3 Mistakes Solution Providers Make via

Maintenance & Renewals That Hinder Growth

(And How to Fix Them)

Read time – 3.0 minutes

 If you’re a VAR or Solution Provider, you’re always looking for ways to drive more recurring revenue. Maintenance, renewals, and subscriptions can be at the heart of that strategy. As we have talked to VARs, we find that up to 30% of revenue can come from maintenance, renewals, and SaaS, but we also find that there are many challenges that come with the revenue.

 

New Complexity Facing Maintenance, Renewals and Subscriptions:

 

• Software Renewals: These now include a range of licenses and subscriptions, and if you miss the renewal window, you risk system shutdowns or, even worse, auto-renewals that can catch you and customers off-guard.

• Enterprise Agreements (EAs): These are essentially large maintenance contracts with asset dependencies. Many OEMs are pushing EAs, and they require robust asset management capabilities to execute properly.

• Diverse Renewal Types: From large enterprise contracts to small, regular updates, maintenance, licenses, and subscriptions can range from major deals to tiny transactions that are tedious to manage and monitor.

• Complex Billing Structures: Differing by product, OEM, and billing dates, maintenance often needs to be coterminated, consolidated, or billed in increments over time, affecting forecasting and commissions.

• Communication Challenges: Managing updates, alerts, and renewals across multiple OEMs and distributors can be a real challenge, impacting customer service, renewal rates, and trust with both customers and OEMs

All of these factors can leave your renewal team feeling overwhelmed. 

Ask them how they’re doing—I guarantee they’ll say, “busy.” These people are the backbone of your operation, and the last thing you want is for them to burn out. If renewals and maintenance get backed up, sales reps and customers feel the strain, and it can start to limit your growth and damage customer trust, which can directly impact your bottom line.

 

Here’s the BackStory:

Early in my career, I worked at a VAR where super hard working lady “Nancy”, our renewals coordinator, was buried under a mountain of paperwork. Her desk was piled high as she handled renewals, built quotes, and processed orders – often working early and late. It was a highly operational role, demanding a process-oriented person who could manage a lot of detail.

I’ll be honest. I didn’t want to sell products with maintenance complexity because it was overwhelming to learn, and it seemed impossible to manage, as the time I sold IBM products vs. Cisco products, because of the complexity of Cisco products and support.

Ironically, later in my career, the hardware reselling business I founded morphed into a data center maintenance company where tracking assets, contracts, and services was the lifeblood of our operations.

If we didn’t get it right, we missed out on recurring revenue and lost visibility into future business. This was where I truly learned about maintenance and felt the weight of responsibility to get it right so we could grow.

Maintenance is near and dear to me, and I know the asset management demands that it takes to pull off a well run maintenance and renewals team.

 

Common Issues Solution Providers Face with Maintenance:

Here are three common mistakes that I made early on, and I as I talked to providers see them being made again and again.  If we are going to scale our businesses and build a recurring revenue engine, we need to get these right.

 

1. Neglecting Renewal Management Systems:

Mistake: Not having a systematic approach to managing renewals leads to missed opportunities and administrative chaos.

Impact: This results in lost revenue, customer dissatisfaction, and an increased manual workload. 

Why does it impact revenue? Simple—small renewals slip through the cracks, and before you know it, a few larger ones get missed too. This upsets customers, and before long, they don’t trust you with more business. They start shifting more and more of their estate to other providers.

Solution: Implement an automated renewal management system to streamline processes, ensure timely renewals, and reduce the burden on your team.

 

2. Inadequate Customer Communication:

Mistake: Poor communication with customers about maintenance and renewal services leads to missed renewals and upsell opportunities.

Impact: This causes reduced customer retention, lower satisfaction, and missed revenue growth.

Why does it impact retention and service? Simple—if customers aren’t notified early enough, maintenance lapses, licenses expire, and worse, service is turned off. Customers might give you grace on a few renewals, but if it becomes systemic—or if a key person leaves—they’ll lose trust in your team and shift to a company that has their act together.

Solution: Enhance your communication strategy with personalized, proactive outreach. Use reminders, educational content, and regular updates to keep customers engaged. The key here is overlaying your personal communication with tools and templates to support your process.

 

3. Ignoring Opportunities for Upselling:

Mistake: Not leveraging the renewal process to offer additional services or upgrades limits potential revenue and growth.

Impact: This results in lower average revenue per customer and missed chances to increase customer lifetime value.

Why do renewal teams ignore upsell opportunities? Simple—they’re slammed. There’s too much data and too many renewals to be proactive, especially without tools to automate or streamline the process.

Solution: Identify and present upsell opportunities during renewals, using data insights and software platforms to tailor offers and maximize value.

 

Here’s the Good News:

You are only a few steps away from getting your maintenance back on track. Here is what it can look like.

• Your maintenance, renewals, and licenses are proactive, predictive, and an opportunity for growth rather than a constant headache.

• Your team engages proactively with customers, identifying and acting on upsell opportunities, and building quarter-by-quarter renewal and upsell pipelines based on data..

• Your customers buy more from you because they trust you to handle the small details that make their lives easier.

• You generate more recurring revenue with less effort, and you can take those future revenue and margin forecasts to the bank.

• You handle increased volume with the same or fewer support staff.

• Your communication between reps, inside sales, quoting, renewals, and customers is seamless, giving you a differentiator to highlight with customers and potential hires.

 

How to get your maintenance, renewals and subscriptions under control:

1. Invest in the Right Maintenance Platform:

• Choose tools that integrate quoting, contracts, assets, renewals, and customer portals.
• Ensure your system supports multi-OEM environments, notifications, and email templates for streamlined communication.

Realize that assets, maintenance, notifications, quoting, and lifecycle management are all connected. You need a system—or a collection of systems—that can run this process end-to-end. If you have a quoting tool and the data stops there, you have a gap in your flow. Close that gap by getting a tool or integrating your tools to pass all this data from start to finish.

 

2. Communicate Early and Often with Customers:

• Use templated emails for regular touchpoints, such as 90-day and 1-year reminders.
• Avoid using spreadsheets; instead, leverage software and automation tools to manage communication efficiently.

Consider collaborating with portals for quoting, renewals, and lifecycle management. There’s a reason you log into your bank or Schwab account to view your assets—customers want and will demand to do the same.

 

3. Leverage Tools for Upselling and Customer Retention:

• Run reports based on asset age, end-of-life (EOL), and end-of-service-life (EOSL) dates.
  
• Identify assets ready for upsell or replacement, and involve your engineering team early to spot these opportunities.
  

Get data out of spreadsheets and into platforms to run upgrade plays. Why? Because your engineers and architects can’t see the data if it’s buried in a spreadsheet. But in a platform, they can engage and help drive sales and ideas without asking for permission. Plus, you can share those insights with more people on the team—a crucial capability in today’s remote work environment.

 

Conclusion:

We hope you learned a bit more about how to grow your business and maintenance practice.

Owlytica helps resellers automate maintenance, renewals, and licenses so you can spend less time on admin and more time selling. Our platform automates communication with both your staff and customers, while providing robust asset management and lifecycle planning to maximize your revenue.