Learning a new category?

Author: Julie Abraham

This blog post is about how you go about getting to know a new product category and managing new brands.  I’m currently learning all I can about the Premium and Luxury Faucet category.  Here are some of the steps I’m undertaking to master a new category:

1. Determine what market research is available – Whether it is syndicated or otherwise, seek out any research that has been conducted for your company and your category.  Read it and make notes of opportunities and threats because this will become part of your “story” or your rationale for your roadmap going forward.
2. Analyze sales reports – Understand your brand in terms of top selling and worst selling SKUs and sub-categories.  This will help you determine where you can build and potentially expand and will also help you understand potential cost savings from SKU rationalization. 
3. Brand framework – You will want to understand the existing foundation for your brand.  What is your brand positioning?  Or what is it supposed to be, even if you’re not delivering on it yet.  Who is your target customer/market?  What is your product portfolio missing?  What are the opportunities in the category (as you found in number 1 above)?  What are your strengths and weaknesses?  This is the beginning of your SWOT analysis.  Be sure to read all of the latest press releases too.
4. Competitive analysis – Once you understand your brand framework, you will want to understand how you are different from your competition.  This includes your brand positioning, target market, product portfolio, distribution channels, and pricing.  This information will help you complete a SWOT analysis.  Undertaking a competitive pricing analysis is one of the quickest, best projects you can perform to really understand your competition.  Visit all of your competitor’s websites and determine what they do well and their weaknesses.  Read their press releases.  Create a Google alert for your brand, your competition, and your category.
5. Talk to other employees – Gain an understanding on what they think about your brand, your company, and your category.  You are collecting data so you can determine your objectives and deliver results to your company.
6. Conduct customer visits in the field with your sales associates – This is one of the best ways to understand your category, your products and your competition.  Be ready with lots of questions for the sales associates and your customers.  You need to be open and receptive to whatever you hear.  Remember this is all about getting a benchmark on metrics.  You’re wanting to find out what your brand/company does well and can do better.  Find out what makes them recommend products.  Is is the quality of the products or the level of customer service they get from manufacturers?  Or something else?

These are all of the things I am undertaking right now.  I’m excited to learn about a new category and new product lines.  Please comment on this blog and tell me what you would differently or in addition to what I’ve listed here?

Product Management Success Tips

Author:  Liz Rohleder

Have you ever wondered why there are only a few companies that are true innovators in their industry?  Companies that come to mind are Apple, Intel, and Microsoft.  What do they do differently in the product development process in the “innovation area” and how do they execute better than their competitors?  How do they consistently come up with products that solve consumer needs and are on the cutting edge?  Here are some success tips that I have come up with after studying different companies in different industries and implementing product management strategies in various organizations:

1.  Have management buy-in and empowerment for new product development initiatives.
2. Do through research and analysis on how to position new product in the marketplace and against competition.  Do not underestimate where your competition will be by product launch vs. where they are during development phase.
3. Make sure price strategy is sound and works far enough out in the future with anticipation of competitive innovations and pricing trends.
4. Communicate/Communicate/Communicate – make sure all cross-functional team members understand roles / responsibilities and deliverables and timeframes.
5. Make sure the development team is in constant communication with launch team (go-to-market team)(seamless & transparent).  Identify any potential risks to project on development side and launch side.  Repeat this process at key time intervals in development process to ensure on-time launch.
6. Execution to plan is the key to ensure a successful launch.  A disciplined approach with review of stage gates / status / metrics gives all stakeholders appreciation for where the project is at and potential risks.

True innovators also have superior product (they are not a “me too” product) and are able to execute with high speed to market.  Intel has been able to continuously reduce their product development cycle to put them in leading position in their industry.  Apple fans are early adopters waiting for the next innovation to be launched.

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Just How Important is Product Lifecycle Management (PLM)?

Author: Julie Abraham

It’s critical.  You need to “purposefully” manage a new product from cradle to grave.  This is all part of product management.  It’s essential to any organization in managing the P&L and driving profitable growth.  This roadmap needs to be part of your product management strategy.

So how do you lead and manage for success?  Once you have a roadmap in place, you need to measure the success of your products.  You need to track how they are doing versus your targets on your key metrics like revenue, volume, turns, facings, distribution metrics, cost of goods sold (COGS) and profit.  These are just the symptoms – you need to understand the root cause.  If you’re not reaching the proposed targets you need to recognize why so you can take corrective action, sooner rather than later.  You need to know if a competitor has launched a similar product or if you’re not delivering on your promise to the consumer or if the product is no longer relevant or if there is a consumer issue with usage.  The root cause of these symptoms can be traced across the entire new product process or even outside of your process.  It can start in your Portfolio Management process with an ineffective management of ideas.  Or it can be due to lack of visibility to competitive activity when you are within weeks of launch.  This is precisely why measuring results, understanding the root cause and taking appropriate action is critical. 

Action might be required immediately after execution and launch into the marketplace or it might be 12 to 24 months down the road.  You simply might need to “refresh” the product by making minor tweaks and changing the advertising message (i.e., new and improved).  It might be that you’ve launched too many varieties and you’ve diluted the brand or the product range and so turns, facings or distribution has diminished.  If this is the case, you might need SKU or item rationalization to increase volume per item and improve profitability.

It is important that you have measures in place and a process to track and analyze your product line metrics.  Keep an eye on the entire portfolio and manage it carefully.  This will help you drive results and stay in front of the competition.  Organizations that are good at this have a good process in place to intentionally manage this.  Sure, you can fix issues with new products after the fact, in which case you have a reactive strategy.  But then you’ve lost valuable time, revenue, profit, and your resources are not working efficiently.  Additionally, issues can deteriorate your brand position and value.  World class organizations have a proactive approach.  Planning your “refresh” or your product launch for it’s next life stage will help you develop a proactive approach with the evolution of the product line in mind.  In doing so, you can cut your development time because the concept and potentially development is already in play.  Your resources will be used much more efficiently and you have a higher probability to reach your growth and profit targets.

Competitive intelligence will play a big role here.  As you see competitive products stealing volume, you need to act quickly.  Depending on how well the product is solving a problem and delivering unique and relevant value to your consumer, competitive barriers to entry will help with this.  But over time, they will find a way to deliver a “me too” product or probably something even better.  So the more you plan for this and solve new consumer problems, the more probable you will consistently deliver unique products and drive profitable results.

Another area to watch closely is customer service and consumer affairs.  You need to track customer (meaning retailers) and consumer complaints to ensure you are delivering on your promise or your intended product performance.  For example, you might see a spike in consumer complaints regarding aroma.  In which case you may want to make product recipe adjustments to improve the aroma immediately.  Again, acting quickly will be important.

Are you managing your entire product lifecycle purposefully?  Is the product roadmap part of your strategy?  Share with us your thoughts or questions. 

Please also tell us what topics you’d like see on our blog.  The more interactive this becomes the more useful it will be for all of us.  We want to hear from you.