Product Bistro: The concept of Time-To-Value

Usually when we talk about products, it's a discussion of features and function. Does the do X or Y? How much memory or disk space does it require? How many bps or transactions can it do? Etc. Etc. I can remember features and functions even from my EDS days when we built banking systems. But a different and very valuable way to look at products, is from the customer experience viewpoint. One aspect of customer experience is an extremely useful concept called the Time-To-Value.

I don't remember when I first heard the term Time-To-Value (I'll call it TTV for short), but I do recall the concept immediately made sense to me. TTV is the effort, barriers, time, resources, planning, change, etc., that the customer goes through before they first see tangible business value from a product or service. The TTV could be very small, like the effort to plug in a power cord and TV cable for a new Mitsubishi flat panel TV, or it could be an extensive period of time, such as the months and even years it takes to implement and begin using a new resource management system, like PeopleSoft.

The most important thing about TTV is that it is a very valuable product design criteria. How so? Well, if the user is required to perform extensive set up tasks up front when first installing a product, but many of those tasks don't need to be performed up front, there could be a significant barrier before the users sees TTV. That's why many software products use wizards, though not all wizards are well designed and helpful to the user (but that's for another Product Bistro blog post.) Other considerations could be ancelary software required but not included with your product that the customer must buy and install. Providing useful defaults in the product configuration. Giving the user sample configurations to help them best determine how to configure a product for their needs. Or not making the user re-enter information multiple times or in different parts of the product. Those are just a few examples.

Do you know the task flow, information gathering, design process, pre-tasks needed, soak time, or other steps the customer must take before they see TTV from your product?  If you don't, you've possibly missed a very crucial element of your customers' experience using your product or service. The good news is, there's never a better time to start than now.

Note: Many thanks to Eric Ogren and his Cisco NAC lemmings blog post for inspiring me to write this so late on a Friday night. I always enjoy reading Eric's stuff and especially appreciate his straight forward, thought provoking insights.