Product Management: An Insight

Products are everywhere, some succeed and some fail. To create a successful product, it needs to follow a structured approach which is the product development process. Product development is the process of designing, building, operating, and maintaining a good product or service. Software and Internet companies use a product development process to ensure that they are not just manufacturing a technology, but creating a product that people will want to buy and continue to use. Product development adds things like pricing, marketing, and customer support to the technology to create a complete product. Without a product management philosophy and discipline, an IT organization becomes focused on the technology instead of the customers and is often organized along technology lines rather than in ways that benefit the customer.

This article is dedicated to few common product pitfalls which lead to a product disaster which are listed below:

Confusing product requirements with customer requirements.
Confusing innovation with value.
Confusing yourself with your customer.
Confusing the customer with the user.
Confusing features with benefits.
Confusing building right product with building product right.
Confusing good product with good business model.
Confusing Inspiring features with “Nice-to-Have” features.
Confusing adding features with improving product.
Confusing impressive specifications with an impressive product.

To briefly explain the first point, it’s not always wise to look forward to your marketing team, sales or customer for knowing about the kind of product you are working on. Sometimes, the customers don’t understand or know the kind of similar products available in the market and sometimes they don’t have the expertise on the technology and don’t understand the possibility of developing the product. Hence, Product management is responsible for defining the right product. It is the job of the product manager to deeply understand the target market and their needs, and then to work to combine what is possible with what is desirable, to create products that solve real problems. This is why top product managers often come from the engineering ranks; they understand what is possible, and when they see an unmet need they can often envision new and innovative solutions. Product marketing is also very important, just very different. Product marketing is all about communicating what the product does to the target market, and supporting the sales channel with the tools they need to effectively sell. Good product marketing is difficult and critical, but it is not at all the same thing as inventing the actual product.

Interesting, more in the next post….

The buzzword is CMR more than CRM...

Customer Relationship Management has been the mantra for many organizations now. Though critical, most of the CRM implementations are failure stories. Why?? Probably because, most of the times, the organization wants the CRM deployed quickly and the returns are expected soon, the vision remains unclear, the management of customers appears to be a Herculean task. They fail to understand what the customers really want and how CRM can be a driving force to better manage the relationship. There is a paradigm shift now from CRM to CMR i.e. Customer management of relationships, it’s just not about customer relationship but customer empowerment too. CMR gives the customer the power to tell what he’s is interested in and not interested in.

Every organization is different, so are its requirements. It’s always essential to align the right kind of CRM vendor application with the kind of clients you cater to and the services/ products you offer. More than what you perceive as important in CRM application, it’s important what your client wants in an application. The organization should not try to implement CRM as a technology but as a Sales and Marketing practice. The organization should be ready for a process and philosophy change if required from client’s perspective. It has been observed that CRM is being used to curb the information flow for security reasons because of which the importance of information flow among certain stakeholders is ignored. CMR addresses that companies should encourage information flow not only with customers but also within the organization. A classic example being one organization bidding with two different solutions/offerings and the two teams are unaware of each other, the result being business clash among practices. CMR just not stresses on capturing right kind of customer information but also how that information would be helpful to the organization in return. It’s a two way process of maintaining the relationship. The most important question to ask next is whether your sales force is trained enough to understand the terminologies of the application and enter the correct data. In many situations, the sales force just ignores the meaning of certain terminologies and enter data what they assume and in the process the reporting shows inaccurate results hampering business forecasts. Training and updating the CRM users on the latest functionalities and features should be a continuous process and automation of knowledge transfer should be a key initiative by the organization through CRM. As they say, the first step for the success of CMR is CRM. Interesting, more in the next post…
to be continued)

Ernst and Young’s tips for Business in 2009

One
Focus on Cash, manage it well as it is the most precious asset that businesses hold. Ensure that even if your revenues are dropping, you have sufficient cash to meet your immediate obligations.
Plenty Cash reserve can avoid situations like automobile companies in US.

Two
Pay attention to risk management as unidentified risk can lead to catastrophic results - shown by 2008. Try to ensure that effective risk management is tied directly to business priorities.
Lehman fiasco along with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac lacked good risk management policies in place.

Three
Be mindful of compensation as pay programmes affect stakeholders in the form of accounting, reported earnings, disclosure and tax implications.

Four
Keep your eyes open for mergers and acquisitions (M&A). Companies looking to expand through M&A should stick to their core services and competencies and ensure they're making smart purchases, including snapping up an underperforming competitor as prices become more affordable.

Fifth
Retain high performers in tough times. For companies searching for quick ways to reduce costs, labour may seem like an obvious expense. But retaining top talent during crisis time can help companies stay afloat and reduce costs in the longer term.

Sixth
Always look beyond here and now. While navigating current challenges, businesses should not forget about the future.

Seventh
Make your non-financial metrics count. In the current state of the global economy, many will argue that economic reality will kill the budding green industry. But investing in clean technology can give you competitive advantage in the form of cost cuts, efficiency, compliance with new regulations and the creation of new products and services.

Eighth
Get ready for International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). Soon public companies will be expected to provide securities administrators with a detailed implementation plan and quantify the conversion's impact on their business, more precisely.

Ninth
Be smart with tax strategies to save you money. Talk to your advisor and do it early. Implement tax strategies to improve cash flow or minimize taxes.

Tenth
See the lemonade, not the lemons. Use the heightened scrutiny caused by the current financial and economic challenges to identify ways to improve and grow your business.

According to Ernst & Young, a climate of fear and risk aversion creates real opportunities for investment and innovation if firms are able to step back and see beyond the current turmoil.