Steven Lewandowski and Mariia Bondarenko spoke with Óscar Ramos, SVP and Chief Value Officer for Business Transformation Management at SAP, in a recent episode of To Customer Value and Beyond. Óscar has spent more than a decade on value engineering, transformation, and value realization.
Go-live is not proof of value
Software teams often treat go-live as the moment value arrives. Óscar sees it as a catalyst. It switches the technology on, but the business impact depends on process changes, change management, and how the organization sets itself up to use the tool. A vendor that counts go-live as success will leave a large gap between what it delivered and what the customer gets.
The second problem shows up after the results come in. Picture a three-year program that improves processes across a business, followed by a CFO asking how much it saved. If nobody recorded the starting point, the team has to reconstruct it from partial data. Óscar put it bluntly: "If you cannot prove it, it's the same as no value at all."
His starting point is the outcome the customer is after. He works with five value drivers: risk, revenue, spend, productivity, and working capital. Anything that falls outside them tends to be softer and harder to defend in front of a board. The baseline should be set before the work starts, not when the renewal is due.
What makes a business case believable
A large ROI figure won't carry much weight on its own. Óscar wants to see where the value comes from, which use cases produce it, what those use cases take in effort and resources, and when the money can realistically show up. He calls that last part the value realization factor. It asks how much value can be captured in the short and medium term, and what it costs to capture it.
One recent customer engagement shows the problem. The business case had around 200 KPIs, and a single one accounted for half of the projected value. The math was correct. Óscar's view was that the number needed a reality check, so he went back to the customer's business context and asked whether the value belonged in the case at all. Sometimes the answer is to drop the item. Sometimes it is to review it together and keep it in.
Cases that hold up tend to be the ones both sides built together. A number handed over at the end invites the CFO to take it apart. A number worked through with the people who own the process, with the false positives removed, is much harder to dismiss.
Three things to look for in a mature practice
Óscar pays attention to three signs. The first is what teams are measured on. If they are rewarded for the number of business cases they produce, they will keep producing business cases. If they are measured on value customers actually realize, they stay involved after the signature.
The second is whether the customer can run value management without the vendor. Óscar calls the structure that makes this possible a value office: the roles, responsibilities, and working model the customer owns.
The third is whether customers talk to each other. Communities and innovation networks let them compare approaches and spot new opportunities.
None of this requires a large central department. Óscar has seen scale-ups build value work into Customer Success and Solution Engineering. What matters is that someone is accountable for each number, and that everyone understands how their work feeds into it.
Ownership needs an operating model
Óscar is comfortable with either a centralized or a decentralized setup. The part he cares about most is accountability. On the customer side, he expects sponsorship from the business, usually a CFO or COO, and from IT, usually the CIO, with a shared number that both recognize. Without a sponsor at the top, the governance underneath tends to fall apart.
Accountability alone isn't enough, though. People also need to know how they will meet, how they will review progress, and how an opportunity moves from identified to realized. Óscar points out that the five drivers help here, because they give every conversation a common starting point.
Change management is where programs stall
Óscar admits he underestimated this earlier in his career. A focused project team can deliver two or three quick wins. The harder question is whether the customer keeps finding and realizing value after that team leaves. Value has to show up in regular decisions, business reviews, and priorities, not stay with a few specialists.
He suggests a simple check. Take away the decks, the quarterly reviews, and the value plans, and listen to the conversations. Are people still talking about features and adoption, or about outcomes? Can they show measurable impact? Are customers sharing their results inside their own companies?
Accountable, not advisory
At the end of the episode, Óscar named a phrase he would remove from the industry: value advisory. Advice ends at a recommendation, and value management has to continue past that point.
"You're not accountable to advise, you are accountable to make it happen."
For vendors, that changes the job. Delivering a business case is no longer the end of it. The vendor stays responsible for whether the customer reaches the goal.
Frequently Asked Questions About Customer Value Management
What is customer value management?
Customer value management is the ongoing practice of identifying, measuring, and realizing the business outcomes customers expect from a product, service, or technology investment. It connects customer objectives with measurable value drivers and continuous performance tracking.
What is the difference between value identified and value realized?
Value identified represents the potential business impact of an opportunity, typically estimated in a business case. Value realized is the actual impact achieved and measured during or after implementation.
Why is a baseline important for value realization?
A baseline establishes the starting point for measuring business performance. Without one, organizations may struggle to demonstrate improvements, quantify savings, or prove the financial impact of a transformation.
What makes a business case credible?
A credible business case includes specific use cases, measurable KPIs, validated assumptions, realistic timelines, and the effort required to achieve the expected outcomes. It should be developed collaboratively with the customer.
What is a value office?
A value office is a centralized or distributed organizational capability responsible for coordinating value realization activities, including measurement, governance, accountability, and ongoing improvement.
How can companies measure customer value management maturity?
Companies can assess maturity by examining whether they measure realized outcomes, have clear accountability and operating models, and enable customers to manage value realization independently.
Hear the full conversation with Óscar Ramos: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Youtube
