By Nirlap Vora, Associate Director- Customer Advisory, SAS India
These are unprecedented times and the pandemic has impacted individuals and enterprises alike. Lockdowns have resulted in every business entity exploring newer ways to manage their business and protect the interests of the enterprise, employees and their customers.With budgets being slashed, it is important for Business Leaders to capitalize& maximize on the existing investments made over the years on People, Process & Technology. Customer Success functions set up within OEMs can help enterprises achieve this goal, which makes them, a critical element for enterprises.
Over the years, enterprises have procured software from OEMs – sometimes for a specific business unit or for the enterprise as a whole. More often, to help meet objectives, OEMs bundle together software packages either to complement existing modules or establish customer base for new product launch and at times to meet their own objectives. Very often, this may have resulted in an Enterprise under utilizing the capabilities of the entire software stack purchased.
Today, OEM’s are realizing, customer-centricity as the key to its success and are now increasingly partnering with Enterprises to help achieve target business outcomes faster by maximizing the impact of their software.
“The goal of Customer Success is to make the customer as successful as possible, which in turn, improves lifetime value for an OEM.”
The new paradigm enterprises expectation from OEM’s is LAER – land, adopt, expand and renew. This essentially means,OEM’s should start small, let enterprises try and adopt the product, drive consumption by expanding their usage, and focus relentlessly that the enterprise tastes success,thus ensuring repeat business with the enterprise going forward.
Land: The introduction of new software, process or change can be daunting for those familiar with previous iterations and to those that are new to the organization. Customer Success takes a wholistic view of People, Process and Technology, with a focus on supporting customer organization through a cycle of Awareness, Enablement, Value and Relationship.
Adopt: Gone are the days when technology alone was a need for enterprises, this has now been coupled with outcomes. They ask for agility, short time to value and predictable cost of ownership. Industry and customers are moving away from the paradigm of “sell to me, install for me, fix for me” to subscription-based, consumption-based and service-led, managed engagements.
Given the expectations from an OEM, the Customer Success teams collaborate relentlessly with enterprises to:
– Reduce risk to realize return on investment by providing a plan for successful adoption.
– Increase the speed a customer can adopt and optimize new capabilities to accelerate business growth
– Empower organizations to achieve desired outcomes
With a focus on technical advocacy and guidance, the Customer Success teams ensure enterprises recognize the value they expect from their OEM’s investment.
Expand: Customer Success teams work very closely with customers right from the technology adoption phase. This essentially means they have built a deep relationship with the customer and have a good understanding of the customer needs.They are often considered as trusted advisors to customers, who can aid their organizations with extension, expansion and enhancement of software in future.
Renew: Customer Success teams focus on elevating customer experience through continuous engagement to achieve desired business outcomes quickly. Making the experience a pleasant one. Thus, a successful journey of Land, Adopt and Expand will result in delightful customer experience, thereby securing an opportunity of Renewal for the OEM.
Delivering an integrated plan that is focused on software adoption, increased utilization, value achievement and ROI guarantees success for the customers.Given the limited usage of existing solutions, budget constraints and skill retention challenges, Customer Success function of OEMs’ are the need of the hour for Enterprises.
OEMs are committed to innovating in order to improve the customer experience at every touch point along the customer journey. The Customer’s success is your success. “Make your enterprise your Champion and success will follow automatically”.
