1. Recurring revenue does not have to be billed monthly

Although RMR suggests a monthly revenue stream, installers and integrators should consider building in their monthly fees or revenue into different offerings.

As monthly billing could potentially require a lot of time and resources, this gives you the option to utilise your time and streamline your process. Rather than billing your customers once a month for maintenance, add the monthly maintenance fee to the cost of the product for your customers. Your customers could pay an agreed one-time fee upfront that covers their maintenance costs for a certain amount of time. You could also consider combining fees into annual or quarterly billing.  

One of these offerings would allow you to maximise profit and leverage the benefits of RMR to your business, without adding too many administrative hours to your workload. 

2. Access control is a growing market with room for RMR

While maintenance agreements are popular in the fire market, until recently, they were relatively unheard of in other sectors. Small-to-medium businesses have created a boost in demand for access control and in turn, have created the opportunity for RMR.

Cloud-based services for access control gives end users a better way of managing systems remotely, and they can be a huge boost to your recurring monthly revenue.

When you use a cloud-based service for Access Control, you can upcharge the cost of your services to your customers per door. This can be billed as a monthly, quarterly, or annual service agreement. Another option is to include the fee in the price of the product.

The licencing of mobile credentials is also a recurring revenue stream since your customer will need to pay for each year that they want to continue using mobile access control.

3. Offering less-common services like warranties

Just like a consumer electronics retailer sells you a one, two, or three-year warranty on a laptop, you can offer a guarantee on your installation for a monthly, quarterly, or annual fee. Not only does this offer a boost to your RMR, if offers a layer of protection to your customers when it comes to installation and hardware issues. Ensuring your customers systems are well maintained and increasing your recurring monthly revenue offers a win-win situation.

You can also leverage ADI’s services for an RMR opportunity when it comes to video surveillance software.  You can use software renewal tracking as part of a software agreement with your end users. When you purchase Exacq software for your customers through ADI, we track renewal dates for you for free. This gives you the opportunity to market the service to your customers without doing the actual labour of keeping track of renewal dates.

4. Using third-party contractors can be income-generating

As recurring-revenue opportunities such as maintenance and service agreements often require additional administrative hours and labour, some installers find that contracting the work to a third party is beneficial to their workload.

Although service or maintenance agreements are not common in residential audio and video installations, the opportunity exists for Commercial AV system integrations. Utilising a third-party solution for Pro AV customers can offer you the freedom of subcontracting your labour to ensure your end users have access to a Pro AV professional. Should there be equipment failures or software issues, this type of solution will enable you to keep your guarantee.