Flex or Single-User: Which Is Right for You?

PRISCILLA NING: Hey, everyone. Welcome to our session. Thanks for joining us today. I'm so excited to share with you all Flex and Single User, Which is Right for You? I'm Priscilla Ning, I'm from the Business Models team. I'm the Marketing Communications Specialist, and I've been waiting a long time to share all these details for Flex. As many of you know, Flex actually just launched August 16th, so I'm really excited to share a lot of these details.

As I mentioned, Flex is very new, so I'll be starting with a Flex overview just to give you all a reminder of what it is and what's coming soon, so that you have a better idea of what we're talking about today. And then I'll be jumping into our comparison, which will be the main section of the session. We'll be comparing Flex to Single Users, so you can decide which option would be best for your team. And then we'll be talking about how you can tell if your users are occasional or frequent, which will be a big deciding factor whether Flex or Single User is a good fit. And then we'll be walking through getting started with both and how they compare, and closing out with some reminders and next steps.

So let's jump right into it. Flex is a new pay-as-you-go option, and I wanted to give you all a quick overview. Flex is developed for customers who are occasional users or for those looking to scale up. For example, imagine you're at an engineering firm, you may have BIM modelers who use Revit all day long, alongside engineers who only need to use Revit a few hours a week. With your team's budget, it could be a juggling act to figure out how you'll allocate your spending, or maybe you're just anticipating growth and interested in increasing access to more users or more software over time, or even maybe you're just plain busy and looking for easier on-boarding.

By incorporating feedback from customers just like you who face challenges like these, we developed Flex with these three key benefits in mind. With Flex we're able to provide access for occasional users and specialized product use, give access to top products and ability to try new products without a significant upfront cost, and provide an option to closer align and optimize usage costs. You'll be able to purchase a mix of Single User subscription and Flex, so you can put dedicated users on subscription and occasional users on Flex.

This allows you to keep your discount M2SD if you have any, and to buy Flex as you need it. If you're currently transitioning to named user, Flex it's also another great option available as you take and you trade in. It also lets you buy product access with low commitment. With Flex, you can buy tokens and predefined quantities that you can use as you need.

With the transition to named user behind us, we've been gathering feedback from all of you and taking note of the challenges admins face on a day to day. We found that although subscription might be a good fit for some, there are three challenges that have come up again and again. Now that I've shared some of these key features of Flex, let's dive deeper into the challenges that help shape Flex.

We've heard concerns about managing users who don't need to use the same products every day or use certain products occasionally. We know it can be time consuming to be frequently adding and managing users or products when project demands change, or maybe some users just need a bigger diversity of products throughout the project lifecycle or design phases. A user might be interested in trying a new product.

If they want to enhance their work, or they just want to try something new, but without the upfront budget, that might not even be an option for you. We understand it can get expensive to purchase multiple tools for users, especially if they're not utilizing all of them every day. Which has brought us to why we're here today, the development of Flex

Now, moving on to the solutions that Flex will provide for these challenges that I just mentioned. With Flex you'll be able to save money on users who only need occasional product use, and that way you can only pay for what you use. You'll be able to save time when you need to add new users or products quickly, and when users want to try new products, not a problem. No need to pay an upfront cost for a subscription before you're even sure it's going to get the usage that makes that cost worthwhile.

So now that I've given a little background as to how Flex works, let's find out how you can decide whether Flex or Single User is a better fit for you and your team, or even if a mix of both works best. In this side by side comparison here, you can see the key differences between subscription Single User and Flex. Some of the main differences are how often users will be using their products and what kind of term length they're interested in.

You can see that Flex is better for occasional users versus Single User is better for frequent users, and also when it comes to terms, are you OK to buy tokens as needed? Or would you prefer an upfront cost that you can budget for in the beginning of the quarter? Which would be Single User. And it's also, are you buying individual product subscriptions or industry collections, or would you just like to buy tokens for a team to access a wide range of products?

Both are available with the standard and premium plan, but you do inherit whatever plan you have, which I'll talk more about later. But the main thing I'd really focus on here is the first line, which is occasional versus frequent. Flex is designed to save you time and money when managing users who will access the product occasionally, which means in most cases seven days or less per month, or need the flexibility to access multiple products during specific phases of projects, all with light use.

Subscriptions are more ideal for users who frequently use specific products. In most cases, that would be eight or more days of use per month. You can also buy Flex to be used alongside your existing Single User and multi-user subscriptions at any time. Buy tokens when you need them, even midterm. It doesn't really matter. It's not like a subscription where you really think of it as a term.

The transition to named user is also available for subscription, but no trade in offers are available for Flex, which is important to keep in mind if that's something that you're doing right now. When you buy tokens, they last 365 days and cannot be co-termed to your subscription, and there's no three year agreements at all. There's no such thing as an annual allotment in a three year agreement where you get a certain amount of tokens per year. It's really like buy as you need and they expire exactly 365 days from purchase.

You might also be wondering about the Standard and Premium plan that I just mentioned. Basically, if you currently have existing subscriptions, you're going to receive the same plan you already have for your subscription. For example, if you're currently an admin for 50 AutoCAD subscriptions on the Premium plan, and you purchase Flex for eight of your contractors, those eight users can automatically receive Premium benefits for Flex.

However, if you don't have any existing subscriptions of Autodesk, you automatically receive Standard. This is because you need a minimum of 50 Single User subscriptions in order to qualify for Premium, so any purchase of Flex does not count toward that minimum, just to be super clear here. So I mentioned earlier that Flex is best for occasional users, and Single User is best for frequent users, but how can you tell whether your users are occasional or frequent? Let's dive deeper into that here.

The first step would be to log into your Autodesk account and pull up your seat usage reporting. As you can see, I put that tab in the red box. So that's really easy to find, it's just on the left nav of your Autodesk account. Here you can see how frequently your users are using your products. We consider occasional users those who access products seven days or less per month, as I mentioned.

So just based on that, you can see which products, or users, are using their products less than that, and take a closer look to see if they're fit for Flex. Let's take a look at this first example. Imagine you pull up your seat usage data, and this is what you see for your product design and manufacturing collection. In this example here, you can see that 50% of your users are accessing 3ds Max two to three days per week, and the other 50% are accessing 3ds Max four days per week. As you can see when you add that all up, you have users accessing your products more than seven days a month. So this is more than two to three times a week as I mentioned this example here.

So a Single User subscription is still the best choice for these users, and you'll see more cost savings that way by staying on subscription instead of Flex. On the other hand, imagine you see this instead of example one. Within the collection, your users are only accessing AutoCAD Mechanical one day a week. This is well under it's seven days a month baseline, so they could very well be a good fit for Flex, and I would say it's worth purchasing some tokens just to try it out.

If you're wondering how many tokens is your purchase, though, after you've taken a closer look at your usage reporting, it's now time to estimate the tokens you need. You can buy tokens any time on the Flex landing page. We've also included this handy estimator tool on the page. It's designed to be quick and simple, no detailed information needed. It's made to be very quick and easy, so that you can go do it on the [INAUDIBLE].

All you need to do is enter the products you'll be using, as you can see here. I'm just checking all the products that I'd be interested in trying Flex for based on my usage data. And now that I've selected everything I want, I'm going to go in and enter the users and days for each product that I've estimated based off of the reporting data.

What I love about this is that you can buy tokens on the landing page, and we have this estimator tool handy, so you can basically do this and buy tokens immediately. So you can see there's a recommended amount of tokens, and I just click buy tokens, and it's that easy. I'm in the cart, and it checks out based on my inputs. And that's it.

Since Flex was designed to be another named user option to Single User, there are a lot of similarities between the two. This makes it easy to reassign users between the two models based on their constantly evolving usage patterns. So with that in mind, I'll be comparing to on-boarding experience with two directly, so that we can really dig deep into differences between both.

Let's start with the obvious. To get started, you'll have to make a purchase for your team. This could be tokens for your team to use for any products available with Flex or it could be a Single User subscription for each user. For both Flex and Single User, the adding experience is pretty much the same. You can add users manually or by importing them in the CSV. If you've already added all the users you would like to sign to Flex or Single User, feel free to skip this adding step, as there's no need to re-add them.

I'm sure you're already pretty familiar with how that works, so I'll jump into assigning where it does look a little different. So with a Single User subscription, you can assign users directly to the product they need access to. However with Flex, you give users access to products included with Flex by signing them all to Flex, as if it was a product, as you can see in the left screenshot here. So all those assigned users to Flex will be able to access products included with Flex without any additional action on their part. They basically just open the product.

To make assigning easier and give you more control, we have tools at your disposal ready to be used in Autodesk account. For Flex we have default assignments, which gives you the power to choose which products your Flex users will have access to. This is brand new, and it's really designed to be complementary to Flex. As I mentioned the slide before, everyone you assign Flex to has access to products, but here, you're able to pick and choose if you want to exclude any products, or if you want to select all and give everyone access to everything that's on the Flex list.

So for example, you might want to exclude certain products either because they have a high token rate, and you don't want anyone accidentally accessing it, or if there are some products included in Flex that you would like to have users request access to first, so you have more control. It's easier to manage within default assignments. Import to assign may be a tool you're already familiar with, but it's very useful. It's for both Single User and Flex. It allows you to save some time in your day and get your users assigned quickly instead of doing them one by one manually.

All you have to do is upload a CSV file with user information, and then you upload it. Simple, super easy, and that way, if you have a lot of users to assign, this makes it just a one button click. Step three, your users access products the same way whether they are on Single User or Flex. There's virtually no difference between the two user experiences for accessing Single User and Flex products from the user side. They just open the product and sign in.

If you're wondering if Flex users have to be connected to the internet, the answer is yes. They have to be connected every 24 hours versus 30 days for Single User, so that's really important to keep in mind if you're working on something that requires you to be offline. And tokens are deducted when users open the product and our charged every 24 hours, unless the user closes the product. I just really want to emphasize that, to avoid being charged, you have to close the product. If not, you'll be charged every single 24 hours from the first time you opened it after closing it.

So for example, if you access it at 9:00 AM on a Monday, on Tuesday at 9:00 AM you'll be charged again unless you close the product. Just want to emphasize that. If not connected to the internet, basically, you'll not be able to be charged, which is why we have to require that. It's just how the model works. If it's a 24 hour charge, you can't be offline for more than 24 hours. And if you're not connected after 24 hours, the user will receive an in product notification to remind them to connect to the internet, and the product will be closed.

We also support previous versions. We include from 2022 all the way back to 2017, and that's pretty much the same for Single User. And for Single User with the charging, it's basically an all access pass within your term. Users can access as frequently as needed within the subscription term at no additional charge as long as they want. They can leave it open, it really doesn't matter.

You'll have access to usage reporting for both Flex and Single User. Usage reporting differs a bit between Standard and Premium, so I'll first be covering it for Standard. Admins automatically receive the Standard plan unless they already have Premium, and all primary and secondary admins can see usage reporting for subscription and Flex. Let's start with Single User.

For Single User, admins see a high level summary, including assigned and unassigned seats and products in use. You can also see a by-product breakdown with total number of users and frequency of use per product. For Flex, admins can see a token usage reporting tab that focuses on token usage instead of seat usage, so they can see similar reporting details to seat usage, but it's very much so focused on tokens instead of seats.

You can see a summary and by-product page that breaks down with total tokens used, the usage of products with Flex, and the number of users using each product, along with the number of tokens you have remaining. So this summary on top, as you can see it says 399 tokens, it's just super handy to help you track your token usage, so you could decide when it's the right time to buy additional tokens, so you never run out, and your users are never locked out of their product.

Now let's talk about the Premium plan. With the Premium plan and Single User subscriptions, you get an additional by user tab with additional insights about your users. For example, in this screenshot, you can see Paula's usage for the time period you select, whether it be weekly, monthly, et cetera. And if you click on her name, you can actually see an even deeper breakdown of her usage, including the version she's using and time of use.

Whereas for Flex, with Premium, you get token usage reporting with an additional by user tab as well, so that admins can take an even closer look at their token usage reporting. You can click on each user assigned to Flex to get a very detailed view of each user's token and product usage, and it also gives you deeper user insights, so you can see who your power users are. As you can see, token usage reporting is a great asset for you to analyze your average token usage, so you can accurately decide the number of tokens you'll need to purchase.

After comparing all those differences, I wanted to close out with some final reminders and frequently asked questions about Flex. So in this slide, I really want to emphasize that Flex or Single User are not all or nothing models. You can definitely have a mix of both, and even one user, such as Sarah, may need both. For example, if Sarah uses Revit every day and Navisworks two days a month, that's a great example for her to have Single User and Flex, based on that estimate.

However, Anna uses Inventor four days per month, which is less than seven, so she could definitely benefit from just being on Flex. However, James uses AutoCAD 10 days per month. That is definitely more than seven days, so Single User would be best for him.

All right. So now that we're closing out, I really want to dive deep into the details here just to really emphasize how Flex works, so that you have a better understanding of that compared to Single User, which most of you guys are already more familiar with. So first of all, you can purchase more tokens at any time. There's no such thing as having to wait until you're completely done with tokens. You can basically supplement as needed, just remember that they do-- number two here-- expire exactly one year from purchase, and do not auto renew or rollover.

So you'll have to monitor your spend, and your tokens, on your token usage reporting, so that you make sure that you never run out. Subscriptions are always used before tokens for any products included in Flex. For example, AutoCAD is available with Flex and Single User subscriptions, so you really want to make sure that, you know, Ben is using subscriptions, so you assign him an AutoCAD subscription. But no need to worry there if he's going to use tokens instead of a Single User subscription, because we always go defaulting toward the Single User subscription, so you don't waste your tokens on something when you could be using a Single User subscription.

Admins will receive low token notifications via email and in their Autodesk account, so you'll receive a low balance notification also a no token left notification, and that just makes it easier for you to supplement your tokens when you're running low. Also keep in mind that tokens that expire earliest will be used first, first in first out. So if you purchase multiple pack sizes on the same day as well, tokens from the smaller packs will be used first.

So I hope that was really helpful for you all today, and that sums it up for me. So jumping into next steps. Make sure you visit the Flex landing page www.autodesk.com/flex, will provide more info about what I've talked about today with a full list of daily product rates, and also the products available with Flex on there as well. Also set up some time to look at your usage data with your Autodesk as a representative or partner. Based on that usage data, determine which users may be a good fit for Flex.

Moving along with that, use that estimator tool I gave you all a demo of, and estimate the right quantity of tokens to buy for your occasional users, and if you have any additional questions, please visit the subscription changes forum and feel free to ask, and we have a dedicated community of expert elites that will get back to you. So thank you, everyone, so much for your time today, and I hope this was helpful.