Partnerships With Software Vendors And Service Providers

Software Vendors and Services Providers need to look at how they work together.  Instead of the traditional vendor/customer relationship, software vendors and service providers should be prospecting, selling and closing deals together.  The mutual benefit unleashes ubiquitous paradigms to be exploited. 

Maximising innovative initiatives lead to long-term relationships not only for the software vendors and service providers but also more importantly for their joint customers.  Organisations need to focus and concentrate on core business, this applies to both software vendors and service providers.  Experience demonstrates that customers respect and engage with service providers who partner with software vendors for their expertise.  Customers demand service at a competitive price but also expect leading edge technology.

A good example is CMMS software vendors and facilities management service providers.  Working together they can deploy distributed vortals and increase revenue and profit.  Utilising best-of-breed web-readiness CMMS software solutions, FM service providers can concentrate on fulfilling their contract and extracting a profit.  In fact there is an opportunity for FM service providers to generate revenue from CMMS licences.  By providing real-time updates on jobs and live reporting via web based portals engages their customers.  Minimal graphical live reports can be provided at no charge providing a hint to what is available.  Gain sticky users, offer more detailed reports and charge accordingly.  Unleash value-added deliverables; ensure the Facilities Service Provider can produce his monthly reports with no work on his behalf and charge appropriately.  In this example, the Facilities Maintenance service provider may charge a Silver, Gold or Platinum service for access to live data.  The greater the service, the higher the charge.  The cost of the user licence to the Facilities Maintenance service provider remains the same; the CMMS software solution will be charging for management portal users at a set rate, the ongoing charge to the customer can be set by the Facilities Maintenance service provider.  It allows the service provider to integrate out-of-the-box users to create revenue.

This applies to all service providers whether Facilities or supporting other services such as maintaining mining equipment, heavy vehicles, communications gear.  All asset centric support services.

The benefit to the customer is transparency; they have access to data and reporting real-time.  The benefit to the service provider is access to the best available solution in which to provide their services, a new revenue stream and customer retention.  The benefit to the software vendor is increased user licences and customer retention.  Deploying B2B synergies is beneficial to all involved.