When it comes to driving consistent value conversations across the field, organizations often face a dilemma: How do you create scalable, standardized content without overwhelming sellers or losing the flexibility needed for customer-specific outcomes?
In our recent Customer Value Community discussion, we heard from Karl Hartmann, Senior Director of Global Value Engineering at Appian, and Beth Kaiser, Global Value Practice Leader at Autodesk, as they shared their experiences tackling this challenge head-on. Their stories underscored the importance of simplifying content, creating scalable processes, and ensuring adoption through collaboration and enablement.
Simplifying Value for Seller Adoption: Appian’s Approach
For Appian, the challenge begins with their content itself, as sellers often struggle to know where to start.
“Our account executives are being asked to be solution experts, industry experts, relationship builders, and value experts. That’s a lot to put on one person. We’ve had to simplify and structure our content so they can actually use it in the field.” — Karl Hartmann, Senior Director of Global Value Engineering at Appian
The takeaway is clear: if value management feels overwhelming, sellers won’t adopt it.
To address this, Appian branded their use of the Ecosystems platform as the Appian Value Lens (AVL). Rather than presenting generic, one-size-fits-all assets, the AVL delivers industry-specific templates tied to common value drivers. This reduces friction and makes it easier for sellers to jump directly into customer conversations with confidence.
One major breakthrough has been the Express Business Case in Ecosystems’ platform, which presents value drivers, assumptions, and benefits in a clear format.
“It’s been a game-changer. Sellers can see value drivers, assumptions, and benefits up front. They’re no longer dropped into a maze of tabs. They can start a customer conversation immediately,” — Karl Hartmann, Senior Director of Global Value Engineering at Appian
By making business case creation as easy as possible, Appian turned hesitant users into active adopters. Adoption happens when tools fit the seller’s workflow, not the other way around.
Scaling Through Process: Autodesk’s Blueprint
If Appian’s story highlights usability in the field, Autodesk’s journey shows what it takes to scale value content across a massive global organization.
“I walked into a situation with great content, but it was overly complex and users were struggling with how to apply it to their value narrative. Some models had too many value drivers; others were so specific, they minimized the broader transformation story. As a result, adoption was low.” — Beth Kaiser, Global Value Practice Leader at Autodesk
The takeaway? Great content is wasted if it isn’t actionable.
To address this, Autodesk tied its value work to a C-suite–sponsored Global Solutions initiative. By embedding value into a broader go-to-market strategy, they brought together product marketing, sales, success, consulting, and partners under one framework. With Ecosystems’ support, Beth’s team created a systematic process for developing value models, reducing development time by 50% and launching 15 new playbooks in a single year.
“Without C-suite support, these efforts can get lost in the shuffle. Having leadership buy-in created accountability and alignment with strategic priorities.” — Beth Kaiser, Global Value Practice Leader at Autodesk
The results have been significant: 73% year-over-year growth in platform adoption, faster model creation, and higher confidence among field teams using the content. Scaling value requires not just better content, but process discipline and leadership support to drive adoption.
How ViViEN™ 2.0 Changes the Game
Both Appian and Autodesk reinforced a common truth: even the best content and processes can break down at the discovery stage. Sellers need a way to capture customer challenges and priorities quickly and translate them into value.
That’s where Ecosystems’ ViViEN™ 2.0 comes in.
“Discovery adoption isn’t where we want it yet, but ViViENTM is going to be a huge game changer. The ability to research inside the tool, use pre-built prompts, and slide findings directly into the business case will accelerate adoption and simplify the process even more.” — Karl Hartmann, Senior Director of Global Value Engineering at Appian
AI, when applied thoughtfully, removes barriers for sellers instead of creating them. By embedding AI-driven research, prompts, and content suggestions directly into the business case workflow, ViViEN 2.0 ensures sellers spend less time hunting for data and more time aligning with customers on outcomes.
Reach out to Ecosystems to learn more about ViViEN™ 2.0.
