Table of Contents Building Strong Customer Relationships Increased Customer Visibility Provide Quick & Efficient Repair Services Facilitating Better Team Communication Enable Better Customer Education & Planning Get Steadier Income Streams Experience New Heights With SiteOwl Recurring revenue is essential for stability and growth, but most security integrators rely on project-based revenue to turn a profit. This can cause major problems for the integrator-customer relationship. Because many projects are one-off jobs, customers view their integrators as replaceable labor rather than strategic security partners. But all of this changes when integrators leverage the cloud. Cloud-based technologies can be a powerful tool that can help you generate more recurring revenue in two separate ways: Selling cloud-managed services with built-in subscription fees. Using cloud-based solutions designed to improve business operations It’s possible to find a ton of information online about managed services. This article focuses on how adopting cloud technology for internal use can help you boost recurring revenue. Let’s dive in! Building Strong Customer Relationships Nurturing robust customer relationships is a cornerstone in ensuring the enduring success of security solutions. Over the long haul, loyal clients: Diminish the overall expenses of securing new clientele. Display a higher tendency to make repeat purchases of access control systems. Can evolve into enthusiastic advocates, propelling referrals for both on-site and cloud solutions Are more inclined to extend forgiveness amidst missteps in physical security solutions All of those benefits rely on the company’s ability to comprehensively understand customer needs and meet them through effective planning and execution. In short: satisfied customers quickly become loyal customers. But in a post-pandemic world, having a superior product isn’t always enough to keep customers engaged. According to Forrester, trust, safety, and inclusion are at the core of customer experience, and that’s not likely to change. In the security business, you can offer these to the end-user by working closely with them in real-time. Cloud-based suites like SiteOwl allow you to achieve this and increase the value you provide to your customers. 1. Better Customer Collaboration The most effective security system deployments can meet the customer’s security needs while delivering projects on time and at the right price. Involving customers from the start of the process is critical to ensuring stakeholders feel engaged and involved throughout the project lifecycle. Co-designing with customers can help you better understand their security infrastructure needs, providing the scalability required to offer solutions that provide maximum value in the dynamic security services landscape. Unfortunately, collaborating with customers is difficult when using traditional, paper-based systems. Information captured through analog processes quickly becomes outdated, leading to confusion and poor decision-making. ERP and digital design software can help, but highly technical solutions may be difficult for non-experts to understand. The cloud changes all this by providing tools that allow customers to collaborate with the integrator from start to finish, ensuring data security, accuracy, and constant occupancy of the latest information. Collaboration can also extend into the system lifecycle’s installation, maintenance, and service phases. Integrators must often work alongside security professionals in the customer’s organization and others that work with them. Leveraging cloud-based technology, you can ensure your customers have a hassle-free experience whenever they contact your brand. 2. Increased Customer Visibility Today’s customers, particularly those investing in sophisticated security services like video surveillance systems with powerful analytics, demand high service and support to meet their needs. If you’ve ever tried to get package updates from your freight service or postal carrier, you know exactly why this matters. Visibility in the supply chain is critical for everyone from retailers, where over half of shoppers want real-time visibility into the status of their order, all the way to stakeholders in your security project—whether they’re part of the security team, a service provider, or involved in any capacity—who want to see how the project is going. In a world where all of our devices and systems are connected, customers want to know what’s going on with their multi-million dollar projects to monitor progress, offer input, and feel like they’re doing something to help the project stay on track. Cloud-based lifecycle management solutions allow integrators to acknowledge and leverage these expectations to create a better customer experience and provide peace of mind. In this way, customers can approach projects with your team and maintain high confidence that the design they agreed upon will be implemented without shortcuts or unnecessary confusion. Explore SiteOwl 3. Provide Quick & Efficient Repair Services Traditionally, when a security device malfunctions, the customer calls the integrator. The integrator visits the location, often lacking the necessary information to resolve the issue. This results in several unnecessary truck rolls, increasing service costs and mounting customer frustration. With a service management suite, integrators can quickly know when a device is malfunctioning, where it is located, when it was last serviced, and other rich information that makes it easy for a tech to resolve an issue quickly. Facilitating Better Team Communication The success of any integration project depends heavily on the seamless flow of information from sales over to engineering, projects, and — finally — service. But traditional team communication methods do poorly to minimize the loss of information downstream. Important details get lost in translation or are omitted from the project completely A single lost file or sheet of paper can set a project back by days Reports often need to be submitted, consolidated, and then repackaged for a variety of project stakeholders Poor accountability results in additional team confusion because nobody knows who did the work The process of reporting progress from the field is often manual. Many common methods of communication — Excel spreadsheets, Word documents, emails, and text messages — are ineffective at holistically capturing field installation reports. And the results of miscommunication and poor accountability can devastate a project, leading to project managers who lack confidence in how the project is progressing and customers who are unhappy with their experience. With the cloud, end-users and integrators can collaborate on a single platform in real-time. All information is recorded