Elly Yates-Roberts |
Organisations all over the world use ClickLearn to create user instructions and e-learning videos to help staff use business software and tools effectively and improve the way that they work. ClickLearn is changing the way it offers its services to help its customers drive value even further, through a subscription-based licensing model and new partner programme.
“I think sometimes we, as software vendors, tend to overrate the importance of our licensing model for customers,” says Joachim Schiermacher, CEO of ClickLearn. “I think there are two areas that are interesting for the customer when it comes to the licensing model: ‘What will my initial investment look like?’ and ‘What will my cost structure be in the future as we grow our business around that particular piece of software?’”
ClickLearn’s new model factors in these questions to help clients derive the most value from the firm’s services.
“With the new subscription-based model, we have shared a very small part of the licensing fee with the end consumers – those who will ultimately be reading and learning from the content which we generate – to allow companies to grow the reach of their learning portals at a very low proportional cost,” says Schiermacher. “Small enterprises have different needs to larger enterprises, both in terms of what they want to do with our solution and how much value we deliver for their business.
“As such, we have also changed the way we license business systems. Our clients can add and subtract business systems and users as their training needs change and as they can scale their feature set to better suit the timings they may have in making content available for their end users.”
Schiermacher believes that the new model gives his customers a chance to understand how the firm’s services can improve business operations, before committing.
“When a customer opts for our solution, they may have reservations as to whether it is the right fit for their business and whether their end users are benefitting from the content,” he explains. “That is a complicated scenario for a business to analyse and the considerations are entirely sensible. I want to make sure that clients can engage with us at a low cost and low hesitation level, so that they can understand our value and then grow their solution and investment with us as we prove our software’s worth.”
“It has always been our ambition to deliver the platform through subscription-based licensing. We feel the timing is right to make that transition in our business, and we have been listening to the feedback from our customers to understand how we can improve our proposition.”
The new licensing model has enabled a natural transition within the company’s partner programme.
“Partners have always been paramount to our business,” says Schiermacher. “We’ve had a service provider programme for a number of years, which allows any Microsoft Dynamics partner to leverage our software to help their customer improve user adoption. We are aiming this at partners of all levels that want to help their customers adopt Microsoft Dynamics more easily and cost effectively. Our new partner programme is better aligned with the way partners do business today.”
The latest company changes are just the beginning though.
“We can support our customers with almost anything and we are using their feedback to make their work lives easier and realise what they want to achieve,” he explains. “They are our key source of input to continuously improve.”
This article was originally published in the Spring 2020 issue of The Record. Subscribe for FREE here to get the next issues delivered directly to your inbox.