Plan Management for Cloud Solution Providers

With the rising competition, customers expect customization and personalization across all products and services that they use. The situation is no different for Cloud Solution Providers. Customers no longer wish to go through the entire suite of products and services available with the CSPs to decide which subscriptions or licenses they seek to purchase. Rather, there is a trend towards customizing offering as well as margins based on customer contracts and purchase insights. That’s where plan management offered by CSP Control Center comes into play to help CSPs offer an enriching customer experience, as well as, have predictable monthly revenue. This blog will help CSPs decode plan management, its benefits and how to get started today.

What is plan management?

As the phrase suggests, plan management is a feature offered by C3 which enables CSPs to create catalogues of their products for existing and potential customers. The objective is to create a customized catalogue for each customer which consists of the products the customer has already purchased for billing and reporting and other offers which customers are most likely to purchase, based on business needs and requirements. At the same time, plan management allows CSPs to create custom margins for different customers based on their contracts, and ensure a healthy pipeline of profits, while providing incentives for customers who have bulk requirements. Invariably, with plan management, CSPs can create individual product catalogues for customers with custom pricing for each product added to the plan.

Benefits of plan management

While there are several benefits that CSPs can derive by leveraging the plan management feature, there are particularly three which can help them achieve the dual goal of predictable revenue and better customer experience.

• Filtered view for better customer experience: Since the product catalogue can be customized for each customer, it leads to a better experience. Customers no longer have to scan through thousands of products before finding one or two which fit their requirements. This eliminates customer frustration by saving them valuable time in navigating through many products that have no relevance for them. Furthermore, it creates a feeling of being valued and personally attended to for the customer, adding to a pleasant experience.
• Greater chances of purchases: When customers have a filtered view, they not only have a better experience, but also foster higher conversions. Navigating through 100 random products and services, a customer might end up purchasing only a few. However, when the products are few and filtered, chances of them being purchased become higher.
• Custom pricing: On the revenue front, plan management allows CSPs to add custom margins to each product in the plan for different customers. Therefore, CSPs can maintain different markups and margins, depending on customer contract, which automatically reflect in the plan selected. This leads to a more predictable revenue stream as well as helps create incentives for bulk customers.

Plan management with C3

With C3, CSPs can seamlessly create custom product catalogues which benefit both the business and the customers. Plans can be created based on custom currency, removing any friction that comes with manual conversion. Furthermore, C3 allows CSPs to create add-ons with existing offers to upsell non-Microsoft and self-promoted value add products and services. Therefore, CSPs are empowered to create personalized plans for each customer, you want them to view and purchase with the sale prices. Book a free product demo to know about C3 feature capabilities that can help your CSP business to grow.