The baseline
The measure agreed before delivery starts. Value measured against a remembered past is value the customer will dispute.
The baseline is the state of the customer’s numbers before your offer touches them, agreed by both sides and written down before delivery starts. It sounds like paperwork. It is the difference between a renewal conversation about evidence and a renewal conversation about opinion, because value measured against a remembered past is value the customer will dispute, and a baseline cannot be reconstructed later.
It is the first entry in the value ledger and the number every CPI is measured from. The discipline is uncomfortable because it happens at the moment of maximum enthusiasm, when both sides would rather start, and it commits you to a measure you might miss. Which is exactly why it is worth more than any case study you could show instead.
Set out in full in: Creating Customer Value Propositions with AI (Kogan Page, 2027), chapters 4, 8 and 9.
Related terms
Value capture
Proving the value landed, in both directions: in the customer's KPIs and in your own board's numbers.
CPIs and KPIs
Critical performance indicators are the critical few, tied to your points of difference. KPIs are the important many. If everything is critical, nothing is.
The value ledger
The running record of value delivered: the evidence file every renewal needs and almost no account team can produce on demand.
See the method run on one real account in three days: the One Page Proposition.