FlexNet Operations: Features

Unified Entitlement Management and Device Lifecycle Management Solution for All Software License Generators and Technologies

 

FlexNet Operations®, the most comprehensive entitlement management solution, empowers software vendors and intelligent device manufacturers to support new revenue models easily and efficiently while streamlining and automating complex back-office processes. FlexNet Operations provides a single, unified view of entitlements for you, your customers and your channel partners.

Making the most (money) with your SaaS offering
Reduce Operational Costs

One Entitlement Management Solution for Managing All Software License Generators and Technologies

FlexNet Operations offers a single system for managing and tracking entitlements across all your license key generators (Flex, homegrown, or third-party). More

It gives you a central repository for tracking and managing all entitlements and licenses, while supporting any kind of license generation (manual, hands-free/programmatic, binary, or text).

By supporting multiple technologies, FlexNet Operations makes entitlement management and software license tracking far more efficient while simplifying the back-office integration issues that come with mergers and acquisitions.

  • Take advantage of sophisticated capabilities such as batch activation, batch transfers (rehosts), and reconfiguration across all of your license servers
  • Integrate any other external process or interface into a single license generation system and maintain a central repository for tracking all entitlements and licenses
  • Support any kind of license generation, including manual, hands-free/programmatic, binary, or text

ERP and CRM Integration

Reduce or eliminate costly and time-consuming manual processes by integrating FlexNet Operations with your ERP and CRM systems.

Automate Licensing and Entitlement Management Tasks

Reduce or eliminate manual data entry and facilitate revenue recognition by automating entitlement tracking, license tracking, license creation, and license fulfillment. More

Manually managing and tracking licenses is time-consuming and error-prone for you and frustrating for your customers.

FlexNet Operations saves you time and effort by automating entitlement management tasks–including entitlement creation, transfers, splits and merges. It automates lifecycle activities such as upgrades, returns and rehosts and enables customer self-service

FlexNet Operations can integrate with your ERP and CRM systems, which eliminates manual data entry and accelerates revenue recognition, by streamlining order entry, license generation, fulfillment, and change requests.

Robust Infrastructure Support

FlexNet Operations supports Oracle® and SQL server databases, multiple browsers, and a wide range of operating systems.
Enable New Revenue Opportunities

Enable New Revenue Models for Virtualized Environments and Region-Based Licensing

To prevent revenue leakage in virtualized environments, a software vendor or intelligent device manufacturer can define license models that allow or deny use of their products in a virtual environment such as VMware and Hyper-V. They can also grow revenues by charging a premium for software used in a virtual environment.

In addition, software vendors and intelligent device manufacturers can grow revenue by pricing differently based on geography with support for keywords related to detecting and enforcing time zone licensing.

Protect and Grow Revenues by Leveraging New and Existing License Models in Amazon EC2

FlexNet Operations allows software vendors and intelligent device manufactuers to develop license models for deploying software in Amazon EC2, including:
  • Concurrent use licenses
  • Standalone virtual appliances
  • Pay-by-hour for virtual appliances
  • Charge for bursts of use for software instances

Grow and Track Channel Revenues

As a software vendor and/or intelligent device manufacturer, you can track entitlements through the entire distribution chain. FlexNet Operations gives you a complete view into channel activities permitting you to increase channel revenues by tracking and measuring performances and adopting incentive programs to attain revenue goals.

Grow Revenues from Bundled Products while Ensuring Seamless Customer Experience

Software vendors and intelligent device manufacturers can now better monetize maintenance programs by automating rules based on maintenance status and by providing upgrades and renewals in bulk for large customers.

Proactive Software License Tracking

Better capitalize on revenue opportunities by proactively tracking license entitlements and support contracts and notifying customers before they expire. More

FlexNet Operations supports multiple license tracking technologies, letting you track all your licenses from a single system.

This license tracking tool  helps you increase upgrade revenue by letting you proactively track entitlements, version levels, expiring licenses, and support contracts (regardless of the technology used) and take advantage of automated alerts to notify customers before they expire.

Create New Product Configurations

Quickly build and deploy new product packages and license models without involving IT or development staff. More

To meet changing customer demands, respond to competitive activity, and build new revenue streams, software vendors and intelligent device manufacturers must regularly modify how they price and package their software. But it can be a manual, time-consuming task that ties up internal resources, thereby limiting your ability to quickly go to market.

FlexNet Operations lets you capitalize on new revenue opportunities by rapidly and easily creating new product configurations and license models that customers want – without involving IT or development staff.  You can now deploy a new product in just a few hours.

Improve Customer Experience

Efficient Activation

Internet and offline activation capabilities within FlexNet Operations help simplify even complex software license management tasks, making it quick and easy to activate licenses. Efficient activation helps reduce support calls related to product activation, upsells and upgrades, as well as lowers network bandwidth costs related to product activation requests.

Self-Service Customer Web Portal

Reduce support costs by providing a 24x7 self-service Web portal that your customers and channel partners can use to manage license delivery, returns, rehosts, upgrades, and renewals. More

FlexNet Operations helps you empower your customers and channel partners with a Web-based self-service portal they can access 24x7.

The portal lets them easily return, modify, and rehost licenses and reassign entitlements at any time without calling your support staff. It helps cut your support costs while improving customer satisfaction.

Hands-Free Product Activation

Your customers can automatically activate products without contacting your customer support staff.

"Shopping Cart" -Style Product Activation

FlexNet Operations' shopping cart style product activation feature enables you to further increase customer satisfaction level. Your customers will find it easy to activate a series of products all at once.

Batch Activation and License Rehosting

Enable customers to activate, redistribute, and rehost licenses in bulk across multiple license servers simultaneously.

Control Access to FlexNet Operations

Easily define each user's access rights to FlexNet Operations, so your personnel can only perform authorized tasks. More

To help track the security of your licensing operation, you can easily define each of your staff's access rights to FlexNet Operations, ensuring personnel never perform unauthorized tasks.

You can assign rights to individuals on a feature-by-feature basis. You can also group users into different roles with specific access rights to FlexNet Operations based on job function. Creating your own custom roles is easy.

FlexNet Operations also allows large end customers to filter entitlements and license in the self-service portal so that only users with the appropriate product category expertise are allowed to touch them—minimizing the risk of downtime in complex enterprise environments.

Efficient Bulk Operations

Bulk Operations enables manufacturers to grow revenues and lower operational costs with automatic fulfillment and email notifications of license upgrades, upsells and renewals.

Disconnected Usage Enhancements

Collect and send data from the customer during the activation process even when customers are disconnected.
Entitlement Management for Intelligent Device Manufacturers

Enable New Revenue Models for Intelligent Device Manufacturers

FlexNet Operations supports intelligent device manufacturers' entitlement management needs by efficiently creating new product offerings and managing FlexNet Embedded licenses. As an intelligent device manufacturer you can increase your revenues by quickly and efficiently penetrating new markets with new product offerings that meet consumer demands.

Make-to-Stock Channel Management

Lower operational costs with make-to-stock channel management by enabling self-service and tracking of product entitlements as they move through a complex channel network. Make-to-stock channel management also enables manufacturers to track and monitor best performing partners while ensuring data privacy.

Device Lifecycle Management

As an intelligent device manufacturer, you have the ability to improve customer satisfaction and reduce cost by turning "on" or "off" capabilities based on the customers' entitlement. If your customer chooses to "add-on" to his/her device, he/she can see the upgrade done seamlessly without having to return the device.

Usage Summary

With Usage Summary, the manufacturer has a clear picture of how much capacity or capabilities an end customer has ordered, has provisioned on license servers and is using inside devices managed by license servers. Usage Summary enables manufacturers to have a true-up conversation with the end customer for monetization models based on usage metrics.

Backup and Restore Device Data

FlexNet Operations captures backup data about devices provisioned by a license server in an enterprise or service provider environment. Manufacturers can restore device data from FlexNet Operations to rebuild a license server in case of data loss, helping to minimize downtime.

License Server Data Synchronization

FlexNet Operations' License Server Data Synchronization capability allows manufacturers to gather device data managed on a license server. This can lower problem resolution time and support costs by knowing configuration parameters of a device for which an end customer is requesting customer support assistance.

Enable Device Tracking

With FlexNet Operations' device tracking capabilities, manufacturers have better visibility into their installed base as devices move within the enterprise.
Gain Customer Insights

Detailed Entitlement Reporting and Tracking

FlexNet Operations has rich reporting and tracking capabilities, giving you detailed insight into who is receiving entitlements for what product, what entitlements are being returned and re-hosted, what platforms customers own, and much more. More

FlexNet Operations has rich reporting and tracking capabilities, giving you detailed insight into who is receiving entitlements for what product, what entitlements are being returned and re-hosted, and more.

This entitlement tracking tool  can tell you the ratio of entitlements to activations, how often entitlements are being returned and re-hosted, as well as which customers are requesting temporary licenses. Reports also benefit your sales team by alerting them to revenue-generating events such as upcoming renewal opportunities.

You can create your own custom reports or run the many reports that come with FlexNet Operations, including:

  • Ratio of entitlements to actual fulfillments (shown below)
  • Track which entitlements will expire this quarter (vital data for your sales teams)
  • Track which license models are most widely used
  • What platforms do your customers use
  • Detailed entitlement history by customer

Track and Report Using Customer Hierarchies

Provide your customers with the ability to track which division or location owns the licenses, so they can share or redistribute them as needed. More

Provide your customers with the ability to track their organizational hierarchies, so they can easily track which division or location owns the licenses and can share or redistribute them as needed.

The parent-child relationship of a company – including subsidiaries and organizations within an enterprise – can all be represented and updated easily in FlexNet Operations.  It is so flexible that you can even assign different roles to a single user based on their division.

This license tracking tool helps you and your customers handle decentralized purchasing issues and accurately track entitlements and departmental charge-backs.

Custom Attribute Searching and Reporting

Define, search for, and report on custom attributes that you care about – including customer demographic and product-specific data – for both FlexNet, homegrown, and third-party technologies.

Customer Data Collection

FlexNet Operations helps you better understand your customers (even those that purchased through resellers) by tracking end-user demographic data during the activation and registration process. More

This license tracking tool includes a number of key enhancements to trusted storage licensing, including the ability to:

  • Deliver custom responses to customers based on the data you collect, enabling you to better segment users, provide a richer activation experience, and increase revenue per customer
  • Collect and send data from the customer during the activation process even when customers are disconnected
  • Gather detailed information around the number of activations, type (manual or online), and more, helping you cut support costs by tracking activation methods and proactively anticipating customer questions

Enhanced Data Mining

Gather detailed data around the number of activations, type (manual or online), and more, so you can improve support by troubleshooting and better anticipating customer questions.

Enhanced Fulfillment History

Better understand customer activity by tracking data on the reason for a license's return, repair, and more.

Create New Product Configurations

FlexNet Operations On-Demand lets you capitalize on new revenue opportunities by rapidly and easily creating new product configurations and enables license models that your customers want – without involving IT or development staff. As a software vendor or intelligent device manufacturer, you can now deploy a new product in just a few hours.

Unify Customer Experience for Diverse Licensing Technologies

FlexNet Operations On-Demand unifies entitlement management and license lifecycle processes across FlexNet Publisher, homegrown and third-party licensing technologies streamlining the entitlement management task for all products regardless of licensing technology used. Improve customer satisfaction by offering a consistent and sought after customer experience.

Customer Self-Service for License and Entitlement Management

Reduce your support costs and improve your customer satisfaction by providing a 24x7 self-service portal for your end customers to generate software licenses and to self-administer license returns, re-hosts, upgrades, and renewals.

Enable New Revenue Models for Intelligent Device Manufacturers

FlexNet Operations supports intelligent device manufacturers' entitlement management needs by efficiently creating new product offerings and managing FlexNet Embedded licenses. Intelligent device manufacturers can increase revenues by quickly and efficiently penetrating new markets with new product offerings that meet consumer demands.

Device Lifecycle Management

As an intelligent device manufacturer, you have the ability to improve customer satisfaction and reduce costs by turning "on" or "off" capabilities based on the customers' entitlement. If your customer chooses to "add-on" to his/her device, he/she can see the upgrade done seamlessly without having to return the device.

Usage Summary

With Usage Summary, the manufacturer has a clear picture of how much capacity or capabilities an end customer has ordered, has provisioned on license servers and is using inside devices managed by license servers. Usage Summary enables manufacturers to have a true-up conversation with the end customer for monetization models based on usage metrics.

Channel Self-Service

Improve your channel performance due to better tracking; lower costs to serve the channel. With the ability to track and report on entitlements sold through channel partners, large channel partners with their own order management system can also associate their order information with an entitlement, and search for and track entitlements through the partner's order ID. Not only will your end-users be able to self-serve their license needs, but also your channel partners as well.

Grow Revenues Through Try and Buy

By enabling Try and Buy, you can increase revenues by making it easier for your existing customers and prospects to try software products before they buy. FlexNet Operations On-Demand streamlines the process for the end-user to generate a Try and Buy without involving you, thereby lowering barriers to trial and adoption.

Maximize Up-Sell and Renewal Revenues Through Entitlement Reporting

The license tracking tool helps you increase upgrade and maintenance renewal revenues by letting you proactively track entitlements, version levels, expiring licenses, and support contracts (regardless of the technology used) and take advantage of automated alerts to notify your customers before they expire.

Minimal IT Involvement and Management

FlexNet Operations On-Demand is a hosted service, therefore your operational costs are predictable and you know you are covered since we take on the management of the service for you. It enables your IT teams to focus on your corporate strategic priorities!

Hands-Free Product Activation

Product activation makes electronic software licensing invisible to your end customers ensuring a seamless customer experience and zero customer support calls. In addition to activation, you can enable a hands-free experience for license return and license re-host while enforcing business policies for these activities.

Role-Based Access

Easily define each user's access rights to FlexNet Operations On-Demand, so only allowed personnel can perform authorized tasks.

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