5 Ways You Can “Go Lean” with Software Monetization

During the mid-20th century, Toyota® was just beginning to enter the automobile market. During that time Ford® ruled the market with its assembly line process. Fast forward 60 years – today Toyota is the most profitable automobile manufacturer, with 4 times earnings per car compared to any of the big three manufacturers. How did a fledgling company with very little manufacturing experience pull this off?

One reason is that Toyota eliminated a lot of Ford’s wasteful methods and inefficiencies. Eliminating waste (muda) is the core principle of lean manufacturing as well as the world-famous Toyota Production System (TPS).

There is much to learn for software producers and intelligent device manufacturers from this core principle of lean manufacturing. For example, many producers do not have up-to-date installed base information, which leads to higher support costs, as well as increases opportunity costs for both producers and their customers.

Here are 5 areas in software license management that all software producers and device manufacturers should tackle today to become the Toyota of tomorrow:

Reduce fulfillment costs by automating the delivery of electronic software updates to your customers.
Reduce support costs by ensuring customers have an up-to-date version of your software, which in turn reduces the number of support calls. Moreover, Average Handle Time and Average Speed of Answer (support KPIs) can be improved by having up to date installed base information and remote diagnostics.
Reduce revenue loss with entitlement management by ensuring that only entitled customers will receive software updates. Performing this entitlement check encourages customers to renew their maintenance.
Reduce opportunity costs from uniformed decisions on new features, end of life, adoption rate and environments by leveraging installed based analytics.
Reduce costs associated with reaching out to the end-users of your installed base announcing upsell events, promotions and new features.

- See more at: http://blogs.flexerasoftware.com/ecm/2016/02/go-lean-with-flexnet-connect.html#sthash.EEeZoX9S.dpuf