Product Management – Art or Science?

Product Management DiagramGood product management delivers two key things to a business. Firstly it ensures that the business extracts maximum value from the product portfolio currently in place and secondly, it ensures that new and existing products are invested in to deliver maximum returns in the future. It uses a range of skills from technical through marketing and financial planning.

A successful business typically has the domain experts it needs to succeed, the technical experts who understand the products in depth, and the sales and marketing teams who understand the customers and markets. Many businesses have very limited professional product management expertise and struggle to bring all this domain knowledge together to make the right product decisions at the right time. Through periods of intense growth or market change the informal methods that have delivered success in the past often require supplementing with more structured methods. I can supplement your proven domain expertise with professional product management techniques to enhance your business success.

Small businesses and startups

Do you have a great product or service but feel you are not yet making the most of it? Are you are looking for additional skills in product marketing, building a business case, pricing or partnerships? Do you know the best way to get market and competitive data and use it to shape your roadmaps? I can bring proven expertise in these areas to your team in a flexible, cost effective way. Helping you achieve the success you deserve.

Growing businesses

Have you tasted success with your first products and services and are you now looking to expand and grow? Are you starting to need to analyse and understand your existing products and customers in more detail, and develop more complex business models to understand your next steps? Are you looking looking at partnerships? Research with leading private equity investors suggest that a key challenge for many mid size companies is failing to put in place solid professional product management processes to control their business. Their success is often built on one or two products and they fail to bring on new products or markets to continue to fuel further growth. If this sounds even a little like your company, you'll need to augment the skills you used to get you to this point with some more structured approaches and you'll need some specialist experience.  I can bring some key best practices used by world class corporations, adapted to your environment, and help you take your business to the next level.

Larger businesses

Are you really beating your competition? Are you anticipating the needs of your customers better than them? Do you understand how the market and your share are moving?  Do you know what really excites your customers? Are too many of your product decisions based purely on the opinions of a small group of people? Do you need to take a hard look at a portfolio that has grown in a rather unstructured fashion? I have developed world class product management organisations and processes for successful global corporations. I can help you transform the way you manage your products towards structured, consistent, data driven decision making.