📊 Strategy is inspiring. But numbers build credibility.

In Episode 3 of my series on value realization, I share how to move from initiatives to impact by:

• Establishing credible baselines and defining realistic target outcomes
• Translating performance metrics into financial impact
• Building a value and ROI model that earns executive trust

I also share a real-world example of how to build your ROI model by the time you listen to the episode.

When you can measure what matters, you don’t just talk about transformation — you prove it

Welcome to CS Shift, the podcast that goes beyond retention with strategists for customer success leaders navigating the new era, let's dive into today's episode.

Welcome back to CS Shift.

I'm Nani Desu, your host.

If you've been following along this new series, you know that in the first two episodes I led the groundwork of value realization.

I talk about why value realization matters, the pitfalls we tend to fall into, and how to map initiatives to real business drivers.

Today I would like to talk about how to actually measure value.

So this episode is about quantifying what matters.

And to do that, I'm going to talk about how to establish credible baselines, define target outcomes, and build a value and ROI model that earns executive trust.

Because no matter how visionary your transformation is, if you cannot translate progress into numbers into business impact, your story remains incomplete.

And if your story remains incomplete, you are in danger.

So let's start with the first building block, which is the baseline.

A baseline is simply your before state.

It's how things perform today, before transformation takes effect, before the solution your company sells is deployed and used.

So the baseline is your reference point, your control variable and your evidence.

So if for instance, your company sells, let's say kind of a sales academy to improve ramp up time for sales, well, your baseline will be their ramp up time today.

Depending on what the solution your company sells, it could be average time to close a deal, average cost per transaction, customer satisfaction score.

And without that baseline, any claim of improvement sounds objective and executives cannot act on subjectivity.

Once you have your baseline, you can now define target outcomes which will be actually your measurable after state.

Those targets should be both ambitious, credible and realistic.

So ideally agreed on by the transformation team.

You work with finance and the different end of the business lines you're working with.

So might be reducing onboarding time for new employee by 25%, for instance, increasing upsell conversion by 10%.

So you're going to use of course, the knowledge you have from the success you have in other organization, but you're going to also work with the company you're working with to define those targets.

Once this is done, the next step is to translate those outcomes into financial impact.

So let's go back to the sales enablement program.

That would shorten onboarding for instance by two weeks.

And if each sales rep generates, let's say, 250k a year, that time saved represents about 10k in additional productivity per rep.

So if you know your solution is used by 100 reps that's million annual impact.

And this is before you talk about upsell retention metrics.

So this is what I mean by a value model.

It's really connecting performance metrics to financial terms.

So let's me give you an example.

Real world illustrations.

Let's say your company sells creative cloud to streamline collaboration between marketing teams.

Or you know, sells a solution to reduce campaign delivery times and ensure brand consistency.

When it comes to proving roi, it's very easy to stop at usage metrics.

How many people are using the solution, how many files were shared to prove collaboration.

It's interesting, but it does not tell you whether this investment paid off.

So if I want to apply the value realization I just shared, first of all I'm going to establish the baseline, let's say before adopting your cloud solution for marketing creatives which are operating in silos, maybe in the company.

Their campaigns took 15 days from brief to final creative, their project averaged five rounds of revisions and the company spends 4 million a year on external agencies to handle overflow.

Those number form your baseline, the before picture.

Now time to define the desired after state.

You might say, okay, with our solution we're going to reduce product time from 15 days to 8 days.

Right?

Revision cycles will be cut from 5 to 3 rounds and we gonna lower your agency spend to 2.8 million or 3 million, whatever.

These are specific, measurable and directly linked to business value.

From there you're gonna build your ROI model.

You said they're gonna move from 15 days to eight days, which means saving seven days per campaign.

And if they're lowering the agency spend well, you're gonna say they save 1.4 million in cost savings.

Same for the quality gains, right?

So you're gonna just have to sum up all those numbers and come with what is the value that that's been created by using your solution.

And let's say the value, the total value adds up to 4 million.

And the company, for instance, invested 1 million in your solution.

Well, it's going to be a big ROI of three times the investment.

You can even calculate a payback period to add even more value to this roi.

Imagine bringing that to your next executive meeting.

You are not just saying teams are collaborating better, you are just saying we have accelerated delivery by 40%, we have cut agency costs by a third and we have created 4 million in annual value.

This is the shift from activity metrics to business impact the shift from Promise to proof now why this matters Again, when you measure value this way, three things happen.

Number one, you speak the language of leadership.

You're giving the impact in euros, in dollars, in hours saved.

Number two, you build credibility for your transformation program because it becomes evidence based.

And number three, you create a baseline for continuous improvement, something you can measure again next quarter.

So value realization is not just an analytics exercise, it's a credibility exercise.

It's how transformation teams earn trust, sustain investment, and create momentum.

As you look at your own transformation projects, ask yourself three Do I know my baseline?

Do I know my measurable before state?

Number two, did I define target outcomes that are ambitious but realistic?

And number three, can I translate those improvements into financial impact that leadership will recognize?

If you can do that, you are already ahead of most organizations.

Now in our next episode, we're going to take this one step further because I want to explore with you how to track and sustain value over time.

Until then, keep moving from promise to proof.

Keep doing the shift.

Thank you so much.

And this is CS Shift.

Thank you for listening to this show.

Remember, the new mandate for customer success is driving growth.

And growth does not happen in isolation.

It's driven by strategic and operational leadership.

Subscribe and share this episode with an overseas leader ready to shift their strategy.

I'm Nandidosu and this is CS Shift.