Another memorable year passes and after another internal analysis here's what's new but old news still. I've been doing our annual report and number crunching and went back to the past 14 years to get a good look again at the details. Our Moves-Adds-Changes revenue trend is spiraling downward to near non-existence while our Maintenance revenue is spiraling upward, more than doubling over past trends. Hmmm. I think Professor Pinder-Schloss would call this "displacement."MAC labor was a keystone line item that no matter what the economy, you could always rely upon MACs as a source of revenue. This I believe is no longer the case and in fact, since 2002, the trend has bounced high and low with subsequent peaks and valleys lower each of the following years. I will agree that our MACs revenue (customer expense item) has almost been eliminated, but "almost" only counts in horseshoes. In fact, it's another illusion that IPT perpetuates that the customer is saving money. No, they're not. Here's why:
Point one is that many vendors including my company are rolling MACs into the maintenance agreement and these MACs are only "remote" work that we can do without a truck roll. Point two is the maintenance agreements have doubled in revenue. Even after deducting the loss of MAC revenue and trip fees, maintenance clearly wins and leaves us with a surplus, better than pre-IPT deployments (the old days).
We also have a "service call" category that captures non-maintenance and accounts by the wayside that we pick up. This revenue stream has grown sevenfold. I can attribute this to IPT partially and that no matter what you call the phone system, where you house it or how you deploy it, customers need service, not some jockey on the phone giving lip service and burning time in fruitless exercises.
Perhaps you can dismiss my analysis since we cater to the SMB. We do more large enterprise (distributed, factory and franchise) work each year and we do not sub-contract to the gray market or other numerous sources that say, "I want to be your phone guy." Unlike the volume box movers that have little regard for customer service, we still operate on handshakes and old-fashioned ideas that customers still want and need service.
I will concede that IPT has improved but I won't agree that it can't improve leaps and bounds more than what we've already experienced. IPT is complicated, remains challenging and requires maintenance. Forget about the days of just hanging the box on the wall or mounting it in the rack because you can't forget it, if you do, you will pay more. When I look at the graph showing monthly MAC revenue for the past 14 years, at first glance it was almost a weeping moment. Then, I viewed the graph and statistics for the Maintenance revenue and thought, "wow, less truck rolls, less expenses (to me) and we end up earning more." What really tops this are the Service Call (revenues). Yes, IPT is more complicated and someone has to pay. All this brings to mind what Jimmy Buffet sang.
