New Survey: 96% of Companies Say COVID-19 Prioritizes Move to Value Management; DecisionLink Launches New Self-Service Tools in Support

New DecisionLink Web Value Calculator and ValueCloud^® Value Professional’s Workbench follow Gainsight partnership to automate Value Management as a self-service capability across the enterprise

ATLANTA, June 30, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Value Management pioneer DecisionLink today announced a number of new automated solutions to support growing enterprise demand for self-service tracking and measuring value across sales, marketing, customer success, and other core business functions. The launch of the DecisionLink Web Calculator and expansion of its ValueCloud^® Value Professional’s Workbench both build on the company’s recent partnership with Gainsight, efforts that were all validated by a new Dimensional Research study that found near unanimous executive agreement about the critical role of Value Management within the modern enterprise.

“Limited for years by a reliance on traditional, time-intensive manual processes, the potential for Value Management has now been unleashed by the power of our automated, enterprise-grade ValueCloud^® platform,” said Jim Berryhill, CEO and co-founder of DecisonLink. “Leading brands like DocuSign and VMware have already proven the business benefits of elevating value from individual sales to the entire enterprise. Now, these additions to ValueCloud^® enable any business to do the same independently and in real-time – critical advantages in this new business normal.”

Companies Underscore Role of Value Management
A new survey from Dimensional Research of leadership and sales executives at more than two hundred enterprise software companies found that value is an urgent and growing priority for these businesses.More than 99% use spreadsheets, bespoke applications, or rudimentary calculators to address this important task. Reliance on these outdated resources limit speed, scale and quality and could be a factor for the 92% that report struggling with value management. Indeed, 82% say they are unable to provide the tools and value analysis their teams need and that customers and prospects request.

Still, the executives polled foresee Value Management having benefits for customer success, marketing, and even research and development teams. In fact, 64% say it’s a top three business priority for their teams this year. More than 96% of those surveyed said value management is even more important in the new business normal caused by COVID-19 because time, resources, and executive access are limited.

If proper Value Management tools and support are put in place, most executives cited confidence in the ability of value-based practices to produce positive gains for revenue, win rates, higher renewals and upsells, and faster times to close deals.

“Value Management is an emerging discipline, with a number of innovative companies embracing an enterprise wide emphasis on value delivered versus features and benefits offered,” said Gerry Murray, Research Director, Marketing and Sales Technology at IDC. “With real-world interactions limited and companies forced to operate on razor thin budgets, proving and delivering on outcome based business value is more important than ever. DecisionLink’s new tools and integrations help companies manage this marketplace shift.”

Pre-sell Value with the DecisionLink Web Calculator
The new ValueCloud^® Website Value calculator enables companies to publish and manage value as an online selling tool with minimal effort and in just minutes. Created through the ValueCloud^® platform, the calculator allows marketing teams to evolve customer submission inquiries into value-selling conversations naturally.

The calculator is an automated tool that does not require a developer team to publish. Teams can create multiple calculators for distinct products and solutions or across an entire portfolio.

ValueCloud Professional Workbench
The ValueCloud^® Value Professional’s Workbench provides a complete self-service platform for defining, quantifying, and defending value.

This first-to-market set of capabilities enable organizations to swiftly evolve and communicate value in real time across an enterprise without requiring a supporting development shop. These powerful tools empower companies to read and react to changing business dynamics by instantly fine-tuning value for branding, products, competitive landscapes, or integration needs.

DecisionLink Partners with Gainsight
These new product announcements follow DecisionLink’s recently announced partnership with Gainsight Sightline that extends the power of value management and value-based selling to customer success. The partnership was initiated to help DecisionLink and Gainsight customers reduce time to value and accelerate their adoption across customer success and value management technologies. The new ValueCloud^® Website Value Calculator and Value Professional’s Workbench further automate those efforts as self-service capabilities.

“In the old world of customer success, business models didn’t care about customer outcomes,” said Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta. “Now, with subscriptions, it’s no longer about being ‘good people,’ your business models depend on customer outcomes. Gainsight’s Customer Success and DecisionLink’s Value Management are perfectly aligned to today’s subscription economy.”

Today, DecisionLink also provided an update on its integration with Gainsight, which combines the power of value-based selling and customer success to further cement the role of Value Management as a core enterprise advantage. Expected to be publicly available in August as part of Gainsight Sightline, the initial integration will allow companies to capture, track, and quantify the economic value they provide to customers from the initial sales process through to customer success programs, more effectively measuring customer lifetime value.

This ability to quantify and measure value realized with existing customers is critical, as only 24% of companies responding to the Dimensional Research survey reported an ability to consistently provide renewing customers with value analysis based on usage and outcomes.

With this integration, professional service and customer success teams can leverage ValueCloud^® to quantify and measure business outcomes to ensure solutions support initial value commitments and deliver on expectations, helping to reduce churn, increase satisfaction and Net Promoter Scores (NPS), and facilitate selling opportunities.

VMware is one of the many companies currently working with both DecisionLink and Gainsight. “Now more than ever, we are committed to tracking and communicating the value we provide to our partners and customers – helping them more effectively manage their businesses and succeed in uncertain times,” said VMware Senior Director of World-Wide Sales, Emerging Products Mike Maxey. “The addition of ValueCloud^® to the Gainsight platform will be a powerful business driver for us, making it faster and easier to quantify this value across our entire lifecycle with a customer.”

To highlight the importance of Value Management and the role of value in selling and customer success, DecisionLink is launching “Value Heroes: A Summer of Recognition.” This summer-long celebration will include a series of blog posts profiling value professionals that have led sales cycles with value and seen exceptional results, as well as a “Value Heroes Summit” on August 13 with a town hall discussion of best practices and impact. Please visit value.decisionlink.com/summit to register for the Summit or value.decisionlink.com/heroes to join the conversation and share your value hero stories.

For more information about these new solutions, to see the entire Dimensional Research study, or to learn more about DecisionLink, please visit http://www.decisionlink.com.

About DecisionLink

DecisionLink’s ValueCloud^® is the first and leading solution for enterprise-class customer value management. The ValueCloud^® enhances the value of CRM systems by providing the missing link to elevating conversations and shifting relationships from tactical to strategic by providing value insights from initial sales call all the way through to contract renewals. The ValueCloud® turns customer value insights into strategic assets that can be leveraged across the enterprise, from CXO’s, to line of business leaders, to Product Managers, to Marketers, to sales & sales support teams, to value managers. DecisionLink is trusted by top enterprise businesses, including Adobe, Caterpillar, CrowdStrike, DocuSign, Marketo, VMWare and more.

For more information, please visit www.decisionlink.com, call 800.670.8301 or engage with us on social media.

Media Contact:
Stephanie Hicks
Cosmo PR for DecisionLink
805-295-9455
stephanie@cosmo-pr.com