The Journey to Becoming a “LAER Efficient” Organization

A few months back I attended a TSW Vegas keynote session with TSIA’s President and CEO. I have been attending these events for several years and there have always been discussions around the importance of “LAER” (Land, Adopt, Expand, Renew) within the channel. This session with J.B Wood was no different, except there was a stronger sense of urgency this time and an emphasis on the need to be ‘LAER Efficient’.

Let’s take a look at what this all means and steps you can take to become a LAER Efficient organization.

First Off - What is LAER?

As we discussed in an earlier blog, we are seeing a very clear and deliberate shift amongst technology providers to subscription-based “as a service” delivery models. As a result, TSIA created the LAER model which consists of four key steps along the customer journey from the perspective of the technology supplier: Land, Adopt, Expand, and Renew.

The association recognized the need for technology providers to follow this customer engagement model to help prevent customer churn. And, whilst technology providers have adopted this framework – some are doing it better than others. The ultimate objective now, is to not only implement this model - but to do it efficiently - LAER Efficient to be exact.

The Steps to Efficiency

One key factor to LAER efficiency is driving down the cost of sale in order to remain profitable and ensure positive cash flow. This is driven by the shift in revenue for these organizations - from large, long-term contracts - to regular, lower value transactions. How are you managing your ‘long tail’? How much time and effort does it take to identify, quote and close your renewals? With the right tools in place, you could automate all of this and by doing so, you can substantially reduce Customer Renewal Costs (CRC) and Customer Expansion Costs (CEC), shorten your quote to cash periods and increase on-time renewals rates.

2. People

You must compensate your sales team in a completely different way, and you may need to consider hiring a different sales persona altogether. Because to be truly focused on LAER, you will need customer success superstars who can help build long term customer relationships to drive retention.

3. Customer Value

Whilst retention is a must, expanding on customer value is just as important. You should implement tools and processes to see the customer through every stage of their lifecycle. Are they using the products/services? What else can you up-sell or cross-sell to help make them “sticky”. Again, managing the entire product and customer lifecycle can be challenging and time consuming. And in order to be truly LAER Efficient – automation is necessary. Product lifecycle tools such as iasset.com can help manage all of this pro-actively, with tech refresh, upgrade and/or migration campaigns based upon where they are within the product lifecycle.

In our next blog, we will explore the four phases that companies experience on their journey to becoming LAER Efficient (as outlined by TSIA), but from a technology perspective.