Snowcap Technologies

Introduction

SnowCap Technologies is a New England-based consulting firm and reseller founded by industry veterans, each with decades of experience helping customers address business challenges through technology. SnowCap’s vendor-agnostic approach has proven valuable to its customers and has been the driver for the company’s continued growth. Its vertical market expertise spans across retail, biotech, aerospace, financial services and other verticals.

At SnowCap, establishing and maintaining long-term customer relationships is essential. From a business perspective, a crucial component of this approach is ensuring each customer is up to date with their support and maintenance agreement (SMA) with the equipment manufacturer, which becomes an annual arrangement after the initial three-year warranty expires.

A Comprehensive, Cloud-Based Solution

Previously, SnowCap monitored the status of SMAs using Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. While it is possible to generate reports from these, doing so required a lot of manual effort and SnowCap’s staff found themselves being reactive when it came to renewals, as every item a customer uses has a unique serial number, and each serial number is tied to a certain SMA. After a thorough market analysis for a better solution, they found RenewalTracker.

“With RenewalTracker, we can easily generate a report that lets a customer know that they have 10 items that are up for renewal in the next 90 days,” said Brad Maher, VP of Technology Solutions and Services at SnowCap. “For us, that means things don’t slip through the cracks, and for them, it equates to better and more responsive service. Since we started using RenewalTracker, customer satisfaction has gone way up.”

Another decision point that factored into SnowCap selection of RenewalTracker was the desire for a cloud-based application that could be hosted off-premises.

“We’re a big cloud shop here and don’t have a lot of hardware and software sitting at our location,” Maher said. “RenewalTracker is a cloud-based service which made the decision easier as it fits with our overall strategy. Plus, RenewalTracker is inexpensive considering the value it provides and everything it does for us.”

Avoiding Missed Customer Renewals

Back when Maher’s staff was handling renewals manually, they had to enter lots of data into ever-expanding spreadsheets that listed all the serial numbers and associated SMAs.  If a number was entered on the wrong line by mistake, it could disrupt an entire sheet. So even with a lot of data filters, search capabilities, and reporting in place, there was still an element of human error. And when errors crept in, they had to be fixed manually. The same goes for outputting data – it was a slow, laborious process. This all changed with RenewalTracker.

"RenewalTracker makes managing renewals much easier,” Maher said. “Now, I can give each customer a secure login so they can view their item status if they want to, and we’ve set up email alerts in case they don’t have the time to do that. In RenewalTracker, searching is much easier and reporting far more sophisticated.”

In addition to benefiting SnowCap’s customers, it is also paying dividends for the company’s staff members.

“With RenewalTracker, we have a more accurate forecast of what’s to come in terms of customer renewals, which is very helpful to the sales team,” Maher said. “They know exactly when renewals are coming up and can alert their customers, which means we’re not missing renewals anymore. This is a big win and gives us a competitive advantage.”

Simple to Use and Manage

As a small company, SnowCap doesn’t have the bandwidth to spend a lot of time dealing with every vendor. Fortunately, it has developed a productive working relationship with RenewalTracker’s team.

“The RenewalTracker staff is extremely responsive and open to modifying certain features for us,” Maher said. “They did everything needed to get us up and running and get back to us quickly if we have questions. When there’s an upgrade, they take care of it and we’ve had continuous uptime, which is important. Another thing that makes the system simple to manage is how intuitive it is. A lot of applications have way too many bells and whistles, whereas RenewalTracker has everything we need and nothing we don’t. It’s streamlined and easy to use.”