The point of business process automation is to eliminate constant, excessive human intervention—not to load employees up with detailed data updates, corrections and notations to be made manually, individually, across all your data platforms.
One and done
Renewals Data Management, Product Lifecycle and Cloud Contract Management systems are workflow tools to make your business healthier and your employees' jobs easier. It should be painless to identify and manage recurring revenue streams without adding personnel or highly complex systems your employees need advanced knowledge to use.
It should also be seamless, integrating new data from existing extracts and reports prepared for other purposes. Here's how to prepare for Renewal Management Platform integration at the onset of your business transformation, ensuring all of your systems are speaking, sharing and reacting to every change and update.
1. Involve your IT leadership early in the process.
If API (Applications Program Interface), XML (eXtensible Markup Language) and JSON (Java Script Object Notation) remind you of someone's name or corporate initials, your IT leader or other trusted advisor should be your go-to person to get the job done. They're usually the best placed to analyze the information, data and sources needed for seamless integration of a Renewals Management Platform throughout your business.
2. Identify data sources.
Your ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and/or CRM (Customer Relationship Management) programs usually contain the information needed to feed your Renewals Management Platform. Without including them all in one central, fully cohesive point of entry, incorporating all pertinent information, you won't be able to change one and have that change reflected automatically across all systems. Business process automation foiled!
If dealing with them isn't your bailiwick, it will fall to your IT leader. They may also need to access database, spreadsheets, existing data extracts and/or reports.
3. Help your API vendor understand what you're doing now and why.
Before you begin, gather all the information needed. If the thought of locating your workflow process documentation concerns you, have a meeting with your system vendor. They should be able to map it out together with your IT team. When it's done, you'll have the blueprint for a new, fully integrated workflow and data management system.
Your vendor wants your Renewals Management Platform to add value and efficiency to your business. They also want to eliminate areas where quality and data integrity might fail. To do so, your supplier must understand your current process, identify key pain points and areas ripe for automation. Pinpoint and explore all these details at the start of the process. Process optimization, along with managing your renewals information according to your business rules and projections, is a major part of a project's ROI.
4. Establish Your Project Team.
The goal is to address potential hurdles early and provide easy adoption and meaningful training along with data systems integration. Your IT group and vendor are only part of your Renewals Platform Integration Team. Super users, project Champions and Sponsors should also be included. The more inclusive the process, the more effective the business process improvement will be. If you deploy through Channel Partners, you should also consider including one in the team. If deploying your Renewals Platform doesn't make your Channel Partners more efficient, it will fail before it even gets off the ground!
Once your team is established, issues of data security, scaling, replication and infrastructure management can be discussed and solutions can be implemented. If needed, your vendor should be able to supply data support services, helping you prepare and assisting you during data implementation according to the Project Team's needs and concerns. Going forward, the vendor should also offer services to ensure the continuing validity and integrity of the data important to your team and Renewals Management Platform success.
5. Define what you want accomplished.
Your goal: To meet your desired end-state through the implementation of a fully integrated, completely onboarded Renewals Management Platform. But what does that mean? How can you determine its success?
First, agree upon your Key Performance Indicators (KPI) for success metrics. Renewal rate improvement? Increased revenue? Reduced operating costs? Some combination? All three? If you don't have a clear picture of exactly what it is you're working for, you won't know when you get there.
What factors need to be updated, massaged, built up or eliminated? Because an integrated platform works across the business, you can include your goals into the system itself. You'll have something to compare results against and start your planning for the next round.
And isn't that the real objective? To reach this year's target and define and reach for the next?
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