Is your accounting tech startup spending enough time talking about ‘Time To Value’ or TTV? In a SaaS sector where delivering value is fundamental to your offering, you’d assume that TTV is baked into your KPI dashboard, right? But, in our experience, many software startups in the accounting sector are not tracking and measuring TTV effectively.
Ask your team this: ‘How long does it take for our customers to experience value in our product for the first time?’ If you don’t know the answer, then getting a better grip on TTV and the focus of your value offering is probably long overdue.
Let’s start by getting the lowdown on the true meaning of TTV – and why it’s a client experience and value performance metric that should be front and centre in your accounting tech dashboard.
What the hell is time to value?
Time To Value (TTV) measures the time it takes for a customer to realise the benefits and value of your product or service – in this case, your accounting technology solution.
In other words, TTV is a measurement of how long it takes your customer to go from ‘What’s this new app?’ to ‘We couldn’t live without this app!’. TTV is a key indicator of the effectiveness of your software, a barometer of customer satisfaction and a measure of how quickly your product becomes invaluable to your audience.
It’s about how long it takes for your customers to:
- Implement the software – this includes setting up the software, configuring settings, integrating with existing systems and training your end users.
- Adopt the software – this involves users getting familiar with your software’s features, integrating it into their daily workflows and relying on it for practice tasks.
- Realise the benefits – if implementation and adoption is a success, your customers will start to experience the tangible benefits of the software. This could mean improved efficiency, increased productivity or greater practice automation.
The quicker you can move the implementation and adoption phases, the sooner your customers will get that warm, cosy feeling that ‘added value’ brings to the table. (If you’re coming out of beta, this is the single most valuable thing to get right early.) And turning your customers into rabid brand advocates is a major pathway towards growing the business.
What can tracking your TTV score bring to the table?
Why is TTV such a critical metric for your accounting tech startup? It’s all down to what it tells you about your customers’ perception of the product.
Yeah, you want to have a solid pipeline of sales bringing in recurring revenue. But you also need those paying customers to get the value you’ve promised. If your tagline is ‘Transforming your practice management with smart AI tools’, you’d better bloody deliver on that value promise!
What your TTV score does is give you a way to quantify and drill down into that value proposition, so you can start refining, nuancing and improving your offering.
Shortening your TTV can lead to:
- Improved customer satisfaction and loyalty – if you shorten your TTV, that’s a sign that customers are grasping the value in your solution more quickly. That enhances your customer satisfaction and helps you start creating loyal brand advocates.
- Reduced customer churn and better retention – satisfied customers are less likely to churn and disappear off the radar, reducing your customer acquisition costs and making your whole operation a lot more profitable as a result.
- A boost in word-of-mouth marketing – if your customers are totally stoked with your product they’ll want to sing your praises from the rooftops. A true advocate will refer you to their mates and their network, helping you expand your customer base fast.
- Better data-driven decision-making – TTV data gives you golden insights into where your startup may need to up its game. That might mean upgrading your UI, adding missing product features or making the onboarding process a whole lot easier.
- A competitive advantage over other market players – in the super-competitive accounting tech market, a shorter TTV is a fundamental way to differentiate your startup from the competition. If your customers get to the value prize more quickly, that’s an edge that your competitors will find it very difficult to overcome.
What can you do to supercharge your TTV?
So, what does a shorter TTV tell you? Basically, it’s a great indication that your accounting tech solution is easy to implement, user-friendly and quickly delivers value to customers (in other words, you’re killing it!). Startups with a good TTV score are likely to have higher customer satisfaction, increased retention rates and incredible word-of-mouth marketing.
So, what can you do to boost that TTV number and start seeing better results?
Here are some core areas to focus on:
- Ease of implementation – make it as easy as possible for new customers to get up and running. Streamline the installation process, provide comprehensive documentation, and make sure your onboarding support is second to none.
- An intuitive user interface (UI) – the simpler your UI is, the faster people can get up and running. Design a user-friendly UI that has clear navigation, consistent design patterns and context-sensitive help features to get new users out of trouble quickly.
- Quick wins and visible benefits – make it clear why your solution is the one to choose. Highlight the software’s immediate value benefits, whether that’s automating repetitive tasks, reducing manual data entry or generating real-time financial insights.
- Training and support – top-notch training helps remove the hurdles when a firm first starts using a new solution. Offer comprehensive training resources, including tutorials, webinars and online communities, to help customers quickly grasp the software.
- Build in control points – the integrations, workflows and data dependencies that make your product part of how the firm runs. Control points don’t just shorten TTV, they make the value hard to give up.
- Continuous improvement – your product never stands still, so make sure there’s a process of continuous development embedded into your culture. Get feedback from your customers, analyse usage data and do your utmost to address every single customer pain point, while delivering the ultimate customer experience.
Let Journey send your TTV stratospheric
Boosting that TTV score should be high on your priority list, as the founder of an accounting tech startup. But being able to stand back and objectively judge where your solution is slowing down the all-important TTV score isn’t easy when you’re on the inside looking out.
At Journey we’re the experts in growth marketing for the accounting tech sector. So we know exactly what’s going to shorten that TTV time and get your accountant audience paying attention.
Partnering with us helps you:
- Shake up the accounting technology sector
- Elevate and streamline your marketing efforts
- Amplify your presence in the accounting niche
Get in touch to find out how Journey can shorten that TTV time, transform your customer experience and help you start delivering explosive growth for your accounting tech startup.
