Posted on 3 Comments

100% subscription renewal

I’m happy to note (this is internal Open Query happiness but I’m pleased to share) that so far we have a 100% renewal rate for our Proactive Services for MySQL subscriptions. Some of the early clients have grown in the initial period and are have now moved to a higher # of hours (this can also be changed upward during a term), which is of course excellent both for the clients and for us.

I was in eager anticipation of this time since the introduction of the concept late last year, as it is of course the essential proof of whether a subscription service actually works over time. Ideally, you’d want renewal to be a simple straightforward process, with the client having experienced the value of the service. This is relatively straightforward in this case, since it’s not an insurance, emergency or retainer type arrangement – the client actually gets benefits each and every month, so there’s both technical progression as well as ongoing human contact. Seems like a winner!

Along the way we also see a steady influx of new clients. I haven’t been specifically chasing this, as all new concepts take a while to mature, and we also had new people internally. The really cool thing is that our business structure for this service is scalable – I won’t say linearly because at some point the # of internal people involved would require adapting some processes, but it’ll scale a fair way still from where we are now.

Elspeth, our Special Projects Operative, who apart from an ace coder&geek is also organisationally organised, has been a great help with some of the admin aspects of the company. We’re paper-less, but that doesn’t mean there’s no paper. We tend to not produce more, but we do get it from others 😉

Posted on 3 Comments

3 thoughts on “100% subscription renewal

  1. I’ve seen a number of posts like this from Open Query on planetmysql now – and fail to see how they are “technically focused on MySQL”.

    I remember Arjen complaining about MySQL using planetmysql for “marketing” messages in the past, and wonder how this is any different for Open Query.

    Let’s get back to the technical side of things Arjen! 😉

    1. Point taken, Mark! I do think most of OQ’s posts are MySQL/technical in nature? I didn’t do a complete tally to check though.
      In any case, I do have a broader interest covering OSS in general and also business models, and OQ is also kinda like my experiment to prove a point – namely that it’s entirely doable to build a business that doesn’t merely try to extract as much cash as possible out of its clients, but instead deliver pretty much 1:1 value – and that this can be done sustainably, profitably, and support significant growth.
      That’s the objective of the post, not plugging the company as such.
      But I will keep an eye on it. Thanks again for your feedback!

  2. Well done mate! Keep it growing!

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