CONCORD, Massachusetts, July 2002- Gantry Group has just published a primer that speaks specifically to technology vendors looking to quickly assimilate ROI (Return on Investment) principles into their sales and marketing strategies. The white paper is available to the general public off of Gantry Group’s website www.gantrygroup.com.
Based on expertise derived out of Gantry Group’s Quantifying Customer Payback Practice, this white paper achieves quick knowledge transfer to technology vendors who wish to effectively measure and communicate customer ROI.The ROI Primer provides a highly readable overview of the various ways technology buyers measure ROI success or failure. Gantry Group de-mystifies the many confusing payback definitions, terms and calculations now flooding the industry and media. With this white paper, Gantry Group effectively transcends the concept of ROI from the realm of the corporate financier to the technology executive.
The white paper comprehensively addresses the process of gathering and measuring costs and benefits. A methodology is outlined for pinpointing the exact business performance metrics used by technology buyers to judge the benefits of a particular technology investment. Gantry Group also highlights the pitfalls to avoid, identifying “worst ROI practices” such as employing artificial means to maximize the ROI from a technology investment.
The primer is the result of Gantry Group’s extensive technology client research and strategy engagements that have repeatedly underscored the importance of ROI calculations in closing technology sales. “Today, being able to demonstrate a credible ROI for your products and services to a prospect is perhaps the most critically important component to closing a sale. We call this selling strategy, Leading with ROI”, said Dawna Paton, Managing Partner at Gantry Group.
Having a robust, believable ROI tool as part of a selling package is no longer an option for technology vendors. But buyers are skeptical of website ROI calculators that over generalize and over inflate returns using only a few meager, and often inapplicable, inputs. “It’s impossible to create a generic, one-size-fits-all ROI calculator for technology offerings. Each industry focuses on different business metrics to track costs and benefits”, said Dale Troppito, Managing Partner with Gantry Group. The ROI Primer encourages vendors to gain a vertically focused ROI understanding for each of their targeted market segments.
Troppito also added, “unfortunately we find many consulting firms creating ROI tools based on assumptions and algorithms that do not correctly evaluate a customer’s projected payback”. Most technology vendors hire an independent third party to develop their ROI calculation tools. It is therefore important that vendors be able to recognize dubious unsubstantiated ROI approaches, even though they may generate appealing ROI figures – before customers do. A good ROI calculator builds a company’s credibility with its customers by accounting for all costs, and appropriately amortizing upfront investments. The Gantry Group hopes that the ROI Primer will enable technology vendors Primer to distinguish between sound and flawed approaches.
The 16-page ROI Primer is based on Gantry Group’s mission to provide unbiased research and opinions that help companies to maximize sustained market adoption of their offering.
About Gantry Group
The Gantry Group is a strategic advisory firm that uses primary market research to help companies cost-effectively accelerate the successful market adoption of their products and services -- online and offline. Gantry Group has helped over 165 client companies drive sales, acquire new customers, increase brand equity, and increase customer lifetime value through our market analysis, marketing testing, and ROI/TCO benchmarking service suites. Gantry Group creates customized market research studies to better understand customers’ needs and experiences. Gantry Group benchmarks a client company’s opportunity, competitive landscape and their offering’s ROI impact on its target market. The result is a quantified value proposition that is crisply differentiated within a receptive market.
The Gantry Group designs custom TCO and ROI studies to help companies communicate factual quantified value propositions to prospects and customers. Gantry Group designs custom ROI and TCO calculators to comprehensively profile the ‘impact’ equation of a company’s technology offering. Using such tools, Gantry Group then conducts online and in-person studies to consistently profile ROI/TCO across a carefully selected sample of participating companies.
Gantry Group has equipped many technology product and service firms with credible TCO and ROI models that communicate value in the terms of the business metrics that customers and prospects use to access the performance of their own companies.
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