Building Enduring Enterprise Products with the Hierarchy of Engagement

For enterprise organizations, growth is rarely the primary challenge. Reach, brand awareness, and distribution are often already in place. The real challenge lies elsewhere: driving sustained, meaningful engagement across complex user bases, platforms, and portfolios of products.

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This is where the Hierarchy of Engagement offers a powerful strategic lens. While often discussed in the context of startups, the framework is equally—if not more—relevant for enterprises building and modernizing digital products at scale.

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At Very Good Ventures (VGV), we apply the Hierarchy of Engagement to help enterprise teams move beyond surface-level adoption toward durable, value-driven engagement.

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What Is the Hierarchy of Engagement?

The Hierarchy of Engagement describes three progressive levels that products must master to deliver long-term impact. Each level builds on the previous one, and enterprise teams often struggle when these stages are approached out of order.

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1. Driving Meaningful Engagement (Not Just Adoption)

At the foundation of the hierarchy is a simple but often overlooked question: Are users engaging in the behaviors that actually deliver value?

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In enterprise environments, success is frequently measured by:

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• Licenses provisioned
• Accounts activated
• Users onboarded

But these metrics don’t guarantee that users are completing the product’s core action—the critical behavior that unlocks business value—whether that’s completing workflows, making decisions, collaborating, or acting on insights.

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Even at scale, organizations can over-optimize for visibility and adoption while under-investing in the behaviors that drive meaningful, repeat engagement.

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2. Retaining Users Through Accruing Organizational Value

For enterprise products, retention is less about churn and more about relevance, dependency, and embeddedness.

Products retain enterprise users when:

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• Value compounds with continued use (data depth, personalization, automation)
• Workflows become integral to daily operations
• Switching costs increase due to integration, institutional knowledge, or process alignment

In large organizations, disengagement is often silent; users don’t leave, they simply stop using features or revert to legacy tools. Designing for retention means ensuring the product continues to earn its place within complex ecosystems over time.

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At VGV, we see retention as a systems problem—one that spans product design, architecture, change management, and user experience.

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3. Self-Reinforcing Engagement at Enterprise Scale

At the top of the hierarchy is self-perpetuating engagement—when engagement doesn’t just sustain usage, but actively amplifies value across the organization.

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In enterprise contexts, this can take the form of:

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• Cross-team network effects
• Shared data and collaboration loops
• Standardized workflows that scale best practices
• Platforms that become centers of gravity within the organization

When designed well, enterprise products don’t require constant top-down enforcement. Engagement spreads laterally as teams see value created elsewhere and adopt organically.

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This is how internal tools become strategic platforms, and how external enterprise products become deeply embedded with customers.

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Why the Hierarchy of Engagement Matters for Enterprises

Enterprise digital initiatives often fail not because of technology, but because engagement is treated as an outcome instead of a design constraint.

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The Hierarchy of Engagement helps enterprise leaders:

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• Align product metrics with real business outcomes
• Prioritize depth of use over breadth of rollout
• Avoid costly transformations that never fully land with users
• Create platforms that scale engagement, not just features

Rather than asking “How many users do we have?”, the more strategic question becomes: “What behaviors are we enabling, and are they compounding value over time?”

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Applying the Hierarchy of Engagement at Very Good Ventures

We use the Hierarchy of Engagement to guide enterprise teams across modernization and transformation efforts:

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Platform & Portfolio Strategy

• Identify core actions across products and user roles
• Rationalize overlapping tools and fragmented workflows
• Define engagement-driven success metrics
  
  

Adoption, Retention & Enablement

• Design onboarding and enablement around real work, not features
• Ensure value accrues with continued usage
• Reduce cognitive and operational friction over time
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Scaling Engagement Across the Organization

• Build systems that encourage collaboration and reuse
• Leverage data and feedback loops to improve engagement
• Enable bottom-up adoption alongside top-down governance
  
  

Engagement as a Strategic Advantage

For enterprises, engagement isn't a growth hack—it’s a strategic advantage.

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Products that drive deep engagement:

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• Deliver higher ROI on digital investments
• Reduce tool sprawl and inefficiency
• Increase resilience during organizational change
• Create durable differentiation in the market

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Learn More

If your organization is investing in digital platforms, product modernization, or enterprise transformation, engagement should be a strategic priority—not an afterthought.

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Very Good Ventures partners with enterprise teams to design and build products that drive sustained engagement, measurable outcomes, and long-term value at scale.

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👉 Contact us to learn how we apply frameworks like the Hierarchy of Engagement to real-world enterprise challenges and help organizations turn adoption into impact.