Featured Article from Software Licensing

People want to feel like they’re in control. They tend to like to try before they buy. They prefer easy to use solutions. They appreciate personalized service and being kept in the loop. Businesses should consider all these factors when designing software licensing programs and processes, says Mathieu Baissac in his most recent Flexera Software blog.

In a follow up to an earlier blog in which he offered six tips related to renewals, Baissac in his new Dec. 9 piece offers four additional tips, which are as follows:

• provide meaningful upgrades at least once a year;

• provide those upgrades on the customer’s timeline, not your own;

• provide the upgrades only to those who have paid for maintenance; and

• make sure the right people are receiving your renewal notifications.

Businesses should provide a meaningful upgrade at least once annually, Baissac suggests, because to do so less frequently may get customers thinking about buying a whole new license every three to four years rather than paying maintenance for that window of time.

Upgrading on customers’ timelines, he adds, makes them want to upgrade rather than feeling forced to do so. And allowing customers to upgrade easily, and trial the upgrade if they like, can also build customer loyalty.

Of course, it’s important to police upgrades as well, notes Baissac. That involves checking whether a customer is on active maintenance before allowing for a download, validating against maintenance entitlements in the case of a push upgrade model, and changing the version numbers on license keys.

Identifying and continually checking to ensure the relevant contacts are getting upgrade communications is also key, says Baissac. Here, he offers an example of what can occur when updated contact lists are not maintained.

“Recently I was talking to an unhappy customer who said ‘we went live and then we never heard back from you,’” says Baissac. “This customer was using one of our first releases…. Once we provided them with a large number of release notes and updated their contacts, they were quite excited at the rapid pace of evolution of our products.”