staff To create effective desired business outcomes, they must be measurable and attainable. This is where outcome software can help.
Software teams that practice outcome-driven development prioritize customer value over the velocity at which they release new products and features to their customers. This allows teams to be more strategic about which features to roll out.
Customer Experience
A desired outcome model is a powerful way to align your business goals with your customer’s needs. By defining clear OKR, it also enables you to measure the effectiveness of your customer success strategy by providing direction on how to achieve those goals. However, determining the best way to reach your desired outcomes depends on the type of business you have and your customers. It also depends on the metrics you track to determine your success or failure.
If you want to improve a user experience, for example, you must test whether your new design works by measuring the impact on measurable metrics. In addition, your team will need to be able to communicate effectively with stakeholders to find the simplest path to your desired outcomes.
For instance, if you’re a behavioral health provider, you may need to collect accurate patient data to help you understand the root causes of their problems and make effective interventions. Using a data collection tool allows you to monitor key metrics such as client engagement, adherence, and behavioral change.
The result of this approach is that you can reduce your product development cycle and delivery risks while improving customer satisfaction. This is because software teams that adopt outcome-driven development place a greater emphasis on the value of the features they produce over their velocity.
Sales
Sales and marketing departments are key cogs in a successful outcome-based customer journey. Whether that’s driving customer outcomes through a proactive support model or being available to troubleshoot technical hurdles, these teams are crucial for creating repeatable processes that drive value throughout the lifetime of an outcome-based client.
They can do this by adopting a “land-and-expand” strategy, focusing on providing their customers’ desired results and then expanding that offering into additional services or solutions. The goal is to keep delivering more and more quantifiable data-driven value while building trust, comfort, and a deep relationship with their customers over time.
By implementing outcome software, your team can align on the metrics that matter most to your customers. For example, if your clients want to increase inventory turns, you can use the product to create a workflow that delivers those results. This provides a win for your company and for the client as well.
The outcome-as-a-service model takes traditional technology services like software as a service a step further by delivering actionable business outcomes. As a result, it’s easier for your customers to invest in this type of solution and see immediate returns. In addition, the rapid pace of innovation can help you deliver new business outcomes to your customers in weeks rather than months.
Marketing
Outcome software helps businesses meet their goals by delivering results that are directly measurable and achievable. This is done by leveraging analytics and automated data collection for continuous improvement. The process of outcome-based development is broken down into three incremental phases: validation, hyper-care, and maintenance/support. This ensures that applications are tested thoroughly before launch to maximize user satisfaction and reduce risks. It also involves the involvement of product management and digital marketing specialists to make sure that end-users are onboarded and supported successfully.
Companies must establish both outcome and process goals to create a clear picture of success. The former is results-based, such as increased customer retention or a new client acquisition rate. The latter is more measurable and time-based, such as increasing monthly recurring revenue by 5% per quarter. Defining desired business outcomes allows companies to prioritize tasks and set timelines that can be measured, which can increase productivity.
While this approach has many benefits, it does pose some challenges for both analog and digital companies. For example, it’s often difficult to isolate the impact of a solution on a specific metric from other variables. Moreover, solution providers must understand how their customers use their products and how they are impacted by external factors that could influence outcomes.
Operations
While measuring the achievement of outputs is important, these should not be the sole focus. Focusing solely on outputs can result in what is known as the watermelon effect: reports show green all over the place, but your customers are still unhappy.
Instead, you should test your design process against measurable metrics that align with your desired outcomes. For example, if your company’s website has a high bounce rate because users cannot complete the payment page’s checkout process, you could use an outcome-based design approach to solve this problem. Rather than resolving this problem with traditional feature-based software development methods, you might try making the website more user-friendly or offering on-screen help.
Once your products have been tested against measurable metrics, you should implement them and make necessary adjustments. Outcome-based software development processes are iterative, so continually improve your product to achieve better results.
To effectively implement an outcome-oriented model, you need a dedicated team of professionals working together to accomplish your goals. This includes support providers who understand how end-users interact with applications and collaborate with product management and digital marketing specialists to ensure that application messaging is aligned with user expectations. This approach allows for successful customer onboarding and ongoing value delivery.
