Ibbaka makes research its third growth pillar

Steven Forth is CEO of Ibbaka. Connect on LinkedIn

Ibbaka is c customer value management (CVM) platform vendor. Our approach is built on the generation of value models and their integration with value stories and pricing models. We bring value and pricing together to help companies accelerate revenue growth and get a fair price for the value they are delivering.

Given this, why are we adding research and community as a formal part of the company and promoted Edward Wong to the role of Manager of Research and Community?

The Customer Value Management space has been ticking along for the past twenty or so years, but it is starting to transform and accelerate as generative AI changes how B2B applications are built, packaged, pricied and create value. The old approaches where value models and their offshoots like ROI calculators are built by hand and then customized with a small range values for each customer will not scale for the new world. We need to move from building value models to generating value models and then supporting mass customization.

For the customer value management community to adapt we need better models and better data. This is true of B2B SaaS generally. As we saw in the PeakSpan Ibbaka NRR Survey Report for 2024, generative AI is beginning to change the market and upset established benchmarks. In the AI Monetization in 2025 report (to be published in January 2025) we are seeing new approaches to pricing and packaging with Agents, Co-pilots and Applications each taking different directions. We need research to help companies navigate this changing world.

One of the shortcomings of most historical value management work has been that it lacks competitor context. Tom Nagle’s standard Economic Value Estimation (EVE) framework makes it clear that value is relative to the next best competitive alternative. Yet most ROI calculators and value models treat the solution is isolation. With value model generation this can change.

Ibbaka’s Research and Community work will cover three main themes:

• Generic Model Generation

• Major Research Themes

• Community Contribution

Generic Value Model Generation

Ibbaka has developed a process for value model generation. We will use this process to generate families of generic value models across key B2B SaaS categories. These models will be available to Ibbaka’s clients who will use them to understand their competitive advantage and to improve their value differentiation and positioning.

Ibbaka will use its clustering and pattern recognition technologies to find the deep patterns in value within and across categories.

Value is not static. It is dynamic, so part of the research function will be to regularly update the category and solutions context that are used in value model generation and keep these models current.

Major Research Themes

For the past two years Ibbaka has conducted two major surveys.

• The PeakSpan Ibbaka NRR Survey
  2023 N = 342
  2024 N = 503
  Done in partnership with PeakSpan, this survey gives the B2B SaaS industry data on Net Revenue Retention and provides analysis by SaaS vertical, Packaging Model, Pricing Model, Organizational Design and Scale. It is used to benchmark performance and to uncover trends in best practices.

• AI Monetization
  2024 N = 308 (data gathered in 2023 published in January 2024)
  2025 N = 336 (data gathered in 2024 to be published in January 2025)
  Generative AI is changing how B2B SaaS applications create value, how they are packaged and priced, and go-to-market approaches (growth motions). It uncovers the key trends that are reshaping B2B SaaS as generative AI reconfigures the industry.

In 2025 Ibbaka will add additional surveys to create more value for our community and clients.

• AI Performance Metrics

• Packaging AI: Agents, Co-Pilots and Applications

• Customer Value Management Best Practices

Contributing to the Community

Ibbaka’s core values include Deliver Value and Learn Constantly.

We try to deliver on these values inside our software (our values are part of our software), in our sales process, delivery and customer success programs, and in how we contribute to our community of thought leaders, competitors and of course our clients and their customers.

Ibbaka Research and Community contributes to these value in the following ways.

Deliver Value

The reports from our research work are provided to anyone who asks for them. They are also used to inform the value, packaging and pricing models generated for our clients. Deepening and expanding understanding of customer value management will help everyone to create more value and perform better.

Learn Constantly

B2B software is going through a tectonic shift. Ibbaka research is one of the ways that Ibbaka learns and shares its learning.

We hope this research work will create value for you in 2025. To sign up for updates and keep informed you can subscribe to this blog.