Time to Value vs Time to Insights and Time to Deployment KPIs

Time to Value (TTV), Time to Insights (TTI) and Time to Development (TTD) are examples of incredibly powerful Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that your business should probably be using. KPIs help indicate whether or not you're making progress toward where you want to be and they help you drill down into specific areas to show if progress is being made and how efficiently it's being made.

KPIs allow for strategic improvement and they can guide decisions and planning on multiple levels. Of all the KPIs you might use, TTV, TTI and TTD should be at the top of your list, as these indicators can drive very impactful improvements for your entire organization. Let's take a closer look at each of these metrics and how they work.

What Is Time to Value?

Time to Value (TTV) is best summarized as how long it takes for a new customer to first realize value from the product or service you're providing to them. Ideally, you want TTV to be as low or short as possible because you'd rather a new customer find value in say, seven days, rather than in 90 days.

The sooner your customer realizes value, the less likely they are to cancel their trial, stop using your product or look for an alternative.

Time to Value is especially relevant when marketing a SaaS product, as customers always have the option of canceling.

This is very much unlike the perpetual software licenses people used to purchase, where consumers were accustomed to a period of disillusionment as they wandered around searching very hard for the value in software that they usually could not get a refund for.  

Whether you're working with a SaaS product or another offering, the most important thing in measuring TTV is defining what the "value" is.

Many organizations make the mistake of basing this definition around the value they wish to deliver, but you need to focus entirely on the value your customers are looking to receive.

For instance, while an eCommerce optimization platform may wish to deliver fantastic customer service or sleek reporting if the customer signed up because you promised to increase the average order size, that's the value you need to track.

Until your customer sees an increase in average order size, they have yet to realize the value of your service.

What Is Time to Insight?

Time to Insight (TTI) measures how quickly data is turned into actionable insights. Both individuals and businesses are constantly seeking out data and we have an ever-increasing expectation to be able to leverage that data almost instantly.

For users, reducing TTI means creating a more intuitive, accessible and user-friendly experience. For businesses, it means finding and implementing analytical tools that help you make use of valuable data faster.

For most organizations, TTI is a metric of internal measurement that you use to see how quickly you're turning your data stack into information that can inform decisions at a second's notice. Data visualization is one of the most common tools being implemented to reduce TTI.

By visualizing data, you provide a more interactive and straightforward means of digesting said data while avoiding the chaos and overwhelm of spreadsheets.  

If you're looking to reduce TTI, you should seek to avoid highly-specific data tools, make use of more data sources and automate the analysis process. Real-time data collection and around-the-clock analysis of that data is a must to fully optimize TTI.

In doing so, your business can expect a myriad of other benefits that come along with having constant access to up-to-date, actionable insights.

What Is Time to Deployment?

Time to Deployment (TTD) is yet another KPI worth tracking. TTD is also called "deployment lead time" or "implementation time," and it's a measure of how long it takes for your organization to deploy a release into testing or production.

This metric can help you speed up deployment and delivery, which is why it fits in nicely with TTV and TTI.

Cutting out manual reviews, handoffs and other time-intensive processes is the best way to reduce time to deployment. The more you can automate processes, the lower your TTD will be.

Of course, you still need to pursue intensive quality checks and testing—don't compromise on these things as it will only delay TTD if errors and problems aren't discovered early in the process.

Choosing the Right KPIs

KPIs are only valuable if you choose the right ones for your organization's current priorities. Over time, the KPIs you use are likely to change, but many businesses get stuck tracking the same old metrics or, worse, taking the wrong approach to measuring essential analytics.

Rather than making a costly mistake that can cause you to miss out on valuable data, you must evaluate your business to determine which KPIs will prove most valuable to you.

TTV, TTI and TTD are just three examples of KPIs your business might consider implementing. Selecting the best KPIs for your current goals requires a thorough analysis of your priorities, blind spots and foreseeable challenges.

So, while TTV, TTI and TTD are extremely valuable, there's no way to say that they're right for your business until you've done some digging.

In regards to when you should use each of these metrics, it all depends on your organization and its goals. Time to Value (TTV) tends to be most beneficial when you are onboarding customers, especially if you have limited time and you're working with customers who have high expectations.

Meanwhile, both Time to Insight (TTI) and Time to Deployment (TTD) are ideal for tracking internal performance, especially when trying to achieve a greater impact with fewer resources (i.e., time and money). So, any or all of these metrics could be beneficial to your organization.

At Adservio, we help companies every day in the selection, planning and long-term usability of essential metrics.

If you're interested in learning more about how KPIs like these can help your organization set and reach new targets, our team can help you achieve that.

Get to know more about what we do and how we can help your business today by reaching out to our team of professionals.