Maximizing Your Time to Value: Strategies for Accelerating Your Business Growth

First impressions mean a lot, especially in software implementations. In our latest webinar, we spoke with Michael Carroll, Head of Product at Baton, about how to define time-to-value—and how you can leverage it to grow your business.

‍

Today’s macro economic environment has pushed RevOps teams to focus more energy on customer retention, renewals, expansion, and revenue. Showing time-to-value has become critical for building profitable, long lasting customer relationships. But it comes with challenges.

‍

What is time-to-value?

‍

Time-to-value (TTV) is the amount of time it takes for a new customer to realize value, or ROI, from your product. In other words, it’s the “aha! moment.” Implementation and customer success teams have a goal to minimize TTV, but quantifying value is very dependent on each one of your customers.

‍

“What is value is very, very, very difficult to define.” - Michael Carroll

‍

Defining TTV can be challenging

‍

Start by looking for patterns when you speak to your customers. For example, your champion may tell you that, “if it wasn’t for this feature, I wouldn’t be able to do my day job”, or “I’d have to work an extra 8 hours a month.” 

‍

This can help build a story, but you’ll still need to tailor TTV for each customer because: 

‍

• TTV can be highly subjective
• TTV metrics often vary from team to team
• Productizing TTV requires integrating with all customer products across different categories 

‍

Account for time-to-launch

‍

You really won’t see any value until after an implementation project is completed. So make sure to account for time-to-launch (TTL) when measuring TTV. Customers can launch your software once data is flowing and APIs have been set up, but it will still take a few months before they see the value of their purchase. In the end, delayed TTL equals delayed TTV. 

‍

“time-to-launch will always precede time-to-value. You can’t reap the benefits of your investments if your project fails to launch.” - Michael Carroll

‍

Baton highlights 5 common challenges that delay both TTL and TTV:  

‍

1. Lack of defined processes; project plans with unrealistic deadlines 
2. Project handoffs between internal teams - sales, implementation, CS, professional services
3. Disjointed communications between your implementation team, the client, vendors, and consultants
4. Project approval mixups 
5. Lack of visibility to quickly identify project risks and roadblocks

‍

Delayed TTL can mean that you may never realize revenue; your customer may walk away before they can see value from your product, or even before they launch. Implementation management software, like Baton, helps implementation and customer success teams track progress over time, automate processes, and track your unique TTL and TTV metrics so you can use TTV to fuel your business growth.  

‍

Looking for more great content? Check out our blog and join the community.