A framework for proving measurable value
A validated model of how preclinical R&D teams define success, grounded in evidence rather than assumption.
- Role
- Senior Product Marketing Manager
- Timeline
- 3 months, research to first adoption
- Organization
- Enterprise R&D software platform
- Collabs
- Product managers, in-house scientists, customer success leaders, R&D execs
- The problemThe roadmap was assembled from feature requests, and product and go-to-market teams held different definitions of customer success.
- The solutionA layered research program turned into one outcome framework: pillars, categories, phase-bound outcomes, and decision criteria.
- The resultAdopted as the reference model for the next-generation platform build and the shared vocabulary across teams.
Challenge
The platform roadmap was being assembled from feature requests, not from a model of what customers were trying to achieve.
Go-to-market and product teams were working from different definitions of what success looks like, so there was no shared vocabulary for tying commercial messaging to the specific decisions researchers were making.
The goal was a framework rigorous enough for product architecture and plain enough for a first sales call.
Strategy
Establish the baseline
Structured research across regulatory guidance, scientific literature, and competitor claims produced a first-pass outcome taxonomy that was deliberately built before internal opinion was layered on.
Validate against internal expertise
Working sessions with in-house scientists and customer success leaders confirmed that the regulatory foundation held up with how customers actually make decisions and added real-world depth.
Stress-test with real-world executives
Interviews with R&D and translational leaders pressure-tested the phase boundaries and forced the framework to hold under real decisions.
Ship it as a reference model
The final framework was published with definitions, phase criteria, and evidence notes, in order to seamlessly plug into roadmap reviews, sales strategy, and feedback collection.
Impact
Reference model
Adopted for the next-generation platform build
Enterprise expansion
Framework used to open adjacent workflows in existing accounts
Shared language
One vocabulary across product, sales, and customer teams
The framework became the structure the next-generation platform was scoped against, mapping capability areas to outcomes rather than to feature parity and driving unprecedented product-market fit.
Account teams used it to show enterprise customers exisiting value gaps, which turned renewal conversations into expansion conversations.
GTM teams adopted the same outcome labels to tag customer feedback, so product and field conversations finally reconciled.
Personal takeaway
The best framework means nothing if it sits in a folder. The real outcome was adoption: I ran enablement sessions, wove in AI tools where teams already worked, and built relationships across product and go-to-market so the framework became a shared operating system, not just a finished document.
Deliverable
An anonymized and streamlined version of the framework. Select a pillar to see the categories it spans, then open a category to see its phase-bound outcomes and decision criteria.
Users live in the decision criteria level and used the product to achieve these specific goals. By incorporating this level of detail in the framework, internal teams could map key user questions to the higher-level outcomes they were working to achieve. This unlocked the ability to link user-level value with key business decisions, improving the way the company was able to communicate measurable value to the customer.
Select a category to expand its outcomes in place. Each outcome is gated to one or more preclinical phases — Ideation & Discovery, Early Optimization, Late Optimization, or IND Readiness — and carries the number of decision criteria required to claim it.
Strategic & Patient Value
Is this asset worth pursuing, for the business and for patients?