Struggling to scale your service business? We get it. As a service agency or SaaS provider, it can be difficult to balance cost-efficiency and growth. Every time you try to take on more clients, you find yourself needing more employees to manage the workload. And taking on a bigger team will mean more expenses – it can feel like an endless cycle.
You might also feel like you’re spending all your time writing quotes and negotiating with clients. Then even when you’ve agreed to a package and price, scope creep sets in and you end up spending extra time on the project and offering more than you charged for.
Of course, eventually you’ll reach a point where you’re scaling up, but this can be a slow and difficult process and you find yourself thinking “there must be a better way!”.
The solution isn’t as complicated as you might think. Unlock unlimited scalability and unbeatable cost efficiency with the dream combination of productized services and white label solutions.
Read on to find out what productized services and white label solutions are, their main advantages and why they’re a match made in heaven.
What is a productized service?
Service productization is a business model that is becoming more and more popular among agencies and SaaS providers, as they realise it expands their opportunities for scalability and cost efficiency.
Put simply, productization occurs when a service company takes its most popular offerings and creates a packaged-up solution that will appeal to its key customers. Services are sold more like a product, with value-based pricing and clearly defined features.
Put into practice, this model comes in many different forms, and is mainly brought on by a company’s desire to scale up in a more sustainable way.
Benefits of productization
#1 – Increase client confidence in your offering
From the client’s perspective, productized services are more tangible since it’s clear exactly what the cost is upfront and exactly what to expect from the company. This provides them with added confidence in the process – plus there’s no need to go through the tedious process of agreeing on a quote.
#2 – Scale up exponentially
Often, professional service providers struggle to increase their gross margins beyond 40% as they achieve scale. This is due to the requirement for more employees every time they try to take on more work. By introducing automated processes with software solutions using the productization approach, companies are able to serve more customers with a small team and enhance the services they provide.
#3 – Remove the risk of scope creep
More often than not, it’s difficult to stick to the original quote you agreed with the customer. Small adjustments are made throughout the process and before you know it, your work has taken much more time and resources than you’ve charged them for to begin with. This is called scope creep and can be easily avoided with fixed product offerings that set expectations on both sides from the get-go.
Given these benefits, it’s easy to see why productization could be the way to go. Unlike a launch of a whole new brand or product, you’re simply taking what you already provide and packaging it up differently (in a more convenient way for everyone). You already know who your market is and how to reach them, so what’s getting in the way?
Not sure how to productize? Try white label
The biggest source of friction for companies considering productization is the ‘how’ not the ‘why’ or the ‘what’. How do you automate your processes? How do you embed a product in a service?
The obvious answer is to build solutions based on what you’re trying to achieve, but this can take months (even years!), substantial financial backing and may involve skills beyond your expertise. This is where white label solutions come in.
What are white label solutions?
White label solutions are fully supported products that are made by one company but sold by another. The purchaser customises their solution to match their brand, logo and identity, and then sells it on to their end users as if it’s their own.
This benefits the creator of the solution, since they can focus their energy on maintaining and optimising the product, while the reseller is able to expand their offering without having to develop and build their own software from scratch.
For example, our white label social media scheduler, CoSend, took months and months of work from our team to develop, test, perfect and launch. Plus, it still takes time and resources to maintain, optimise and update. We spend this time and money so our customers don’t have to.
Going down the white label route is ideal for companies who want to increase the scope of their offering, scale up to a full-service agency, enhance their brand, and save huge amounts of money and time.
Why productized services and white label solutions are the perfect match
When companies decide to productize their service, they often feel compelled to invest lots of time and money in their own solutions to help automate processes and create a more tangible offering. However, on most occasions, starting from scratch isn’t necessary and there are many white label solutions available that will do just as good a job (if not better!) for much less cost and time.
For a productized service provider, a white label solution presents the perfect opportunity to introduce a new element to their offering and make their service more appealing to new and existing customers.
If you’ve productized your services, or are considering doing so, here are 4 undeniable reasons why you should include a white label solution as part of your productized service offering.
#1 – Easier and more cost-efficient
Productization is all about saving time – no more having to write proposals for every client, no more coming up with new pricing for each service, no more negotiating deals – it’s all set out in simple, ready-made packages.
This then frees up time to focus on other aspects of your business. You can automate the menial tasks and put your energy into creativity and supporting your customers. Imagine being able to continue with your easier, more efficient practices brought on by productization, while offering a whole new, powerful feature.
White labelling enables you to add to your offering, become more attractive to your customers, and engage all new audiences – all with little-to-no legwork on your part. Not to mention the thousands of pounds (and we mean thousands) you’ll save by outsourcing rather than developing your own.
As an example, our white label social media scheduling tool will fully integrate into your existing systems and comes ready-made. Once you’ve onboarded your customers and trained up your team, you can start selling it as your own and discover a whole new revenue stream.
You can then add it as part of your existing packages or offer it as an add-on at an extra price. The more features you offer as part of your productized service, the more value you’ll provide your customers, since it will reduce the number of vendors they need to use. Plus, if you start offering something your competitors aren’t, who do you think potential customers will choose?
#2 – Focus on what you know
When you productize your service, you free up time to focus on more meaningful tasks, while technology covers the rest. If you’re looking to scale up through a move to this model, trying to launch a new product from scratch isn’t going make the process any quicker or easier. Whatever time you’ve saved by productizing will soon be used up with creation, development and testing of a new solution.
But this shouldn’t mean you don’t add to your offering at all. In fact, in order to properly scale up, you’ll have to expand your services at some point. White labelling is the perfect solution, since it leaves the experts with the technical work while you focus on your business’s core competency. Tap into expertise outside of your own and avoid making the mistakes others have made before you.
#3 – The 3 Rs – reliable, recurring revenue
One thing that agencies who use the more traditional service model often suffer from is lack of reliability and recurring revenue. This is because they’re entirely dependent on the client, quote and requirement for your service at any particular time.
By productizing your services and introducing structured pricing plans, like subscriptions and set tiers, you create a more reliable, recurring revenue stream. This then provides you with a more predictable growth, so you can plan your next moves.
A white label solution is great partner to this model, since it introduces a new, recurring revenue stream through the SaaS model. For example, by introducing CoSend (our social media scheduling tool) into your offering, you’ll unlock a whole new feature for your clients, and you can choose to markup our price however you like, based on what will work best for your customers.
#4 – Simplify sales & support processes
Hiring and training new employees is made easier with productized services, since all your prices and processes are made consistent. You’ll have standard operating procedures (SOPs) that can easily be taught to new team members and improved upon with every new customer.
When you introduce a whole new element to your service offering or create a new software to automate processes, you’ll have to ensure that all your employees are fully clued-up on all the ins and outs of it. This can take time and disrupt the smooth processes you’ve got in place.
With a white label system, however, sales and support materials are often provided, meaning training your staff and onboarding new customers is much easier! Rather than creating all your own documentation and coming up with innovative ways to explain your solution, it’s all prepared for you and you have a support team to go to when things go wrong.
For instance, our CoSend white label customers have instant access to any help they need from our support team, plus the ability to add our Help Centre to their own site. This means that all our ready-made FAQs and How-to guides are available to all their customers, as well as their staff for training purposes.
Solve the struggle and scale up
When scalability and cost efficiency become a problem for your service agency, try productizing with a white label solution. It might not be something you’ve considered before, and yet could be the answer you’ve been looking for.
Cut out unnecessary, time-consuming tasks like quoting and negotiating with simple, packaged up plans and automate your processes with self-branded solutions without having to start from scratch.
These solutions enable you to focus on building your brand and selling your service while simplifying the conversion path for your customers.
Not sure where to start? Speak to us about CoSend, our white label social media scheduler.
