revenue leakage
revenue underperformance
revenue planning
Revenue Leakage occurs when software products are used without being paid for. This may be deliberate or inadvertent. However, the effects are the same. Lost revenue from sales and increased ancillary costs. These concerns have been well documented in trade publications as well as the popular press. If your software is not restricted at all then it freely moves from system to system without your knowledge. If it is restricted then considerations of client convenience, robustness and perceptions come into play. In some circumstances, poorly implemented protection do nothing but hurt your sales.
Revenue Underperformance is somewhat less obvious. It is the failure to sell into a potential customer base when the product is otherwise a good fit. In spite of the best sales efforts put together by your team, some customers cannot accept the fit of your product to their needs. Putting your product in the customers hands for a test drive is the best way of overcoming that resistance. However, it is difficult to put full working product into customer hands and protect your intellectual property at the same time. If it is freely downloadable, then the functionality or features must be limited in some way. The choice normally revolves around either limiting the feature set or the duration of functionality. If the full product code is shipped with a limitation scheme, then the challenge is to avoid having that scheme hacked and made available to the public in general. For high end products or institutional sales, some vendors rely on the shipment of full product subject to written agreements. This method is labor intensive and is only available during normal business hours.
Revenue Planning revolves around the locus and timing of revenue flows. While these are corporate policy decisions, there is still the need of tools and methods to facilitate the decisions made. Proper revenue planning can help both you and your customers. Consider the simple case of project budgetary constraints. By choosing to use the software on a rental basis, the customer can move the cost from a large one time capital expenditure to a recurring operational expense that more closely matches his revenue stream. For some high end systems, this can be an overriding factor in product selection. In this scenario, the vendor benefits in two ways. First, the sale is made. And second, he achieves a predictable revenue stream. Since costs occurr every day of the year, predictable ongoing revenue is perceived by investors as more valuable than one time non-recurring revenue. Then consider the client wishing to purchase from a different jurisdiction and currency than that which you are currently operating in. INFINIPASS operates in multiple jurisdictions and is prepared to consider additional jurisdictions as needed.
