Industry:
Utilities: Electrical Provider
Company Size:
5,000–10,000 employees
As a customer, when you are looking to buy software, you want to get the best possible deal and build a strong relationship with the software provider. However, this can be difficult to achieve if a bad sales rep is working with you. In this blog post, we will explore why keeping a bad sales rep could cost you and provide actionable tips on how to get a great software deal and strengthen relationships.
Why Keeping a Bad Sales Rep Could Cost You
A bad sales rep can cost you in many ways. A bad sales rep:
Actionable Tips to Get a Great Deal and Strengthen Relationships
Now that we’ve looked at why a bad sales rep can cost you, let’s explore some actionable tips on how to get a great software deal and strengthen relationships.
Mistake: Not doing research
Tip: Before making a software purchase, do your research. Look for reviews and testimonials from other customers, check the software provider’s website and social media accounts, and speak with current or past customers if possible. This will help you make an informed decision and avoid wasting time and money.
Mistake: Not communicating your needs
Tip: When speaking with a sales rep, be clear and specific about your needs. This will help the sales rep understand your needs and make appropriate recommendations. Don’t be afraid to ask questions or ask for clarification if you don’t understand something.
Statistic: According to a survey by TechValidate, 97% of B2B buyers said that the sales rep’s ability to understand their needs was an important factor in their decision to purchase.
Mistake: Not negotiating
Tip: Don’t be afraid to negotiate with the sales rep. Ask for discounts or special pricing, especially if purchasing multiple licenses or a long-term contract. If the sales rep is unwilling to negotiate, consider speaking with management or looking for a different software provider.
Statistic: According to a survey by HubSpot, 89% of B2B buyers said negotiating pricing was an important factor in their decision to purchase.
Get in Touch with Us to Avoid That Bad Software and Sales Rep
As a customer, if you’re looking to buy software, you want to get the best possible deal and build a strong relationship with the software provider. We’ll help you avoid those bad sales reps that cost you, and we’ll provide even more actionable tips on how to get a great software deal and strengthen relationships.
As businesses continue to rely more and more on software, the role of the sales representative has become increasingly important. A good sales rep can help enterprises to find the right software at the right price, while a bad sales rep can do the opposite. In fact, a bad sales rep could end up costing your business more than just money. According to a study by HubSpot, over 50% of customers say they have stopped doing business with a company because of poor customer service. So, how do you avoid keeping a bad sales rep, get an excellent software deal, and strengthen your business relationships?
The first step in avoiding a bad sales rep is to know what to look for. Here are some warning signs that you might have a bad sales rep:
Actionable Recommendation: Watch for these warning signs, and don’t hesitate to ask questions or voice concerns to their management team. A good sales rep will be transparent and responsive.
Error to Avoid: Don’t assume that a sales rep who seems nice or friendly will automatically be a good fit. Always do your research and ask questions.
Your business has unique needs and goals when it comes to software. A good sales rep should prioritize your vision, not theirs. Here are some ways to ensure that your goals are being met:
Actionable Recommendation: Clearly articulate your goals and vision to potential sales reps. Look for reps who show a willingness to work with you to achieve these goals.
Error to Avoid: Don’t settle for a sales rep who tries to push their own agenda or goals onto your business. Always prioritize your own needs and vision.
Sales reps are often incentivized to push additional products or services, even if they don’t add value to your specific needs. Before agreeing to any add-ons, take the time to evaluate whether they align with your goals and objectives. Ask your rep to provide data or case studies demonstrating how the add-on has helped other clients in similar industries. Don’t be afraid to push back if you feel the add-on isn’t necessary or won’t provide a good return on investment.
Remember, it’s your business and your budget— don’t let a bad sales rep pressure you into making a decision that isn’t right for you.
Azure Cost Management
Azure is a powerful and feature-rich cloud platform that offers a wide range of services and tools to help organizations build, deploy, and manage applications and workloads. However, the cost of using Azure can be a significant concern for organizations, particularly as the scale and complexity of their Azure environment grow.
Optimizing Azure costs requires a strategic approach considering the organization’s specific needs and requirements. To help organizations optimize their Azure costs, we recommend the following strategies:
Understand your workloads: One of the critical steps in optimizing Azure costs is to understand the specific workloads and resources consumed in your environment. This includes identifying which services and resources are used, how they are used, and how much they cost.
Right-size your resources: Ensuring your resources are appropriately sized for your workloads is critical to optimizing Azure costs. This can involve scaling resources up or down as needed to meet the demands of your workload or selecting cost-effective resource sizes that meet your performance requirements.
Utilize Azure Cost Management tools: Azure provides various tools and services to help organizations optimize costs, including Azure Cost Management, Azure Advisor, and the Azure Pricing Calculator. These tools can help you identify optimization opportunities, track your costs over time, and plan for future growth.
Use resource tagging: Resource tagging is a powerful tool for optimizing Azure costs. It allows you to assign metadata to your resources and track their usage and costs more granularly. This can help you identify and optimize underutilized or overutilized resources and allocate costs more effectively.
Optimize resource deployment: The way that you deploy resources in Azure can have a significant impact on your costs. To optimize your costs, consider using resource groups to manage and deploy resources more efficiently and leverage deployment automation tools like Azure Resource Manager templates to streamline resource deployment.
By following these strategies, organizations can optimize their Azure costs and get the most value from their investment in the cloud.
Effective Azure cost management requires a strategic approach considering the organization’s specific needs and requirements. To help optimize Azure costs, we recommend the following best practices:
Azure provides a range of tools and services to help organizations optimize their costs, including:
Effective Azure cost management requires a strategic approach considering the organization’s specific needs and requirements. To help organizations optimize their Azure costs, we recommend the following strategies:
In addition to the strategies and best practices mentioned above, there are several additional tips that organizations can follow to optimize their Azure costs:
Azure provides a range of documentation and resources to help organizations optimize their Azure costs, including:
The cost of using Azure varies depending on the specific services and resources consumed. Azure offers a range of pricing plans and options to suit the needs of different organizations, including:
In addition to the documentation and tools mentioned above, there is a range of additional resources available to help organizations optimize their Azure costs, including:
By leveraging these resources and strategies, organizations can optimize their Azure costs and get the most value from their investment in the cloud.
Conducting Microsoft True-Ups is critical for organizations to maintain compliance with their Microsoft Enterprise Agreement (EA) and ensure they only pay for the licenses they use. However, the True-Up process can be complex and challenging, requiring a deep understanding of Microsoft licensing rules, accurate inventory information, and accurate analysis of software deployments.
IT departments often face challenges determining the licenses required for Windows Server. Inventory information may be stored in multiple systems and tools, leading to missing sources or inaccuracies in the recorded data. The different licensing calculator tools and editions with varying license rules add to the complexity of license calculation.
Accurate inventory information is crucial for creating a correct license position. However, traditional software asset management (SAM) tools may not have the capability to determine the edition installed, leading to assumptions during software audits that can be costly. Even if the tools accurately record information, the data may not always be up-to-date, especially with the addition of new devices to the network or changes in deployments.
One of the biggest challenges in Microsoft True-Up is ensuring cost-effectiveness in licensing. IT departments may assign licenses to meet software contract compliance without considering alternative solutions. This results in overspending on licensing—like a Fortune 500 customer spending over $200,000 on Windows Server licenses for a cluster. The customer’s SAM tool and reseller calculated the number of licenses needed but failed to consider the specifics of the deployments. Further analysis showed that the cluster was a Linux cluster with a small percentage of Windows Servers, and the Windows licenses were for Commvault. By changing the Commvault configuration, the customer reduced their Windows licenses by $200,000.
Conducting a Microsoft True-Up requires expertise, tools, and resources to optimize Windows, saving time and money. An understanding of Microsoft licensing rules, accurate inventory information, how to install management tools, and effective analysis of software deployments are necessary to ensure compliance, cost-effectiveness, and the best return on investment in Microsoft licensing.
Annual True-Ups are required for organizations to maintain compliance with their EA and only pay for the licenses they use. The process can be complex and challenging, but organizations can optimize their Windows with the right expertise and tools, saving time and money. Whether working with a licensing expert or utilizing a service to support the True-Up process, organizations can be confident in the accuracy of their Microsoft licensing and the cost-effectiveness of their deployments.
Want to learn more and level up your confidence regarding the accuracy of your Microsoft licensing and the cost-effectiveness of your deployment? Do you want to know about Microsoft licensing options or need answers to their related questions? Want the experts to answer your questions? Contact us! https://metrixdata360.com/contact-us/
As a Chief Information Officer (CIO), one of your primary responsibilities is managing and optimizing your organization’s technology. To correctly manage technology includes ensuring you have the correct software licenses to support your business needs while controlling costs. This blog post will examine chief information officer roles, responsibilities, and secrets of champion CIOs who have excelled at software licensing and cost optimization.
The first step in optimizing your software licensing costs is clearly understanding your business needs. To know what you need, you must identify the specific software applications and tools required to support your operations and the number of users needing access to these applications. It’s essential to take the time to carefully assess your needs, as having too few licenses can result in productivity bottlenecks while having too many can lead to unnecessary costs.
Once you clearly understand your software needs, it’s time to start negotiating with vendors. Champion CIOs are skilled at negotiating favourable terms with software vendors, including discounts on licensing fees and additional features or services at no extra cost. The role of a CIO here is to be upfront about your budget and willing to walk away if the vendor is unwilling to meet your needs.
Volume licensing agreements allow organizations to purchase many licenses at a discounted price. These agreements are typically available for popular software applications such as Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Suite and can result in significant cost savings for organizations with many users. Champion chief information officers are adept at leveraging volume licensing (and combing with point 2 – negotiate favourable terms) agreements to get the best deal for their organization.
It’s essential to regularly review your software licensing agreements to ensure that you are still meeting your organization’s needs. A best practice is tracking the number of licenses you have in use and identifying areas where you may be over-licensed or under-licensed. The role of a CIO here is to be proactive in monitoring and reviewing their licenses and quickly make changes as needed to optimize costs.
In conclusion, optimizing your software licensing costs requires a combination of careful planning, strong negotiation skills, and ongoing review. By following the secrets of these champion CIOs, you can ensure that you have the correct software licenses to support your business needs while keeping costs under control. So, these are the secrets of four champion CIOs that will help optimize the cost of software licensing in your organization.
In today’s digital age, data is “the new oil” – a valuable resource that helps drive growth and innovation. A champion CIO method here seeks to understand the value of data and use it to advantage regarding software licensing and cost optimization. By collecting and analyzing software deployment and usage metrics data, CIOs can better understand how their software is used and identify areas where they can save costs.
For example, by tracking the number of active users for a particular software application, a CIO may discover they have more licenses than they need. They then use this data to negotiate a reduction in licensing fees with the vendor. Additionally, by analyzing data on software usage patterns, CIOs can identify underutilized applications and decide to discontinue them, reducing costs and simplifying the software environment.
In today’s fast-paced, data-driven world, having access to accurate and actionable data is essential for effective software licensing and cost optimization. A champion chief information officer understands the importance of data and uses it to gain insights that drive better decision-making and cost savings. Collecting, analyzing, and leveraging data can earn a competitive advantage and stay ahead of the curve in software licensing and cost optimization.
In summary, you can optimize software licensing costs in your organization by understanding your needs, negotiating favourable terms, leveraging volume licensing agreements, monitoring and reviewing your licenses, and leveraging data to your advantage. In today’s fast-paced and data-driven world, data is the new oil, and having access to accurate and actionable data is essential for effective software licensing and cost optimization. Using your own data around deployment and software usage metrics will give you the most leverage possible for cost optimization.
For more information on how our services at MetrixData 360 can meet the needs of your technology and financial departments, contact us today. Let’s work with you and your chief information officer’s roles and responsibilities to manage and optimize your organization’s technology.