Entitlement = Savings + Satisfaction
ACROSS is our Entitlement Center where customer, partners and even your personnel can go to download or order the materials they are entitled to. ACROSS takes the product information feed from RESCUE after the kit is made PA. The kit as defined in RESCUE along with the content is made initially unavailable, this allows the administrators to finish the definition and potentially build notification and permission lists. Based upon its RESCUE definitions, the kit may be identified as a update (for instance a service pack) to an existing set of product kits. ACROSS calculates a list of entitled users and then allows a notification template to be used to notify the users who will have the new product kits entitled to them. The update would then be automatically entitled to all those notified.
All levels of the BOM (products or kits, objects or components) can have structure, content, metadata and workflow states. This means components like CDs which may be in any number of separate kits are tracked and referenced as the same part number in those kits. Adding content or changing states of the CD can be reviewed to ensure a complete understanding of the impact.
Having content in a controlled and central repository means one place to find and get it if you have permission. Content submissions and retrievals are check-summed to ensure the entire content has been successful uploaded or downloaded. Linking the state shows you not only the content is safe but you know at what level within the work process the content currently exists at.
Electronic Software Distribution
ACROSS calculates entitlement; the contents of a particular user’s entitlement center is based upon the three basic elements of products, orders and validates. The entitlement center is, of course more that a place for updates. Since the original product definitions are there entitled customers can always go back to retrieve or order physical copies of the related components.
ESD is not a 100% replacement for physical delivery. There will be situations where a customer will require a physical copy but reducing the physical distribution can save a lot of time and money. Making the process as streamlined and automated as possible reduces even that cost.
As well as managing entitlements, ACROSS manages the entitlement delivery. Products can be restricted to or from geo locations, and individuals can be checked in real time against DPL and other government restriction lists prior to downloading files. Combined with a download manager and integration with content delivery networks, product receipt can be confirmed and logged allowing in some jurisdictions for early revenue recognition along with a complete transaction trail for audit and reporting needs.
Electronic License Management
Additionally, license templates can be associated with products allowing users to get keys on-demand. ACROSS supports a number of methods such as calling a web service-based generator, inserting a generating algorithm or taking the next off an inventory of keys. ACROSS is truly license key technology agonist but it provides a simple method for creating uniformity even when many different generators or methods must be used. Find out more about Electronic License Management.
Customer Self-Service Center
There are many reasons why companies build customer self-service centers. The most obvious is customer satisfaction and another is contractual obligations for service contracts. But the best reasons are related to profit and self-service. If you can offload some of the service work to your customer you save resources. Now customer self-service is not about offloading all the responsibilities but it is about empowerment and enablement. In the current context this means placing the materials a customer is entitled to at their fingertips and allowing them to decide when and how to receive the information or files.
Like most things in life, customer care can only be sustained one of two ways either by special effort and attention or by incorporation into ordinary processes and practices. It is the latter that is most effective since once embedded it becomes routine and effortless. The success rate of embedding the activities is increased by utilizing business-required activities as the source for the less visible customer support activities. That is to say, if you must deliver something because of financial or contractual requirements try and leverage that for customer support. For instance, problems and solutions must be logged in a problem reporting system. A (knowledge-base) KB system needs that same data (perhaps cleaned up a bit), most likely it is possible through integration or automation to clone the data into the KB system (minus things like customer identification etc.). Same goes for files, if you use ESD to deliver the original purchase, think about using ESD to deliver the customer support files like fixes and service packs since in most cases they are already in the system because of the initial delivery requirements. ESD also ensures you know who has downloaded it (and when) and many other benefits a link to FTP site will not give you, including notification and updates.
Placing all their entitlements at their fingertips on-demand 7/24 can help raise customer satisfaction. It can also reduce the burden on your staff and those of your channel partners. Combined with eCommerce, customers can buy and self-supply or renew potentially without assistance from anyone.
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