Agile Billing Top 50 Coming June 28th

To create this extensive report, the MGI team has spent the last six months speaking to the vendors, investors, and customers who populate the agile billing market. In the course of conducting this rating process, a few things have become very apparent to our analysts:

1. Most companies do a poor job of understanding their ideal use case and their ideal customer profile (ICP).

Conducting the 360 Ratings process has exposed just how few companies can clearly and concisely articulate the market segment they are attempting to sell into. However, it is crucial for software providers to have a very sharp definition of the use cases their solution addresses best, and the customers who are a good fit for those use cases.

• Even vendors with flexible products that are sold to a broad set of users should be able to quickly describe their solution’s use case.
• Vendors don’t do themselves any favors by going after prospects they can’t adequately support. To create repeatable marketing and sales motions, less is more.

This MGI Use Case Note™ for Opencell (who will be 360 Rated™ in the upcoming report) provides a concrete example of how companies can narrow their ICP and communicate it to prospects.

2. Most companies underinvest in reference management.

Customer references are the most powerful selling tool companies have. Yet the experience of speaking with references is all over the place (and we’ve spoken with quite a few). There is little in the way of a standardized process, references are rarely informed about the purpose of the interviews, and a shocking number of companies unwittingly provide negative references.

Here are recommendations for vendors as they provide customer references to prospects, investors, and industry analysts in the future:

• Reference feedback overwhelms any memory of how good or bad the product is from a briefing/demo. Even the most informative briefing and spiffiest product demo will be overshadowed by an unenthusiastic or resoundingly unhappy customer story – and vice versa.
  • Companies who a) share references earlier in the process, b) facilitate scheduling so it isn’t a nightmare, and c) ensure they are sharing satisfied and credible customers as references will inevitably fare better in any evaluation cycle.
• Every company thinks they have good references – most are wrong. Empirically, we find that at least 10-12% of all references are outright negative. If it’s been a while since your organization spoke with its customer references, consider checking in with them. The MGI team has spoken to multiple “highly valued” accounts only to hear that these customers would never recommend the product in question. Ask yourself – are you sure your references are positive? Are you really sure?
• Beyond negative references – many companies have no customer references whatsoever or are afraid to share them for fear of burning out these relationships with overuse. The inability to provide references stands out as prominently as a missing piece of core product functionality.

The bottom line | Investing in reference management makes a tangible difference in the way a vendor’s brand is perceived – by current customers, prospects, partners, investors, and market analysts.

• Most software providers need to revamp their reference management process, whether using a reference management solution like Verified or something else. Automation, metrics, and analytics are key to success.