First impressions mean a lot, especially in software implementations. Recently, Baton’s Head of Product, Michael Carroll, was thrilled to join RevOps Co-op Founder and CEO, Matthew Volm, for a webinar to discuss how time-to-value (TTV) is commonly defined, introduce the concept of time-to-launch (TTL), and provide tips for how these metrics can be leveraged to improve your implementation and onboarding experience and ultimately grow your business.
Today’s macroeconomic environment has pushed RevOps, implementation, and Customer Success teams to focus more energy on customer retention, renewals, expansion, and revenue. Effectively measuring and showing positive time-to-value data has become critical for building profitable, long-lasting customer relationships. But it comes with challenges.
What is time-to-value (TTV)?
Time-to-value (TTV) is commonly defined as 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” in the customer journey. Typically, the goal of most Implementation and Customer Success teams is to accelerate the time it takes for each new customer to onboard, begin utilizing their solution, and ultimately experience ‘value.’ Unfortunately, quantifying TTV is both difficult and often dependent on each individual customer.
Why defining time-to-value 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 implementation & time-to-launch (TTL)
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.
Delayed implementation & time-to-launch = Delayed time-to-value
Delayed TTL can mean that you may never realize revenue; your customer may walk away before their project launches and can see value from your product.
5 implementation project management challenges that delay both TTL & TTV:
- Lack of defined processes; project plans with unrealistic deadlines
- Project handoffs between internal teams and clients – sales, revops, implementation, customer success, professional services
- Disjointed communications between your implementation team, the client, vendors, and consultants
- Project approval mixups
- Lack of visibility to quickly identify project risks and roadblocks
Implementation project 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 and TTL to fuel your business growth.
