Basic idea of product management
Service companies often offer runtime products such as licences, managed services or maintenance contracts that are billed regularly. Intelligent systems such as teamspace help to keep track of these products and evaluate their success.
While in production, a glance at the warehouse is often enough to assess the inventory and therefore the success of a product, service providers are faced with a different situation: their products are not physically tangible, they cannot be stored or counted.
Another challenge with such products is that they have individual terms. For example, a customer can purchase 100 licences for a service and then buy 20 more licences at a later date. The term of the product therefore differs not only between customers, but also per licence.
In order to maintain an overview, service providers need specialised software that brings together information from different orders. In this way, the progress can be easily tracked. You can see:
– Which products does the customer use?
– Since when and to what extent does the customer use the product?
– How has the product scope changed over time?
In this way, companies not only maintain an overview of current contracts, but can also make well-founded decisions to optimise their products.
Application example software licences
Software licences are a classic example of service company products. For a monthly or annual fee, customers receive the right to use software. However, important details, such as the agreed conditions, the number of users or the start date of the contract, are often scattered across various orders. This often makes determining such information time-consuming and complex.
Product management offers IT companies a solution for managing licence products centrally. It extracts relevant information from different orders and displays it in a clearly organised list. In this way, companies not only keep track of existing licences, but can also easily track changes over time.
One particular advantage of product management is its transparency: if, for example, the number of licensed users has been adjusted several times over time, this can be tracked with just a few clicks. Product management therefore helps companies to manage licence products efficiently and improve customer service.
Automated product management: New functions for greater efficiency
Product management offers IT companies a solution for managing licence products centrally. It extracts relevant information from different orders and displays it in a clearly organised list. In this way, companies not only keep track of existing licences, but can also easily track changes over time.
The system now goes one step further: products can now also be created automatically for existing orders. All you need is a product template in which you define which items are to be assigned to a product – for example, monthly, quarterly or annual licences.
Once the template has been created, the system searches through all existing orders in an automated run. As soon as a suitable item is identified, the system automatically creates a product and assigns it to the corresponding customer. In this way, you can not only create products for new orders, but also for existing customers quickly and easily. With just one click, you receive a complete overview of all products that are in use at your customers.
By activating automatic updating, this process is repeated regularly. The system automatically adds new products that have been ordered in the meantime and keeps product management up to date at all times – without any additional effort on your part.
Product history at a glance
The product history allows you to precisely track the development of your customers’ product usage. You can see at a glance when licences were added or cancelled and how many licences are currently active – this calculation is performed automatically based on the terms.
In addition, the line items tab provides an overview of which services have already been billed and which are still open. This gives you full control over product management at all times.
For more information on the topic you can watch the following video. Please use the automatic translation feauture.
Further product management features
The automatic creation of products is only a small part of the module. You can find out about many other exciting functions such as automatic orders, maintenance items and more in the following videos (click here) or on our product management info page.