Great Demo! Value Realization Event Candidates

In Great Demo! Workshops we teach the concept of Value Realization Events (V.R.E.’s) – a key event for customers on their buying and implementation journeys, and a key differentiator for vendors that identify and track V.R.E.’s with their customers.

Very simply, a Value Realization Event is the first time a customer receives value from their new software.  Note that this is typically not the go-live date, but is instead the moment they can actually use the software to generate some real value. 

Great Demo! practitioners often prepare lists of candidate V.R.E.’s for their offerings to enable corresponding V.R.E. conversations with their customers.  To help, here are some starting points for V.R.E. candidates:

1. The first complete turn of the crank in a workflow (that was previously manual, painful, or impossible).
2. Visibility into something that was previously invisible or that took too long to obtain.
3. A small productivity or efficiency gain (not the full ROI, just one small piece).
4. Reporting (that couldn’t be done before or took too long to produce).
5. An alert for a problem or opportunity (that wasn’t possible previously).
6. The first time something painful or manual was avoided or replaced with automation.
7. The first time something dangerous was avoided.
8. Monitoring something that couldn’t be monitored before (or was painfully difficult).
9. The first “root cause” identified.
10. The first time some problem doesn’t recur.
11. A collaboration that takes place (that couldn’t be done before or was difficult).
12. The first time a business process is completed in a fraction of the time it took previously.

Note also that V.R.E.’s are dependent on job title.  A V.R.E. for an executive may look very different than a V.R.E. for a staff member!

Some of the best V.R.E.’s are gains that are in alignment with the customer’s Critical Business Issue – tangible progress towards achieving the desired goal or objective.

Any others to share?