Ramping and Payback Delays

Not all value happens on day one. Ramping lets you model how benefits actually arrive: gradually, as your solution gets adopted, teams get trained, and processes mature.

​

TLDR:

Ramping allows you to assign a % reduction to the total calculated benefit for a period of time. Typically added to the first few months or quarters of a contract to account for standard adoption times of your platform. To add a ramp, add a phase on the timeline and lower its ramp from the default 100%. The ramp applies to all use cases within the phase.

​

What is a Phase?

A business case calculates the financial benefit a customer will receive from using your product. That hinges on one critical idea: they must actually use your product. Adoption of the product likely won’t happen all at once. The best practice is to rollout in phases, this typically means one of two things:

1. Allowing certain teams, departments, or geographies to get started then gradually releasing it to the wider organization.
2. Activating certain features or products before others.

If 100% adoption isn’t guaranteed in the first few weeks or even months, you might want to consider ramping your benefit.

​

What is Ramping?

In Minoa, you do this with phases on the timeline. Click or drag across months in the phase band above the timeline to add a phase, then click the phase to set its ramp. A phase has a start and end month and defaults to 100% ramping. This means that all use cases on the timeline that fall within a phase will be calculated to achieve 100% of their total benefit. If you set the ramping value to less than 100%, say 50%, it means that during the months of the phase the active use cases will be calculated at 50% of their total benefit.

​

How to Add Ramping

​

Let’s look at an example:

I’ve built a business case for how Acme Co. will benefit from working with Minoa. There are two use cases in the business cases: Pre-Sales Business Case Automation - Saving time on building each business case. Post-sales Upsell and Renewal - Providing a more sophisticated pitch for renewing the contract While we know that Acme Co. will benefit from both of these use cases, we know that pre-sales will deliver value faster. So we might say that the post-sales use case gets activated 1-2 quarters after the start of the contract. So the pre-sales use case starts on day one, but based on what we’ve seen from rollouts at similar companies, we believe they’ll get 25% of the benefit in the first month, and 80% by month two. This might be due to the enablement necessary to teach sellers how to use the tool, or the length of the sales cycles requiring more time to actually experience the benefit of the product. In this scenario, we’ve added both use cases to our timeline already. Now we can add two phases: 1. Initial Rollout - Starts at month one and ends at month two. We’ll add a 25% ramp to this phase. 2. Expanded Rollout - Starts at month two and lasts two months. Let’s add an 80% ramp to this second phase. We don’t need to add a phase to the rest of the contract, but you can if it helps with clarity. By default, the rest of the months in this contract will be calculated at 100% of total benefit.

​

How does Ramping Impact my Calculation?

You’ll notice that your Calculated Benefit changes when you add ramping. This is because the benefit of the use cases have now been adjusted to account for the Initial and Extended rollouts. You can place your cursor inside of the Calculated Benefit box to view the phases from anywhere in your business case.

​

Advanced Ramping

For more granular control over how value ramps across the contract, open the Ramping Modal by clicking “Edit Ramp”. You’ll find it above the timeline and in the menu that opens when you click a use case bar. The modal gives you a spreadsheet-style table where each row is a use case and each column represents a time period.

1. Click a cell, or drag across cells to select several
2. Type a percentage between 1% and 100%, or pick a preset (25%, 50%, 75%, or 100%)
3. To build a gradual ramp, select two or more adjacent cells and click “Ramp up evenly”
4. Save your changes

To clear all ramping for a use case, use the reset button next to its name. You’ll be asked to confirm first. The modal has three tabs so you can work at the level of detail that fits your deal:

​

Why Ramping Matters

When you present a business case without ramping, you’re claiming full value starting immediately. That’s rarely how it works, and savvy buyers know it. Ramping shows you understand the implementation journey and builds credibility with your business case.