A value driver is a single, measurable way your product creates value for a buyer — for example "Reduced Manual Billing Time" or "Lower Infrastructure Spend". It's the building block of every business case.
Each driver carries a formula: arithmetic over a set of inputs that produces an annual dollar figure. When you build a business case, you pick the drivers that apply to that deal and fill in the account's numbers. Serre adds up the results into the case's total annual benefit.
The anatomy of a driver#
- Name and Description — what the benefit is, in buyer language.
- Value category — Cost Reduction, Productivity & Efficiency, Risk Reduction, Revenue Acceleration, Revenue Growth, or Compliance & Regulatory.
- Inputs — the numbers the formula uses. Each has a label, a unit, a display format, and an example value.
- Formula — readable arithmetic over your inputs, with an Example calculation showing the annual value at the example values.
- Applies to solutions — which of your solutions the driver belongs to. Leave it unmapped and the driver applies across your whole portfolio.
Example values show how the formula works. Each case uses its own account's facts; improvement assumptions and conversion constants carry over.
The numbers are math, not AI#
Every figure a driver produces comes from a formula you can read, never from the AI making up a number. Val (the AI copilot) can help you draft a driver and writes the narrative around the numbers. That's what lets the output stand up to a CFO.
Configure once, reuse everywhere#
Your driver library is the value story that value engineers normally carry in their heads. You set it up once, and your team reuses it across deals.
Each business case keeps the version of every driver it was built with. Improving a driver in the library never rewrites a case you've already delivered.