Aware that this climate of fear exists, IT vendors must be able to present proof that investment in their products is worthwhile. Customers wish to know more than ever why they should make an investment in a vendor’s product or service. Prospective customers may require an IT vendor to meet with their decision makers to allay fears of investing in new products and services.

What is the best tool to use to assist a vendor’s selling efforts and establish proof that an investment in the product or service you are selling is worthwhile?

The most popular metric to confirm business benefits is “return on investment” (ROI). Key decision makers rely on this measure to demonstrate and justify an investment’s value and establish tangible results.

TAC will work with an IT vendor to create an ROI metric as a tool so the vendor’s sales team can demonstrate real, measurable benefits to prospective customers. The vendor can then interact with customer financial decision makers to present a credible, common measure of benefits that your company can deliver.

You can use an ROI tool to:

• Provide an estimate of financial justification for an investment
• Validate your selling points
• Provide a competitive edge
• Demonstrate an understanding of customer needs
• Demonstrate technology talking points in layman’s terms

TAC Experts have assisted a variety of technology vendor companies in constructing ROI models. These models help to communicate the selling points necessary to alleviate the fears that companies have about making an investment in an uncertain environment.

Description

Our Return-on-Investment Analysis for IT Vendors offering delivers a working model to an IT vendor for use with its prospective customers to demonstrate the worthiness of investing in the company’s product or service. Each phase of our three-phase offering is important, yet a company may elect to develop an ROI model only to produce case studies and an industry paper. Therefore, the ROI model would not require the amount of attention to detail as one that would be used by a vendor’s sales team, and the amount of time spent in Phase 2 is reduced.

Phase 1 — Uncovering Benefits

How do you convert technical jargon into business benefits that determine an ROI?

Our experienced Experts collaborate with your sales and marketing teams to develop benefits that reflect the business value of your products and services in language that decision makers understand.

Key Deliverables

Sales and marketing benefits identified for use with collateral materials

Phase 2 — Creating the ROI Model

What business benefit will enable achievable and credible metrics?

TAC Experts will assist a vendor’s staff in determining what product and service features best translate into measurable benefits. Once these benefits are determined, the working team decides on a structure for the ROI model, i.e., the best platform for the model to be delivered, the size and appearance of the model, how to build ease-of-use into the model, etc. The ROI-building team will provide a limited number of iterations in the creation of the model until vendor decision makers are satisfied.

Key Deliverables

Project plan for the creation of the ROI model

An ROI model created to measure business benefits of a specific technology

Phase 3 — Proving Benefits

What is the best means to demonstrate a credible ROI to customer decision makers?

TAC Experts will work with three representative vendor customers to identify appropriate inputs to test the model. The model must produce credible results that include the measurable benefits of the product or service, make sense to evaluate, and ring true to an executive decision maker.

Key Deliverables

Three case studies as a result of customer interviews and evaluations of investments made in vendor products or services

A “white paper” about the specific vendor technology

Target Audience

IT Vendor CIO, CFO, CMO, VP Sales, VP Marketing

Vendor executives all have a vested interest in developing an ROI model for customers. Sales and marketing executives understand the importance of providing the sales team with new tools that will:

• Enable sales representatives to call higher in customer organizations
• Provide what top-level customer management requires to make ROI-based decisions

About TAC (The Advisory Council)

Founded in 2002, TAC provides IT organizations with enterprise-wide access to objective, actionable advice for resolving IT challenges and issues. Through its suite of services, products and workshops, TAC helps IT organizations make decisions more quickly and cost effectively. TAC’s Expert Network consists of hundreds of Experts, covering the full range of IT subjects. Clients include Fortune 1000 and midsize companies, government, and educational institutions.