How to streamline subscription renewals with co-termination

Co-Termination is a key feature available in Crayon platforms for Microsoft CSPs that simplifies billing processes and improves customer experience.

Co-Termination Explained

Co-Termination allows you to align the end dates of multiple subscriptions to a single, common date. This means that instead of managing various renewal dates for different subscriptions, you can synchronize them to renew simultaneously. This capability is available through our PRISM and Cloud-IQ platforms, making it easy to implement and manage.

This capability will help ensure that subscriptions align with your term end dates, simplifying your billing process and improving your customers’ experience.

Advantages of Co-Termination

1. Add-on management: You can terminate/renew add-on subscription at the same time as existing subscription, so you don’t need to pay for an add-on subscription alone without having to use it.
2. Simplified Billing: By aligning subscription end dates, you can consolidate invoices, reducing the complexity of managing multiple billing cycles. This leads to a more streamlined and efficient invoicing process.
3. Enhanced Customer Experience: Customers benefit from a consistent billing cycle, which can improve their satisfaction and loyalty. They no longer need to track multiple renewal dates, making their subscription management hassle-free.
4. Flexibility: You can choose to align end dates for each group of subscriptions, providing flexibility to manage your subscriptions as per your business needs.
5. Pro-Rata Adjustments: If a subscription is added or changed before the co-termination date, Microsoft makes pro-rata adjustments to align with the co-termination date. This ensures that the customer is only charged for the portion of the subscription used.
6. Customer Convenience: For customers, co-termination means fewer dates to remember and manage. It can also simplify budgeting and forecasting by consolidating subscription costs into a single period. Anything that reduces time and effort for you and your customers is a net benefit for both businesses.

Examples of Co-Termination Benefits

Let’s consider some scenarios to illustrate where co-termination applies, and how it can benefit customers, and you.

Scenario 1: Microsoft 365 with Copilot add-on

Let’s say you have a customer on a Microsoft 365 Business Premium subscription. The subscription is due to renew in three months, but the customer wants to add Copilot licenses for their executive team.

Normally, this would result in two separate annual payments and renewal dates. By using co-terming, you can align the new Copilot licenses to the Business Premium subscription end date.

Co-termination in this example provides for charges to be prorated, reduction of the original term and one annual invoice. This simplifies the billing process and reduces administration for customers, gives them a better experience and takes less time for you to manage.

See #42 in this Microsoft document for more information about co-termination in Copilot.

Scenario 2: Microsoft 365 with Dynamics 365 Customer Insights add-on

Your customer is a marketing agency that wants to add a Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights subscription and align its end date with their existing Microsoft 365 subscriptions for easier billing.

By using the co-terming feature during purchase, you can set the new subscription to renew on the same date as the others. This way, all subscriptions will renew simultaneously, simplifying billing and improving budget management.

Scenario 3: Mixed Subscription Co-Termination

Your customer has 100 seats in Microsoft 365 Business Premium and Dynamics 365 Business Central Essentials with Microsoft 365 Defender and D365 Field Service add-ons. These subscriptions expire in 6, 3, 12 and 8 months respectively.

For the customer and the partner, this means tracking all expiration dates, processing separate invoices, and managing four separate renewal negotiations. Clearly, this is an administrative burden that can result in unnecessary budgeting and financial planning headaches as well.

With co-termination, you adjust the renewal periods for all subscriptions to align them to the same expiration date.

In this scenario, adjustments would be applied to all subscriptions to give them a common expiration date. The table below illustrates how, and the prorated charges that would apply.

Applying Renewal Adjustments and Prorated Charges.

Co-termination is a win-win solution

Co-termination means you can proactively offer customers a simplified invoicing and billing experience, in exchange for a one-off extension of their subscriptions.

Everyone benefits. One consolidated invoice means less administrative management, and simpler financial tracking. A unified renewal schedule makes it easier to track and manage subscriptions and associated costs, reducing the risk of billing errors and service interruptions.

The co-termination feature in Microsoft’s CSP program is a powerful way to manage subscriptions more efficiently, improve your billing processes, and enhance customer satisfaction.

We encourage you to explore this feature and see how it can benefit your business.

If you would like more information or assistance with implementing co-termination for your customer subscriptions, get in touch with your Crayon channel account representative or email the TAG Productivity team with your inquiry, and we’ll be in touch.