How Remote Monitoring Grows Recurring Revenue For VARs And Systems Integrators

The benefits of remote monitoring of critical infrastructure is relatively obvious to the people who count on them – more reliable uptime and fewer disruptions. As a value-added reseller or systems integrator who maintain those systems, you can leverage remote monitoring to secure and grow your business. The world of value-added resellers and systems integrators is evolving quickly. The hardware side of the business is getting commoditized and margins are falling accordingly. Industry consolidation is creating some large players and others are staying independent building on their strengths. The growth and focus is on higher-margin professional services and recurring revenue. Remote monitoring is an enabler for you to:

• Sell service contracts for existing systems and new as you deploy
• Build “stickiness” with customers
• Create recurring revenue streams based on professional services margins
• Reduce truck rolls for unplanned service calls – know before you roll
• Know of issues before your customer
• Pre-empt problems by seeing trending issues before they impact your customer
• Ultimately differentiate your company from others big or small

The opportunity is to sell a long-term service contract with remote monitoring as the foundation. The service agreement includes multiple services that maximizes system reliability and uptime for your customer. Basic service agreements typically include:

• Remote monitoring – so you have visibility without waiting for customers to advise you of issues
• Preventative maintenance – regular equipment checks done quarterly, semi-annually or annually
• Break-fix – service calls to address issues usually with committed response times

Thus success with remote monitoring is more than just reselling it with a margin. It’s about delivering a broader package of on-going services that typically generates 5-10 times the revenue of the remote monitoring alone. An all-too-common scenario is that a VAR or integrator builds and deploys a new system for a customer without signing a service agreement for day 1 of operations. Building remote monitoring into the package from the outset makes the service agreement a natural part of the deployment and service. Remote monitoring can also be the reason that a customer sees enough value to sign a service agreement who hasn’t had one for years. The customer has grown used to working in a break-fix model, and because they are a good customer you probably treat them almost as though they were paying for a service contract. Remote monitoring can be the catalyst and new value to open a discussion about a service agreement with such a customer. The systems you maintain for your customers are usually from a variety of manufacturers, a mix of legacy and new, and may even be analog and digital. Be sure your remote monitoring solution address all these scenarios under one pane of glass. Contact us to use remote monitoring to grow your professional services and recurring revenue.