{"id":39936,"date":"2019-08-05T11:51:13","date_gmt":"2019-08-05T10:51:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/2019\/08\/05\/customer-success-is-the-formula-for-exponential-growth\/"},"modified":"2019-08-16T09:52:55","modified_gmt":"2019-08-16T08:52:55","slug":"customer-success-is-the-formula-for-exponential-growth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/2019\/08\/05\/customer-success-is-the-formula-for-exponential-growth\/","title":{"rendered":"Customer success is \u2018the formula for exponential growth\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In the era of Digital Transformation and the subscription economy, Michelle Bisset, Vice President, Customers for Life at Sage Africa & Middle East, says that technology companies can only succeed when their customers do. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nrapid shift towards cloud computing and software as-a-service purchasing models\nis freeing technology buyers from vendor lock-in, upfront payments, long\nimplementation cycles and heavy software customisation. That means software\nvendors and their partners need to focus on continuous customer success if they\nare to grow and retain their customer base over the long run. This was my key\nmessage as a speaker during the Sage Enterprise Management Partner Summit held\nin Dubai.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\npractical terms, this means we are seeing customers expect vendors and\nimplementation partners to help them deliver against their business outcomes.\nEfficiency and scalability are no longer enough \u2013 as the recent IDC European Enterprise\nServices Survey shows, the number one priority for technology buyers is for\ntheir providers to deliver results against their desired business outcomes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Customers want inspiration, innovation, guidance and solutions. If they don\u2019t get if from one vendor or service provider, it is easy to move to another in the digital and subscription world. This means technology vendors and resellers that want to thrive in today\u2019s market must pivot to a customer success-driven approach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Michelle Bisset, Vice President, Customers for Life at Sage Africa & Middle East. Photo: Brendan Croft Croft Studio, Centurion, South Africa<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The\nemphasis moves away from features, functionality and cost towards ensuring the\ntech company delivers on the customer\u2019s business outcomes. If the vendor does\nnot get this right, the customer will not renew its subscriptions, let alone\nbuy more solutions and products from the provider or become an advocate for its\nbrand. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\nare three steps towards becoming a customer success-driven enterprise:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Start\nwith the end in mind <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Large-scale\nenterprise software deployments don\u2019t have the best track record. They often\nfail to deliver the expected benefits or run over time or budget. To improve\nsuccess rates, vendor, implementation partner and client must begin each\nproject by defining what success looks like in terms of the desired business\noutcome and how it will be achieved. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This\nbegins with an honest assessment not only of the service provider\u2019s ability to\ndeliver on the brief, but also of its success potential. If there is a\nsignificant divide in the culture and expectations of vendor and client, the\nproject is not likely to succeed. The effort is also likely to fail if the\nclient doesn\u2019t have the necessary skills, platform or change capabilities for\nthe transformation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When\ndefining customer success, a generic benefit like saving time or becoming\nefficient is not enough. One should have a detailed, measurable definition of\nsuccess, whether the goal is better budgeting, more accurate reporting, cost\nreduction or production increases. Knowing the desired outcome and regularly\nmeasuring against defined success milestones and metrics increases the\nlikelihood of customer success. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Remove\nsilos and barriers between customers <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leave\nbehind discussions about who owns the customer relationship within the\nenterprise or its wider partner network-vendor, implementation partner and\nthird-party software provider. Customers want solutions to their business\nproblems, which in today\u2019s complex world requires the cooperation of\ncross-functional and cross-organisational teams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s\nup to all parties, vendors and service providers to align themselves behind the\ncustomer\u2019s goals and to make it easy for the customer to interact with their\nteam. Breaking down silos means establishing shared strategic metrics to\nmeasure collective success. This requires a mindset change, from a\ntransactional focus on project profitability towards focusing on retention,\nrepeat business and references. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Design\nservices for the future <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

IDC predicts that, by 2021, 30% of the tech partner ecosystem will not exist in the form it\ndoes today. But it also forecasts that 70% of cloud service providers\u2019 revenue\nwill be mediated by partners in the same timeframe. However, the services that\nbusiness partners provide may evolve along with the move to the cloud. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At\nSage, we agree that our Sage Enterprise Management Partners will be a key part\nof our continued journey to the cloud, which is why we are continuously working\nto align with them to create customer value and success. We envisage there will\nbe less customisation work to be done, but that data security, cloud\nintegration, business strategy, change management and other services will only\nbecome more important. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Together\nwith our partners, we are looking at tomorrow\u2019s tech opportunities, from Artificial\nIntelligence (AI) to Blockchain. We are also thinking about how the market and\ncustomer will change. Millennials are moving up the ranks and emerging as\ndecision-makers. Are we ready for this confident, tech-savvy IT purchaser who\ndemands instant gratification and collaboration?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Are\nwe able to recruit the young talent we need to serve these customers and their\nneeds? How can we capitalise on the explosive opportunity of new and emerging\nmarkets to further growth? Change is constant and brings enormous opportunity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nfuture is about customer success<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nsuccessful IT services and software companies of the future will be totally\nclient-aligned through sharing risks and rewards, joint ventures and other\nmeans. They will use external technology and ecosystems to their augmented\ncapabilities, building better customer solutions and outcomes. They will do\nwhat it takes to make their clients succeed \u2013 because that\u2019s their only path to\nexponential growth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the era of Digital Transformation and the subscription economy, Michelle Bisset, Vice President, Customers for Life at Sage Africa & Middle East, says that technology companies can only succeed when their customers do. The rapid shift towards cloud computing and software as-a-service purchasing models is freeing technology buyers from vendor lock-in, upfront payments, long […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":40413,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5307,137,6787,139,6,332,9961,13],"tags":[3211,3355,1707,1037,908,420,276,9904,9905,9906,2743],"class_list":["post-39936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analysis","category-blog","category-digital-transformation","category-industry-expert","category-insights","category-software","category-thought-leadership","category-top-stories","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-blockchain","tag-cloud-computing","tag-digital-transformation","tag-dubai","tag-idc","tag-idc-european-enterprise-services-survey","tag-michelle-bisset","tag-sage-enterprise-management-partner-summit","tag-software-as-a-service"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39936"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39936\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40414,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39936\/revisions\/40414"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}