Recharging Renewals: What Your Depression Era Great Grandmother Can Teach You About the Value of Pennies

Like many when you were young, you may have spent hours at Granny’s counting pennies, fulus, kopeks, centavos, pisos, roubles, won, groschen, pfennigs, francs (1) and other coins at the bottom of your country’s currency system. Stacking them into piles, marking time on Old Folks’ idiosyncrasies, ways gone by. No doubt clueless how such worthless bits of metal add up to power bills, new hats, toasters, school supplies or even television sets.

We offer “pennies for thoughts,” assuming the thoughts aren’t valuable. Denigrate our own opinions by calling them “just our two cents worth.” While we might look, if that coin on the road can’t buy a soda, how many of us actually stoop to pick it up?

The same may be asked of those who depend upon CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) Software rather than an Automated Work Flow Process for subscription updates and renewals.

Everyone knows the most profitable aspect of sales falls within CPQ. You configure the client need, offer guided steps to add pre-defined features and options. Then generate a quote. On the intake, CPQ offers many advantages.

But what happens at the end of your customer’s CPQ cycle? The high level of customization and detailed agreements are already in place. Already paid for. But what of Renewals or the products life cycle? When that initial CPQ contract ends, the CPQ system becomes over-wrought and unwieldy. The questions have already been answered. The product, already working to customer satisfaction.

So why go through all those initial sales CPQ steps again? Why bother customers, channel partners and direct sales to re-query at least – re-enter at best?

Sure, CPQ – with all its detailed entries and double checked boxes – can give you the in-depth knowledge accurate initial quotes rely on. But their actual cost to the client – and to your company – may render all those steps expensive overkill.

Like Granny’s Small Change, Easy Renewals Money is in the Numbers

Like those pennies, kopeks, jiao, rial and dinara, on their own they may not be worth stooping to pick up using an unwieldy CPQ system.

An automated Renewal Management Platform, on the other hand, can be configured to aggregate contracts coming due based on transaction value, product type and entity, contract dates, sales (Direct and/or Indirect) persons, appropriate updates, new products and more. All you need to generate seamless reports captioning subscriptions up for renewal. Even to reward sales personnel and Channel Partners for their continuing contact.

Painlessly. Seamlessly. Without interrupting the other vital work performed by Sales and/or your Renewals Specialist.

Small potatoes you say? Individually, they might be. But like those piles of low denomination coins Granny saved, piled together and added up it could mean – depending upon the size of your company and its contracts – million$ (million€, million¥, million£, millionKr, etc.).

CPQ Renewals are Like the Canadian Penny, Costing More to Make Than They’re Actually Worth

In 2013, Canada stopped distributing the Canadian Penny because it cost more to make than it was worth. The US abolished its half-cent in 1857. The British, their half-penny in 1984. Not to be outdone, New Zealand and Australian abandoned their one- and two-cent coins in the 1990s. (2)

But these are governments not in the business of making money from their money. What they throw away in coins can be made-up in larger denominations.

Your Renewal Business can’t do that. You either have a Renewal Specialist spending hours, days, weeks, a full-time job cherry picking from spreadsheets or entering, re-entering way-more-than-necessary CPQ data. Or you can add a smart, adaptable automated renewals system focused on just that – Renewals.

The right business process automation can be adapted to spiff Channel Partners originating the sale. It can point to new product upgrades and updates you want to add to some customers’ renewal packages. Most importantly, it will make visible – and accountable – all those lost “penny” renewals which alone, don’t make much of a loss. But which together, can add up to enough present – and future – business for easy ROI.

More Than Finding Fortunes Overlooked, a Treasure Chest for the Future

A large part of automating business rules and tasks is removing human effort and error. The right automated renewals workflow can remove all human touch points, lowering the cost of small fee renewals and making them profitable.

Set your system to follow your company’s definitions, rules and limits – transaction values, entities, product types, customer contacts and original sales people. Add reminder dates, generate automatic emails and update information. All the things CPQ may or may not be able to, or may not be able to do without considerable human costs.

Your automated renewals process is one that can be extended as long as you have products to offer existing customers. What adds up in one year, adds on even more income in years to come.

You do the math. How much would Granny have missed if she didn’t cash in on all that small change waiting to be counted?

How much will you miss out if you don’t cash in on all those small renewal contracts just waiting to be added up – and in? 

1. www.Worldcoindatabase.com
2. www.bbc.com/news/magazine/21572359