We’re pleased to announce a new six-part series centered around building a relationship with your customers. One of the biggest benefits and key advantages of the CPQ products that Simplus implements is a functionality known as the install base. To start, we’re going to talk deeply about the purpose of an install base in this first blog, and in the next five parts of the series we’ll dive deep into the following elements:

1. Contracts

2. Subscriptions

3. Assets

4. Amendments

5. Renewals

The install base is comprised, in most systems, of three critical objects: Contracts, Subscriptions, and Assets. In addition, there are two key processes we can add to our core selling motion, the Amendment and Renewal. With these elements, we’re able to create a holistic picture of the commercial agreements we’ve entered into with our customers, the associated one-time non-recurring revenue products to those commercial agreements, and the recurring revenue products installed at customer sites. Knowing this information is critical to building a 360-degree view of each individual customer so that we can adequately support, upgrade, and transact across the entire install base, as well as look at trends and patterns to better serve our customers.

The install base can drive many other functions within your organization. Once we have a solid record of what our customers have installed, we can build associations between the service and support we’ve offered as a part of the initial sale known as an entitlement. This allows us to accurately and quickly offer the requisite level of service that was sold during the initial sales cycle. We’ve had customers who, prior to deploying Salesforce CPQ, with no visibility into their install base, did not know which level of support customers were entitled to when they filed support cases or called into phone support hotlines. With a robust install base, this is no longer an issue!

Ultimately, it’s about knowing what each individual customer has purchased from your company in the past. Over the next five parts of this series, we’ll talk about each particular component and how it can truly transform your business.