Ensure a high adoption rate with these best practices
We're excited to support you as you improve your portfolio reporting and monitoring processes! This article covers best practices to help you and your companies be successful as you implement Visible.
Step One: Setting up your account
Your Account Executive will be the initial point of contact as you get started with Visible. They will develop a better understanding of your needs and create your account for you.
Then, the Investor Success Manager will work with you to get onboarded onto the Visible platform. This includes uploading your data, creating your metric infrastructure, and getting you started with some of our other awesome features like requests and updates (among others). The Investor Success Manager will continue to be your point of contact for assistance in the future.
Step Two: Notify your companies
Requests are an essential part of collecting data from your portfolio companies. When sending a Request to your portfolio companies, we suggest notifying your companies about the adoption of Visible two weeks before your first Request is due. This will give them plenty of lead time as they get used to the new reporting process.
Check out Introducing Your Companies to Visible [Email Template] for an easy-to-use template as you start to communicate with your companies about Visible.
Step Three: Communicate company options and the WHY
Visible is designed to make completing Requests as frictionless as possible. By default, your companies complete Requests via the link-based form, so make sure they know that they do not have to sign-up for a free Visible account just because you are using it. We've designed the platform so that you as an investor can easily collaborate with portfolio companies - regardless of if they are also using it. But let them know they always have the option to sign-up!
More information about the different ways companies can engage with Visible when their investor also has an account can be found here.
Step Four: Schedule an intro call with Visible's team (optional)
Making sure your companies have a complete understanding of your new reporting process helps make for a smooth transition. Visible's Investor Success Manager and Founder Success Manager are happy to conduct an introductory call with you and your founders to help kick off the first reporting cycle. This call will be used to show your founders how they can complete Requests and answer any questions. For interested founders, our team will also provide a walk-through of the Visible for Companies product.
Step Five: Sending out your first Request
Requests are how most investors use Visible to collect quantitative and qualitative information from their companies on a regular basis. For more information on how to send requests, check out How to Build a Request and How to maximize Request response rates from your portfolio companies.
To give you some confidence as you send your first Request, here are some helpful tips:
-
Send yourself a test Request to see how it will look from the companies' perspectives. You have the option to do this from within the platform as the final step when you are setting up the Request
-
Consider doing a 'trial Request' by sending a Request to your most engaged founders with whom you have developed a rapport. They can provide you with feedback on your metric definitions, number of metrics, etc.
-
Reach out to us at Visible and we'd be happy to review how you've set up your first Request and provide recommendations.
Step Six: Sending one-off reminders
It's easy to set up automatic email reminders to reduce the 'chasing' that is sometimes needed for companies to complete their reporting. Below is an example of how you can set up automatic reminders.
For the first Request, you may need to Send One-Off Reminders to make sure no one slips through the cracks. This is especially important the first time a Request is sent because it's your best opportunity to set the right reporting expectations with companies. For visibility into the status of your sent requests, check out How Can I View and Export a Summary of Request Responses?
Step Seven: Checking in with companies
Consider checking in with a few of your companies after the first Request has been completed to make sure there aren't any questions about the content. If you need to make any changes to your Request ahead of the next reporting cycle, read How to Edit a Request.
In Closing
We've designed our product to be founder-friendly and intuitive; however, it's still a good idea to implement these best practices. This will ensure you get a high adoption rate which will, in turn, produce regular, accurate data that you can use for your own internal and external reporting.
Please let us know if you have any additional questions!