A leading cybersecurity and systems management company uses Skillable’s lab platform to help accelerate sales cycles by decreasing their deal average time to close. They’re able to accomplish this by providing robust environments for prospects’ pilots and feasibility testing – reducing the need for on-premise proof of concepts.
Key takeaways
- On-prem POCs built for Fortune 100 deals don’t scale. Smaller customers need a faster, lighter path to evaluate your product.
- Virtual lab environments eliminate the six-week setup and security review bottleneck by giving prospects on-demand access to production-quality software.
- POC environment build time dropped 84% – from 20-25 hours to 2-5 hours – freeing Solutions Engineers to focus on selling instead of configuring.
- Pilot duration dropped 85% – from 56 days to 7-10 days – directly accelerating time to close.
- Spin-up/tear-down hosting means you only pay for POC infrastructure when prospects are actually using it.
- Keeping prospects active in a secure lab during DPA negotiations maintains deal momentum instead of letting it stall for months.
- The company closed its first deal without an on-prem POC: a new logo with a three-year commitment set to double in 18 months.
Keep scrolling to read more or see how can decrease your reliance on on-prem POCs by scheduling a demo.
The challenge
The on-prem POC problem: Six weeks to stand up, months to close
The company’s Proof of Concept (POC) model is designed for Fortune 100 enterprise customers and lacks scalability for small enterprise and mid-market customers. This misalignment causes deals to stall in the POC pipeline stage, negatively impacting key sales metrics like average time to close.
- For F100 clients the company’s solution is installed in their actual environment requiring a full security review with the potential client’s information security team.
- POCs on the company’s cloud infrastructure is costly and only recouped if deals sign.
- Standing up their solution in the customer environment took an average of six weeks.
Objectives
- Significantly decrease average time to close
- Decrease their human capital costs of setup and implementation in addition to the hosting costs for the POCs
The solution
Hands-on product access without the on-prem overhead
Implement a POC solution where a prospect can see and interact with a production version of their products, including guided instructions that walk the prospect through each of their modules. Key capabilities, include:
- Create a “Gold Copy” of their product environments that can be quickly iterated on to match the customer’s product configuration, reducing Solutions Engineers' time spent building out the technical environment for each prospect
- Showcase each of their product modules with guided instructions throughout using the Skillable platform
- Automate spin up and tear down of virtual machines so hosting costs are only incurred when the POC environment is actually in use
Measuring success
85% faster pilots, 84% less setup time
The cybersecurity company is confident that this new approach will solve the scalability issue for smaller customers, speeding up sales opportunities. An internal process with a ticketing system for POC requests is now live citing the following benefits:
- Provide quick and easy access to their software environment
- Maintain sales cycle momentum even during Data Protection Agreement (DPA) negotiations that can take months to negotiate because prospects are active in their safe and secure lab environments testing and gaining confidence in them and that thet could do what they said.
Using Skillable’s platform for proof-of-concept environments has enabled them to:
Accelerate sales cycles
85% decrease in production pilot duration
Now 7-10 days instead of 56 days.
Improve SE efficiency and capacity
84% decrease in time spent building and configuring POC environments
Now 2-5 hours instead of 20-25 hours.
Increase win rates
Faster execution leading to better outcomes
- Focused solution validation
- Overcome security constraints
Still waiting months to build on-prem POCs?
There’s a faster way. Explore how you can use virtual lab environments for demos and POCs.
