Why Does My Managed Services Contract Auto-Renew?
You’ve recently received a contract from OpFocus and noticed it has an ”auto-renew” clause. Now you’re left wondering why this is in your contract, as you may not have had a chance to discuss it with your sales contact. “Auto-renew” can particularly give CFOs pause. While they can imagine how vendors can benefit from auto-renew, what’s the advantage to your company?
That’s understandable.
Just like when a subscription you don’t use auto-renews, it’s difficult to see the benefits of an auto-renewal. Managed services, though, is a different sort of animal.
First, a quick clarification on what Managed Services means
It’s important to clarify what OpFocus means when we say Managed Services. We don’t offer “managed services” as you may traditionally know it. Instead, we offer what we call Growth Services, in which we take a prescriptive approach to manage your projects. During these projects, our experts offer proactive prescriptions, direction, and leadership to drive your projects forward. Our Support Services offering is closer to what you may conventionally know as Managed Services in the IT services market., where you access an on-demand bench of specialists to provide additional bandwidth. For Support Services projects, our consultants take a more narrow scope of work and typically are used to fill gaps in your team. Discover a more comprehensive outline of the differences between Growth Services, Support Services, and Staff Augmentation.
What makes Growth Services auto-renewals different?
When you sign up for OpFocus growth services, you’re doing so because you need help accomplishing daily tasks that your company doesn’t have the time, expertise, or resources to handle. The expected outcome? Maximum value for your investment, month after month.
Unlike other subscriptions, Growth Services are very rarely something your team will need once, More often, the support you need is ongoing and an auto-renewal anticipates this need.
How does auto-renewing Managed Services help you?
Continuous momentum towards reaching your goals
Because you’re engaging us for an ongoing relationship, we make sure to prioritize the availability and access to experts you need for the duration of your engagement with us. If your managed services contract had an artificial end-date — one whose goal was to ensure there’s an out for your company — you could be left in the lurch.
What would happen if your people on the ground were caught unawares when the contract ended?
Chances are the experts you have been depending on, and may still require, would no longer be available, as we assign them to other client engagements. The extended team of people that you’ve invested in, who have spent time learning your business and priorities and executing on your systems, would likely reprioritize their focus to assist other clients, potentially in the middle of a critical workstream.
None of us wants that to happen.
Auto-renew ensures there’s no artificial stop that causes you to lose momentum on critical projects. With auto-renew, you can rest easy knowing the experts you need will be continually available for as long as you need them.
Higher flexibility for scaling up and down
High-growth companies move at very fast paces. To capitalize on new opportunities and respond to urgent, mission-critical needs, they often have to take on new initiatives. More often than not, they don’t have the resources in-house to support all of these initiatives. Sometimes they divert resources from other tasks, but this puts daily operations at risk.
Auto-renews mean that you’re able to scale the amount of support you need much faster than if you had to draft up and negotiate a new contract each time. It also gives you the assurance that you won’t be caught short of staff. When the need for additional resources arises, simply notify your OpFocus project manager and we assign more expert advisors, consultants, developers, or architects to your engagement.
When steady state returns, you can request to dial our engagement back to daily operation levels. If you need to cancel, we build that into our schedule as well. Our clients report that this high degree of flexibility is invaluable in providing the options and control they need as they scale their operations and grow their team.
Prioritized access
As critical as being able to scale resources up and down is, ensuring that you access the best people for the job at hand is just as essential. Clients with renewing contracts get first dibs on OpFocus experts, from consultants and data experts to architects and developers, throughout your engagement. So you can be sure you don’t just get what you need, you get who you need.
Our continued partnership ensures you are provided access to high-demand consultants before newer clients who are initiating new engagements with OpFocus. You’ll also have increased access to consultants with highly specialized skill sets and that have an extreme depth of knowledge with the specific platforms involved in your project.
What consultants will I work with?
Auto-renewing enables OpFocus to provide the flexible, adaptable, responsive access to top experts and resources you need to manage growth and scale your business.
Providing this level of prescriptive service is why the vast majority of OpFocus growth services engagements with high-growth companies span multiple years. We’re invested in the success of your projects and your company and are there for your team every step of the way.
After reviewing your contract you’re likely starting to wonder about who on the OpFocus team your team is going to work with. We wrote an article to help you narrow down the teams and individuals you’ll work with.
