Every tech company claims to be “data-driven”, but how often do you go beyond the buzzword and dive into meaningful customer data analysis that fuels growth and strengthens retention?
Selling and onboarding is the hard part, but once your buyers sign the contract, detailed software usage reports can reveal engagement levels, feature adoption, service denials, and upcoming renewals – allowing you to identify churn risk and potential expansion opportunities.
I’m sure you’ve heard of Google. They’re pretty big in the tech world and know a thing or two about strategic customer data analysis. Here’s what their CEO, Sundar Pichai, says on the topic:
This basic-but-beautiful philosophy has propelled Google into one of the biggest brands on the planet. (If you really haven’t heard of them, you should try looking them up on Yahoo. You’ll be amazed at what they do.)
Knowledge is power, but you don’t need to be a multi-billion-dollar corporation with a full squad of data scientists to find lucrative stories behind your stats. Valuable insights are probably closer than you think, and with the right setup, automated alerts can notify your team when action is required.
Software Usage Reports That Go Deeper
License lifecycle and entitlement management solutions often provide standard software usage reports that give visibility into products, downloads, activations, and entitlements – helping you analyze adoption rates as a general measure of account health.
In short, you can see what the customer has purchased, to what extent they’ve started using it, and perhaps which versions they’re running. However, this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the type of granular customer behavior data analysis that drives innovation and long-term revenue growth.
If you don’t look below the surface, you’ll miss out on feature-level consumption trends over time, indicators of upsell or cross-sell potential, churn warnings, and signals from power users who can shape your future roadmap by revealing which features drive the most value.
Deeper insights allow Product Managers and Customer Success Managers to improve user experiences – both at the macro and micro level – and Revenera’s Monetization Analytics is one of the most powerful customer data analysis tools available today, with practical software usage reports and alerts.
Customer Data Analysis Software
To conduct a serious customer data analysis project that positively impacts your pipeline, you need seamless access to targeted information, which is precisely what Revenera’s entitlement management system provides.
The Analytics Dashboard offers several smart software usage reports, including:
- Service Denials: When customers are denied access due to insufficient capacity or use rights, this is a clear signal of an upsell or cross-sell opportunity – especially if it’s repeated behavior over a prolonged period.
- License Server Usage: Drill into specific feature usage to see whether key customers are making the most of your product, or if action is needed to boost adoption. This data can also inform overage billing scenarios.
- Fulfillment: By comparing available quantities to activations, you can see if customers are maxed out and could benefit from more, or if you need to intervene to reduce churn – either by driving adoption or recommending right-sizing, which improves satisfaction and lowers cancellation risk.
- Renewals: A real-time view of upcoming renewals helps your team stay ahead. You can also conduct customer churn data analysis by filtering churn by region, allowing you to audit expired entitlements and assess your options for re-engagement campaigns.
The Producer Portal within FlexNet Operations makes it easy to perform the customer data analysis examples listed above, while Data Access REST APIs enable direct sharing with other data warehouses and business intelligence platforms, allowing you to monitor customer analytics in your own way.
Easy access to information is one thing, but it’s what you do with it that counts, and customizable notifications can trigger low-code workflows to alert key stakeholders when it matters most.
Delivering Insights to Your Inbox
Rather than manually digging for gold, the alerts functionality allows you to set certain parameters – such as 10 service denials, reduced monthly logins, or when capacity limits are near – and automatically inform account teams when thresholds are met, either by email or push notifications in your CRM.
Alternatively, you can configure emails to be sent directly to customers if their usage activity suggests they might need to upgrade.
Embedded analytics, automations, and API integrations make data-driven conversations much easier, and these advantages should be factored in when deciding whether to build or buy software monetization systems.
Many companies rely on manual record keeping for customer entitlements, but this approach provides zero insight for meaningful customer data analysis, hampering sales and creating a significant business risk – particularly when employees who manage your spreadsheets leave the organization.
Boost Sales with Customer Data Analysis
A key part of the Product Management Guide to Software Monetization is understanding how the right technology and customer data analysis techniques can work together to help you grow recurring revenue.
There’s much value to be gained by analyzing different customer segments and evaluating whether specific vertical markets or geographies have common issues – such as peak usage spikes or underutilization of certain features – allowing you to make informed decisions and tailor communications effectively.
Forrester Consulting recently interviewed four product leaders from a range of industries to produce a Total Economic Impact™ Study of Revenera, which found a 426% ROI over three years with an initial payback period of under six months.
Here’s a snippet from the study:
“One of the biggest challenges in our industry is that account managers often reengage customers a year later with little more than anecdotal feedback from conversations. There’s no clear view into actual usage, which makes it hard to steer sales conversations and identify the best next steps with customers. Revenera gives us analytics around what customers are using, and that insight changes everything.” – Director of R&D, Engineering Technology
As market trends shift toward increased flexibility, such as outcome-based licensing or usage-based pricing for SaaS and AI, the need for a single source of truth with clear, accurate data has never been greater.
Profitable customer data analysis hinges on deep software usage reports that reveal actionable insights, and the customizable notifications within Revenera’s platform turn data into knowledge so you can proactively improve customer experiences while growing your business.
If you’d like more information on the full capabilities of Revenera’s solutions, please contact the software monetization team today.
