How to evaluate a value intelligence platform
Judge a value intelligence platform the way pricing professionals judge an offer: by economic value estimation. Then look at where each platform starts, because that decides what you build before the first business case.
The standard: economic value estimation
Economic value estimation is the method value and pricing professionals use to put a number on what an offer is worth. It starts from the customer's next-best alternative, not from a list of features. The economic value of an offer is the price of that alternative, plus the value of everything that makes the offer better for this customer, minus the value of anything that makes it worse (Steven Forth on value ratios and economic value estimation; Ibbaka's primer on economic value estimation).
Three things follow for anyone choosing a platform:
- The alternative is part of the calculation. A platform that can't say what the customer would otherwise use, or what it costs, can produce an ROI figure but not an economic value.
- Differentiation value is what supports price. The part of the value that comes from being better than the alternative is what a seller can defend in a negotiation. Total value alone can't justify a premium.
- Every driver needs its own logic and evidence. Each benefit should trace from what the product does, to what changes for the customer, to the economic result, with its source and confidence shown, and without counting the same benefit twice.
Four places to start
Every platform here produces a business case. They differ on what has to exist before the first one.
| Approach | What you build first | Platforms |
|---|---|---|
| Built from your material first | A framework, library or set of templates, built from your team's method, CRM and call history, or with the vendor's practitioners, then maintained | Minoa, Cuvama, Symbe, Ecosystems |
| Calculator-led | An ROI spreadsheet or calculator, turned into an interactive tool | ValueCore, Mediafly Value |
| Generated | Nothing of yours. The value model is generated from a company URL and product name, with each driver written as an equation and its benchmarks sourced | valueIQ |
| Built yourself | Prompts, templates and your own notes in a general-purpose AI assistant | ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot and similar |
Platforms that build from your material, and calculator-led ones, are strong when the framework, the deal history or the spreadsheet already exists and is good: your best value engineer's method, run at scale. Generation matters most when it doesn't exist yet, or when you're selling a product, segment or deal type you haven't modelled before. Built-yourself drafts fast, but the numbers rest on whatever the prompt and the assistant supply.
Last updated 29 October 2026
