As adoption grows for SaaS (and MVaaS) we are starting to see ripple effects, adjustments, and observations, that impact how business is conducted and what we view as best practice. Great recent article in Sand Hill highlight a top five tips for delivering value to customers.

I think all 5 are spot on but I wanted to expand a bit on #3 – Know How You Will Measure Success. For readers of this blog, and those of you familiar with Envysion, you know that we are laser focused on delivering bottom line profit improvement for our customers. Because of that focus we are actively involved both in defining metrics but also the measuring.

For this to resonate and be valuable for customers its critical that the metrics and the measurement be in terms familiar and selected by the customers. Specifically, what are their KPI’s? What matters to them? How do they calculate it? Once value and success metrics are defined with the customer the next question is how do you measure it. Here again it is critical to align with the customer on the data, method, periods etc. At Envysion we typically conduct a pilot with our customers at the beginning of which we align on success metrics and at the end we run the numbers together with the customers finance team. While we are happy to do the math and run the numbers on behalf of our customers we make sure that they completely buy in up front and the results at the end.

The net here is that not only do you need to measure success for customers – in our view you should also align with your customer on what those metrics are and how you calculate them.