The Product Pulse

As many of you probably know, releasing a product to market involves a whole system of moving parts. It's not as simple as coming up with a great idea and then seeing it on the shelf a few months later. If only!

The only way to ensure you're meeting time-to-market targets for your new products, and thus having a significant impact on market share and profitability, is to synchronize all of those moving parts. It's a highly-orchestrated process that requires a comprehensive release management initiative. Instead of getting caught up in individual roles or parts of the product release, every department within your company needs visibility into how their piece, which may consist of multiple projects, are impacting the larger release schedule of the product portfolio. Everyone needs to be actively assessing the big picture via a centralized roadmap, proactively communicating any potential roadblocks, collaborating on release details, and working towards one common goal: a successful product release.

And really, it doesn't matter if you're releasing products to market or applications to the business -- the same rules still apply. In fact, in our technology-driven world, IT often has a starring role in developing the software components or applications embedded within the products you use every day.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Do all interested parties in the company have access to the requirements delivered in a release?
• How will this product be messaged and marketed?
• Is everyone along the supply chain well informed about the timing and impact of release?
• Is there a central location where all release and product content is stored?
• Are you able to deliver a long-term visual roadmap to your customers and stakeholders?

If you're tracking all of this information via emails and static spreadsheets, you have my sincere condolences because you're likely living in spreadsheet hell. Increase the number of products you're releasing, and the complexity increases exponentially. I know organizations are struggling with juggling all of these release details -- it's exactly why we made the enhancements we did to the release management capabilities in the newest version of our software. In the end, with the right tools and processes, you will be able to harness the power of all of that disparate information you've been tracking to get products out on time.

One company that has been quite successful in product release management is Green Mountain Coffee Roasters. As the world's second fastest growing company, they've had to learn quickly what it means to look at the bigger picture when it comes to ensuring their products are delivered on time to the market. Check out this fascinating webcast to learn more about how they do it.

Your product pipeline might be perfectly streamlined and efficient. But if you're like many organizations, your portfolio may have some issues that are costing your organization in terms of revenue, product failures, and eventually reputation. Maybe you've wanted to implement a Product Portfolio Management Solution but haven't defined or designed your processes yet. Did you know that it's actually recommended that you go ahead and get started with a PPM solution so you can grow your processes as you go along? Here are some sure-fire ways to gauge whether it's time you invest in a software solution to improve your chances for success.

1. Failed Market Launches
   Has your organization launched unsuccessful products that have blemished your brand or product line? Have you missed critical time-to-market deadlines that have cost real money? Product Portfolio Management allows you to analyze your portfolio before you make the decision on what will be on your roadmap. It enables you to evaluate every piece of your portfolio so you have a complete picture -- the impact on your brand, competition, resources, sustainability, and bottom line. What has a failed product launch cost you? Chances are, a lot more than what it would cost to implement a solution.
   
   
2. Limited Resources
   You've repeatedly heard and our recent Benchmark Surveys have confirmed that the #1 pain point around Product Portfolio Management is too much work for available resources. You may have people presenting great ideas, but you only have a limited capacity when it comes to people. If you say 'yes' to every good idea, you spread your resources too thin and few of those good ideas actually make it to the market on time. Product Portfolio Management gives you tools to run 'what-if' scenarios before you execute. It allows you to perform comprehensive portfolio analysis to understand your current capacity, usually based on role or skill, and then evaluate all of the things in your pipeline to go on the roadmap to ensure they can actually get done on-time with the available resources. When you use your resource capacity as a filtering mechanism, you have a much higher chance of success.
   
   
3. Market and Product Conditions
   Look at the size of your product catalog and the number of markets you serve. If you have a large number of products, multiple projects that deliver a product, a large number of metrics to analyze the performance of each product, multiple markets or global markets, or if your roadmap is frequently changing, you're ready to centralize and automate your product portfolio to maximize visibility and reduce risk. Are you still updating your roadmap manually through PowerPoint? That's a not just a sign, but a neon flashing sign telling you it's time to convert to a formal solution.

Take a look at your current product portfolio and see if any of the 3 signs above are present. If so, you just might be ready to call in reinforcements!

Consumer Goods Growth & Innovation Forum Review -- Part 1 of 3

The 2010 Consumer Goods Growth and Innovation Forum just concluded in South Beach on Friday with a big bang… including a spontaneous and refreshing F-bomb from an amazing new innovator. But, more on him in a moment.

This year's conference, produced by CGT, had a theme of New Product Resurgence: Bringing Back the Consumer and Driving Growth. The conference presenters represented a who's who list of consumer product giants, including Kraft, Mars, Colgate-Palmolive, and Kimberly-Clark. They covered a variety of topics on everything from Brand Management to Developing Leadership and Talent. The sessions and personal exchanges amongst the 50+ executive attendees were rich, engaging, and motivated towards sincere, helpful solutions based on real-life experiences.

One of the biggest highlights of the event was the presentation of the Innovation Awards. Some of the winners included the new Liquid Pencil made by Newell Rubbermaid, the new Jeans Diaper made by Kimberly-Clark, and the big, grand prize winner: MooBella Ice Creamery Machines. While all of the attendees were given a Liquid Pencil (I used mine to draft this blog post -- thank goodness it erases!), we were disappointed that there were no MooBella samples to enjoy. (Hint, Hint for next year, Bruce!)

For me, the two presentations that stood out the most were Ben Kaufman, Founder and CEO of Quirky, on Group Think Tank, and Michael Becker of the Mobile Marketing Association on Reaching the Consumer Through Mobile Marketing because they demonstrated the true spirit of innovation, how quickly consumers are maturing, and how rapidly the products game is changing overall.

While Michael Becker's presentation on Mobile Marketing left many furiously adding items to their marketing To Do List (more on him in Part 2 of this Forum Review), I must first share my enthusiasm for the presenter who left my jaw hanging open. Please allow me to introduce to Ben Kaufman:

• Ben started his first company, Mophie, the day he graduated from high school.
• Six months later, Mophie took home the Best of Show award in the innovation category at MacWorld with his invention: the Song Sling for the iPod Shuffle.
• The next year at MacWorld, Kaufman felt like he had to top the previous year's win, so he handed out pencils and notepads to attendees on the trade floor, asking them to come up with new product ideas for the iPod accessories. The crowd delivered with 120 unique ideas. The Mophie gang scanned them in, allowing over 30,000 people from around the world to collaborate to develop a brand new product in 72 hours: the Bevy.
• Ben Kaufman was named the #1 Entrepreneur under 30 by Inc. Magazine in 2007.
• Mophie got acquired around the same time and Ben immediately started his next company, Kluster, to develop the technology platform to gather direct consumer feedback from around the world.
• Based on Kluster's technology, he then founded his current passion: Quirky. Ben wanted to share the thrill of taking a product to market with the world. So every week, ideas are submitted online, the community votes, submits product names, comes up with a logo, and by Friday afternoon a new product is born. Everyone who participates in the process shares in the profit. Killer, huh?
• Oh, and did I mention he's is only 23. He'll turn 24 next month. Happy Birthday, Ben!

Kaufman's keynote presentation covered much of his personal history, which, in itself, is completely inspiring and fascinating. But he had some terrific lessons learned to share with the legendary experts in the room, especially as it relates to innovation and the entrepreneurial spirit. Quirky and Kaufman have tapped into the inventor in all of us. Consumer goods companies can certainly learn a lot about the products consumers want to buy from focus groups and customer satisfaction surveys. But the times… they are a changin'. And I believe that innovators like Kaufman are leading the way on how to do this in a new "quirky" way. (Oh, and yes, Ben was the one who dropped the F-bomb during his presentation. It was classic!)

Part 2: When Is a Phone No Longer a Phone? When It's a Way to Connect with Your Target Market!

Welcome to The Product Pulse, our new blog focused on innovation and optimizing the product portfolio.

As you probably know, we didn't just pick this name out of a hat. We held a contest open to the world to help us pick the right name. We had come up with what we thought were some great ideas… but "The Product Pulse" came from one of you. Which is so fitting, because we want this to be a community of interaction on cool topics that matter to the product development community.

So, what about this particular name and tagline manifested the Eureka moment? It came down to a couple of key words, to wit:

• "Pulse" -- product development teams are living organisms, they have a pulse that is rarely in a state of relaxation (in fact, most of the development teams that I have been a part of spend much more of their time closer to peak heart rate!). Cranking out new products and maintaining existing ones, working to keep existing customers delighted, striving to attract new customers, and driving to establish competitive advantage -- these all keep the heart pumping. My guess is that we are all accustomed to the "pulse."
• "Innovation" -- here's a loaded word for sure. Innovation has reemerged after a period of cost-focused survival as the number one priority for most product organizations. Innovation is at the heart of what we do, it's the payoff that gets most of us come to work every day, to bring new ideas to market in a way that fuels the success of our customers and our companies. Seems pertinent for us to talk "innovation."
• Finally, the "Product Portfolio" -- this is where the rubber hits the road. None of us have the luxury of being able to focus exclusively on introducing the newest, latest products to market. Whether or not we refer to it as such, we all manage a "portfolio" of new, mature, successful, struggling, and long-in-the tooth products. How we optimize our performance given this reality is typically the most challenging aspect of our jobs. The everyday trade-offs demanded by our portfolios is our reality and we hope to share ideas on managing this process.

So that's where this blog is starting: rooted in these concepts. We look forward to seeing what it grows into, with your participation. We hope you will find this to be a unique place to engage with peers and thought leaders on the full range of topics that encompass the idea-to-launch-to-ongoing support processes associated with maximizing innovation and managing the product portfolio. Ultimately we hope that you learn (and share!) a few things that make your team more successful and your job a little easier. Thanks for joining us!