Return on Investment

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Accelerating outcome based sales

Increasingly telecoms is shifting from technology focused procurement to one based on enabling business outcomes. ROI analysis is the tool that can enable stronger business outcome based sales. Moving from a sales approach based on product features and functions to one based on tangible business process improvements and outcomes. ROI talks the language of the C suite beyond just the CTO organisation.

Appledore’s business and technical expertise and in-depth experience of the telecoms industry means we’re uniquely qualified to undertake Return on Investment or Business Benefit analysis. Appledore’s experts have over 20 years of experience delivering ROI analysis for major telecom vendors. ROI is a very subjective process and needs to support customer dialog, it is not a scientific method. Appledore provide the experience to help you navigate this customer subjective process, building commitment to act on its findings.

“We won the deal with CSP in APAC. Your business case analysis directly influenced the customer’s decision.” — Head of Product Marketing for Network Automation at multinational NEP

Indicative ROI

An indicative ROI is the starting point for all ROI and business benefits analysis. An indicative ROI can allow a vendor to clearly articulate the benefits of their product, particularly for new products or new features, where quantatitive customer based findings are unavailable. It supports the early articulation of how a product can support a customer’s business outcomes. It also can act as the first step in a full ROI allowing the prioritization of product capabilities to focus on.

Full ROI

A full quantatitive ROI allows a customer to explore their ROI supported by industry derived insights and experience. A full ROI will typically involve interviews with customers, account teams and product managers. The output of the full ROI is an ROI calculator that can be used in customer engagements to sell business outcomes.

ROI whitepaper

The results of an indicative and full ROI can be presented in a whitepaper. An ROI whitepaper will typically use average or anonymised numbers to support early customer engagement with clear linkage to likely business outcomes. An ROI whitepaper can be the first step in a deeper engagement with the customer in understanding the benefits of a vendor product.

ROI training and support

ROI is ultimately about customer dialog. Often clients want the capability to work personalised ROI with customers. Appledore can provide training in the use of our ROI tool to sales and pre-sales within a vendor organisation. Appledore can also support customer specific ROI analysis working with account teams.

ROI Success

Francis Haysom – Appledore ROI Practice Lead

With over 20 years of experience of ROI analysis, working with global telcos, for Cramer Systems, Telcordia, and Ericsson; Francis can deliver compelling ROI for your product based on practical experience and a business aligned methodology.

Full Bio

Francis Haysom


To find out more please call our USA office on +1 603 969 2125 or email sales@appledoreresearch.com

Our ROi methodology

An ROI needs to be owned by the customer and relate to the business of the customer, not simply to product features and functions. Appledore’s ROI methodology aims to deliver an ROI which the customer will support when the vendor is not in the room. ROI must be based on business processes, not product capabilities, focusing on how business processes are improved by features not the feature itself. Appledore’s ROI methodology is based on mapping features to improvements in business processes and ultimately to earning drivers, backed by industry experience and real customer experience.