Software Monetization Featured Article

They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Value is too.

That’s the word from Shlomo Weiss, Gemalto’s senior vice president of software monetization. He said that during his LicensingLive! presentation “Get the Most Value from Your Software in 2019.” He noted that different people and departments may define value in different ways.

But, however they define it, Weiss said the business value of licensing tends to fall into one of four buckets. He said those buckets include revenue generation, operational efficiency, business insights, and customer experience.

A business can use licensing to enable it to launch new revenue-generating products or services. But, Weiss noted that revenue generation is broader than that.

It may also include minimizing revenue leakage by preventing people from improperly using software. It can entail introducing try-and-buy offers, tracking renewals so sales people reach out to customers when the time is right, and taking advantage of cross- and up-selling opportunities.

Software licensing can help businesses improve operational efficiency by simplifying business processes through automation. It also can ensure business continuity, help businesses minimize risk by addressing compliance, reduce operational overhead, and allow for faster post-M&A integration.

Gaining business insights is becoming more important for many organizations. Effective software licensing can help with that, too.

It can allow businesses to track customer usage, so they can anticipate potential customer churn. It can help identify revenue loss by seeing who’s renewing and who is not. It can provide intelligence on what customers are using, when, and to what extent.

Weiss said software licensing strategy also can serve to increase customer satisfaction. Licensing can allow businesses to give customers more choices in software packages and prices. It can help businesses keep customers’ software up to date. It can even enable customers to purchase and update their software themselves. Weiss said providing customers with self-service can lead to 5-10 percent churn reduction.

It’s important that businesses clearly define the primary value of their software licensing efforts, Weiss continued. They should work to get people from different departments and disciplines onboard, he said, advising businesses to plan out every step in the journey.