use spreadsheets to run our renewal quotes and they work just fine!" If spreadsheets are working well for your organization, then stop reading here and get back to chasing renewals! However, there are significant limitations to using an application built for financial modeling that will negatively impact your company in the future.

What's Wrong with Spreadsheets?

For small businesses and those with a relatively small number of sales – and therefore less renewals – spreadsheets are an appealing software for renewal quotes. They're simple to use and broadly accessible.

Even if you have a small amount of sales, renewals typically over account for up to 22 times your net new sales. Either way, over time that single spreadsheet is going to be more valuable than your CRM or ERP systems are.

As your business grows and increases its customer base and product offerings, the complexity of the renewal quotes process multiplies. Before you know it, the spreadsheets that support a crucial aspect of your business operations have become too difficult for an individual to maintain (let alone a group).

There are several key problems with spreadsheets for IT renewals management:

1. They don't scale.

Renewals are always growing and the rules change pretty often as well. While in the beginning, you can scale a spreadsheet by adding rows and supplementary spreadsheet tabs, this system will soon be a tangled web of unusable data.

2. They don't integrate with other systems.

All data has to be exported from another system first. It's too difficult to combine information from your spreadsheet with your accounting system, ERP or CRM. Spreadsheets also aren't designed to function well between departments, locations, or even employees. The security options for saved files are also minimal.

3. They are error-prone.

Manual manipulation is required to enter data and to get it into a useable format. It is easy to accidentally change cells, enter incorrect digits, or lose entire rows or columns while moving things around – all without realizing the impact on outputs.

4. Reporting is limited.

Creating a variety of reports tied to the data is not a straightforward process.

5. They are time-intensive.

Manually entering in renewals data, searching spreadsheets for required information, and resolving the associated errors, all takes up valuable time that could be spent closing deals. There is a very real opportunity cost to using inefficient data management methods.

6. They aren't easily accessible across all devices.

So many companies rely on mobile devices to enable their employees to work from home, on the road, or across multiple sites or locations. Key business data must be easy to access and fully functional across the spectrum of mobile devices.

7. They require manual back-up processes.

Without an automatic back-up function, your spreadsheets face the risk of data loss. Since spreadsheets don't integrate well with other systems, the likelihood of error increases with each additional tool or process.

What could be done better?                    

Not only are spreadsheets lacking in the ways I listed above, but they also cannot perform several of the key functions that are needed for an efficient and effective IT renewals management process. So if your team is using spreadsheets, you probably also need additional tools (manual or software) to perform these tasks:

• Create quotes with input from other systems

• Automatically send those quotes to the relevant individual or organisation

• Manage the entire product lifecycle (create tech refresh opportunities by producing alerts for aged products or services)

Since spreadsheets don’t integrate well with other systems, the likelihood of error increases with each additional tool or process.

The ROI for IT Renewal Management Automation Software

Transitioning your existing renewals spreadsheets to automation software designed specifically to support the IT renewals management process can resolve all of the issues mentioned above and deliver significant ROI in the form of:

• Increased Productivity: Streamlining data entry and reporting to a single, scalable system, and significantly reducing the potential for error, results in a much more efficient and productive renewals process.
• Improved Reporting and Increased Visibility: An automated renewals software solution can provide a unified view across any customer’s entire purchase history, including serial numbers, promotional discounts and contract dates. It enables accurate planning and forecasting to ensure renewals are closed prior to contract end dates.
• Increased Revenue: Proactively managing renewals leads to improved customer retention, and opens up more opportunities for cross-selling and upselling. 

Thinking about transitioning from your spreadsheets to a more automated approach to renewals management? Download our free white paper to get more information how to optimize your renewals process: “Optimizing Your Renewals Will Lead to Increased Profitability and Reduce Customer Churn”.