Companies are constantly seeking innovative strategies to drive growth while ensuring operational efficiency. With the market size of the global subscription economy projected to hit $1.5 trillion by 2025, the adoption of subscription-based services is a popular tool businesses are employing. What’s been a welcome discovery is how we’ve seen that service model enhance relationships with our customers, fostering long-term partnerships while still supporting the evolving needs of their businesses. At the same time, that aligns with our values, showing a fundamental transformation in how companies can interact with their service providers, removing barriers, and fostering a culture of collaboration and trust. We want to highlight the takeaways from our experience.
Benefits to the Customer
Predictable Costs
Subscription-based services allow customers to budget more effectively. That predictability helps businesses plan their finances without unexpected spikes in expenditures. Predictability also reduces the risk of the system being under-implemented at go-live and additional functionality planned for in future phases from being pushed back or eliminated.
Long-Term Relationships
Subscriptions encourage long-term relationships between the ERP consultant(s) and the customer. That fosters trust and collaboration, leading to better outcomes as consultants gain a deeper understanding of the customer’s business processes and objectives over time. According to a study from HubSpot, such enduring partnerships lay the foundation for better outcomes and sustained success, as customer-focused businesses boast 60% more profits than companies that aren’t.
Aligning Value & Continuous Improvement
It is a shared win-win to both the customer and the partner when the subscription aligns more closely with the value received by the customer. Customers want to pay for software and services that directly contribute to their operational efficiency and success. A subscription also helps customers embrace a model of continuous improvement that helps them stay competitive and adapt to changing business environments.
Reduced Barrier to Entry
Offering subscription-based services eliminates the significant initial investment in implementation costs that often act like a bell curve. The top of the bell curve can be too high, which prevents the project from moving forward even though the solution would help propel the company forward in their goals for digital transformation and growth.
No Barriers to Access
The key stakeholders and users of the ERP system often wear many hats. It’s important for customers to efficiently own and fully leverage their ERP system. A subscription enables them to pick up the phone and get direct access to a resource that will assist them with tasks, such as completing a particular transaction, resolving an error, handling a new process, or retrieving data for decision makers. Ultimately, this makes for more empowered users and reduces the side effects of time spent trying various options because seeking expert help results in a bill.
Benefits to the Provider (aka Us)
Driving Positive Change through Expertise
Based on everything covered above, we’ve come to see how fostering long-term relationships with our clients through a subscription-based services model aligns with Arris’ customer-centric values. At the core of our approach lies a commitment to impactful solutions and unwavering dedication to problem-solving that lets us serve as trusted advisors on their digital transformation journey. Our team thrives on the diverse challenges each day brings, leveraging our expertise to drive positive change and empower our clients through knowledge transfer and training. We don’t need to make ourselves irreplaceable because of our report-building expertise. Sure, we can build amazing dashboards and set up your reports for great analysis, but our goal is to help people use the technology themselves to do what they do even better.
Transformative Approach to Customer Service and Sustainable Growth (Both the Client’s and Our Own)
Prioritizing customer service by way of subscription allows us to offer a transformative approach to supporting a client’s digital transformation while nurturing long-term relationships and helping drive sustainable growth. The model allows companies to remove financial and technological barriers and focus on customer needs. That allows companies to leverage their ERP systems as intended: for innovation, collaboration, and success.
All that said, it’s worth noting that subscription-based services are not for every customer. The same benefits of long-term relationships, continuous improvement, and no barriers to access are leveraged by our current customers on the billable hour model. Figuring out the service model that works best for your company’s needs at the time is the really important part. To figure that out, we’re happy to have a conversation to see what works for you.