Providing ongoing value and securing the renewal of course involves engagement from numerous functional groups (Customer Success, Account Management, Product, Finance), but the same notion noted above to begin the section remains true in the land of renewals/upswells – friction is the enemy of execution. Modern enterprises now leverage dozens and dozens, sometimes hundreds, of software products to supercharge their efforts. As a result, simply getting ahead of what subscriptions need to be renewed, when, and for what amount, can be a daunting task to manage. Fortunately… there’s now software for that! A new crop of vendors has emerged in recent years focused on automating the renewal/upsell process, improving the experience for both customer and provider by removing friction wherever possible. Today, this primarily involves providing the buyer with all relevant information required to make the keep, cut, or buy more decision, and ultimately making the (re)purchase process itself as seamless as possible. Human beings increasingly prefer to self-educate and self-serve, more frequently demonstrating a propensity to avoid human interaction and drive decisioning in a self-guided manner wherever possible. The vendors in the burgeoning renewals automation segment that we have been impressed with cater to that propensity and deliver mind-boggling ROI to their customers in the process. While at first blush the value proposition espoused by these platforms may seem tactical, make no mistake about it – reducing friction across the buying/renewing/upselling journey is highly strategic, and the momentum the early leaders in the space are experiencing is the pudding that bears the proof. Similar to the Revenue Predictability segment discussed in part two of the thought map series, a tangential but very important benefit these solutions deliver is their ability to support customers in becoming more dynamic, real-time, and data-informed in their forecasting and budgeting approach. Moving towards an agile forecasting methodology enables organizations to be more deliberate and intelligent in their resource allocation decisioning. - 22 -