product strategics.docx

Yuzuncu Yil University Product Lifestyle Strategics Under the guidance of Prof. Dr. Reha Saydan By: Heresh Sabr MUhamad: Ph.D. Student 2018 Table of contents Introduction …………………………………………………………… 2 The Strategic Planning Process ……………………………………… 3 Product concept ……………………………………………….………. 6 Strategic product Plan Template: What Is It? ………………………. 6 The Strategic Product Plan …………………………………………… 7 What is a vision of product strategic? ……………………..………... 16 Total quality management and strategic product ………………..… 18 A tentative definition of Strategic Product Management …...……… 18 Strategic Product Management …………………………….……..… 19 Risks and benefits ……………………………………………………. 20 Strategic Product Design … ! ……………………..………….……... 22 What is a planning process for strategic product ? …………...……. 22 What is the process for creating a strategic plan … ? ……….………. 23 Creating a Strategic Product Plan ………..…………………………. 23 The real strategic product in the corporate's goal ……………....…... 24 Divisions and strategic product lines ……………………….……….. 24 How to lead a strategic product …….……………………………….. 26 Strategic product process and SWOT analysis ……………………… 28 Conclusion …………........................................................................ 30 References …………………………………………………………….. 32 Introduction What is a Lifestyle Product? Back in the bad old days it was very easy to identify a "lifestyle product" because they always sounded like crap. Clock radios, boom boxes, un-dolbyized portable cassette players, and portable AM radios are all prime examples of what used to be called "lifestyle products." In every case the primary goal of a lifestyle device was ergonomic - to perform a particular task. How well or high fidelity these devices were was not only secondary, but a tertiary afterthought - if sound, any sound, came out their job was done, even if it was at more than 10% IM distortion. But somewhere, sometime, audio equipment manufacturers decided to change the rules of the game - the meaning of "lifestyle product" morphed into something new - it's been expanded to encompass virtually any portable device that emits music, even, it seems, high quality music. Recently I reviewed two "lifestyle products" from two different high-end audio manufacturers, both of which were priced around $2000US, both sounded superb, but my problem was that I have a difficult time seeing them as lifestyle products - they were too good and too pricy to fit into the older lifestyle definition. I would have been much more comfortable if manufacturers called high-performance entry-level devices what they are, which is an entry-level high-performance audio device, not a "lifestyle" product. Now I know some readers are thinking $2kUS is a lot of money, far more than most people are going to spend on their first audio device. I agree. But if a component is a manufacturer's least expensive offering in a particular product category, it IS their entry-level device. If you can't pay the cost of their entry-level offering, it's probably best to not even look at their flagship models. Conversely, there are some manufacturers, such as FIIO, whose gear is priced so reasonably that based on street prices they MUST be lifestyle products, but if you listen to them, they qualify on purely sonic terms as high-performance audio devices. I wouldn't want to denigrate them with the term "lifestyle audio." So, the next time some salesperson says, this is "a lifestyle product," ask them "what exactly do you mean by that?" Their answer could be very interesting... The Strategic Planning Process So let’s step back and take a look at what an end-to-end product planning cycle might look like when integrated with the company’s strategic planning cycle. Assuming that a company resets its corporate strategy, financial plans, and product plans once per year, the planning process would ideally occur during the 3rd and 4th quarters of the fiscal year in preparation for the upcoming year. The five basic steps in the planning process (as depicted in figure 1) are: 1.Market review 2.Financial review 3.Corporate strategy 4.Product strategy 5.Product Roadmap and Release schedules Market Review: * Market Trends and Opportunities Customer needs Competitive Landscape Financial Review: * Company Performance Sales Channel Performance Product Performance Corporate Strategy: * Vision Financial Objectives Growth Plans Product Strategy: * Product Financial Plan Target Markets and * Customers Products, Themes, and Pricing Product Roadmaps and Releases: Quarterly Deliverables Products and Features Schedules Figure 1 During the first step, product management presents a market review to executive management sharing facts on market trends and opportunities, key customer needs, and competitor moves and positions. Though product management will keep tabs throughout the year on many of these items, this is the opportunity to update the information to make sure it is complete and current. Other functions may be invited to provide their perspectives on the market and customers as well. During the financial review phase, the finance organization presents results on the financial performance for the company overall, for its sales channels and for its products. Providing revenue and profitability by product is critical to making good product decisions and developing effective strategies. The next step is where the company’s executive team outlines its corporate strategy in terms of its vision, financial goals and its plan for achieving those goals. The corporate strategy should be explicitly presented to the product management team to facilitate development of a product strategy. For some smaller businesses, steps 3 and 4 may be combined into a single step. During step 4, product management develops its product strategy considering market dynamics, customer needs, financial goals, and corporate strategy. It specifies what changes to the products are needed and indicates the financial plan for each product area. The product strategy should be reviewed by the executive team to ensure alignment with the corporate strategy before proceeding to the next step. The final step involves the development of a product roadmap and more detailed release plans for the coming quarters consistent with the product strategy. This roadmap becomes the official “product plan of record” and should be managed with formal change control procedures. This step is executed at the conclusion of the annual planning cycle and is repeated every 3 or 4 months to allow responses to changing market conditions and deployment schedules and should be re-approved by executive management. Strategic Product Concept The best Strategic product usually start with true a strategic product concept, which is a general idea about a particular strategic product. Various departments within a company may meet and talk about a new strategic product idea that may complement a company's current product line. During this process, decision makers will often create an outline for the strategic product, including features, dimensions, marketing, competition and even a price range, . Marketing research managers may even have industry research information that shows the strengths of key competitors and their products. Strategic product Plan Template: What Is It? The Strategic Product Plan is a written document explaining the strategy used by the company to make decisions and how to use resources in business for the strategic production and success of the program and planning for that purpose. Common sections of the strategic product plan include the company's vision, mission, objectives and business. Strategic product plans look at each element of business to find the best way to implement and develop them. The Strategic Product Plan … ! The essential goal of a product plan should be to ensure that a product is built that delivers some business value to a specific set of customers in order to meet certain financial goals based upon a defined corporate strategy. Successive plans should increase that product’s effectiveness in doing so. A product plan describes the market opportunity, profiles the target customers, specifies pricing, identifies the financial goals, indicates the key priorities for development and enhancement, and provides a roadmap for delivery for at least the next four quarters. For a new product, a comprehensive MRD (Market Requirements Document) might well serve as the product plan. But each product that continues to be offered to customers should have a product plan updated every year. So, how does product management create a good product plan? Let’s assume that the product management department is already managing several products that are currently serving customers. After getting feedback from customers, speaking with the sales teams, obtaining a list of the top technical support issues, surveying competitor positions and features, and receiving new ideas from development, the product management team has generated a list of possibly hundreds of potential product enhancements across the product line as well as some new product ideas. Project prioritization typically takes place next due to limited development resources. Many companies apply some arbitrary prioritization scheme based upon the perceived number of times the feature/product has been requested or how much revenue they think the feature can generate. The product manager (or his development friends) may also make assumptions about value based upon how they think the product should be used. The product management team then creates a roadmap and a release schedule based upon these priorities and voila, the product plan is done, right? No, it certainly is not! The product plan is not complete because the company’s strategy has not yet been considered. The executives who are chartered with running the company have not had an influence on the product plan. The plan is merely a reaction to a somewhat random set of market facts and events. So how exactly does the corporate strategy relate to the roadmap? Well, the goal of almost any technology company is to increase revenues. Without a strategy to indicate HOW the company plans to increase revenue, then just about any product plan could arguably help the company achieve its goal, including the plan we just created. But with a strategy that specified how new revenue will be generated, a product plan tailored to supporting that strategy can then be developed. For example, your company could plan to grow revenue by selling its flagship product into new geographic regions. Your company could plan to grow by establishing a new reseller channel. Your company could grow by enhancing its existing products to appeal to a wider base of customers. Your company could plan to grow by developing new products that appeal to the existing customer base. Each of these decisions carries with it significant implications on the product plan. Selling into new geographic regions would require local language support and may have other specific regional requirements. Selling through a reseller channel may require multi-tier administration and branding.Enhancing products to appeal to a wider customer base requires profiling that new customer and understanding his/her unique needs and requirements. And developing new products requires new analysis, requirements, design, and development work. Thus, each of these strategies would result in a different prioritization of the projects on the product manager’s candidate list and a different allocation of resources. The product plan we created previously is reactionary and haphazard, while the product plan that responds to corporate strategy is directed and intentional. So why aren’t corporate strategies incorporated into product plans? There are several possible reasons, but three of the most prevalent ones I have come across are: 1) no strategy exists, 2) the strategy has not been clearly communicated, or 3) the strategy appears inconsistent with market and customer data. Let’s analyze each in the following sections and propose some ways to solve them. If no strategy exists, then one should be created. At one Internet Services company, the executive team employed a process where they reviewed and prioritized the top project requests every six weeks. This approach resulted in constantly shifting priorities since the highest priority projects were always related to the biggest sales opportunities at the time. Less critical product features never made the cut resulting in a product line that became increasingly uncompetitive. Without a driving strategy behind it, your company risks being jacked around by short-term opportunities. Product management is in a good position to persuade executives to develop a high level strategy as part of the product planning process. Here are some key questions that product managers can ask executives to help with product planning that might very well stimulate some strategic discussions. •What are the top 3 most critical challenges our company will address this year? •In which geographic regions will we focus on selling our products? •Will there be any changes to the sales or channel strategy? •What are the revenue and profitability expectations for each product line? •Will there be any changes to the focus of marketing and advertising? •Are new markets or product lines being considered for the future? •What strategic partnerships are on the horizon? •What resource changes are expected for the coming year? Now an astute executive may ask the product management team to answer or help answer many of these questions. And that makes some sense since product management sees market opportunities, has heard customer feedback first hand and has aggregated it from others, has tracked competitor’s moves, and has an in-depth view of their products’ financial trends. But at the same time you still want to leverage the knowledge and experience of the executive team and make sure they agree with the assumptions and logic being used. Therefore, a practical approach to strategic planning could involve a meeting (or series of meetings) where product management presents their market and customer information to executives, who then have a chance to discuss what they have heard and how they think it should apply to the future of the company. You could expand the discussion to include input from other functions like sales, marketing, and finance so that everyone is hearing key information that will lay the groundwork for the strategy. In a subsequent meeting, product management can replay the conclusions and decisions from the previous discussion(s) and then present a proposed product strategy that responds to them. Hopefully by then, a consensus on the strategy will be reached and the product management team (with the assistance of development) can then present an updated roadmap and proposed release schedule for the coming quarters for final review and approval. The second reason why corporate strategies are not incorporated into product plans is that product managers don’t know about them or don’t understand them. It is certainly possible that an executive team will define a company strategy and then will succinctly describe that strategy in a form that can be handed down to all employees for successful execution. More typically however, the executive team communicates the strategy to their teams in a less formal fashion. Atone mid-sized software company, the executives felt that the strategy was too sensitive to share broadly and tried to share it on a “need-to-know” basis only. Most of their own employees were therefore in the dark about how to successfully execute the strategy. The product management team is a key executor of the strategy. The will translate corporate strategy into product strategy and will create roadmaps that drive the work of many of the company’s employees. For product managers to thoroughly understand the corporate strategy is to significantly improve the odds of its successful execution. Thus, I would highly recommend that the entire executive team present the strategy directly to the product management team. This will facilitate the necessary dialogue and allow for a joint understanding of the implications to the product strategy. Product management should then be required to develop a product strategy and proposed roadmap and present back to the executive team to close the loop and ensure alignment with the corporate strategy. The third reason why a corporate strategy may not be adequately incorporated into product plans is that the strategy itself appears to be inconsistent or contradict market and customer data heard by product managers. This is a likely result if the executive team developed their strategy without being adequately in touch with the market and customers. If the product management team is being utilized appropriately, then they will be serving as the “headlights” of the company driving the front-end of the product development process and thus they will be spending the majority of their time discovering market opportunities, customer needs, technology trends and competitor positions. Now executives should always make it a part of their jobs to speak with customers and to review market trends. But to ensure they hear the wealth of available market and customer information, it should be considered a prerequisite to developing the corporate strategy to have the product management team present a review of what they have learned. You may have noticed that in all three of the cases where corporate strategies are not adequately integrated into product plans, we found that the solution was direct communications between product management and the executive team. Product management can help to educate senior executives with their market and customer knowledge, can help mold the strategy, and must also hear it first-hand so that they can properly execute it. However, there are reasons why this direct communication does not occur. It is quite common for the product management team to report to a VP of Marketing or a VP of Product Development who represents them at senior-level meetings. These are broad functions with many responsibilities. Marketing executives are often measured and rewarded on driving revenue (with sales) for the company. Product development executives are expected to deliver quality products on schedule. Now I am admittedly oversimplifying here, as many good executives will make decisions with a big picture perspective on business priorities beyond their direct responsibilities. But there are some general tendencies based upon short-term rewards and there are limits to a person’s time and attention. So when sitting at the strategy planning table, what types of things are they most concerned with? How well do they understand customer needs and market opportunities? Is profitability one of their primary concerns? Are they concerned with short-term or long-term issues? In other words, will they be good representatives of the market and will they push to defend the bottom-line? This brings us to a broader issue at many technology companies. Who is actually concerned with profitability and the balancing short and long-term goals? Who is ensuring that every key decision is being made with key business goals in mind? In short, who is minding the store? For most functionally-aligned technology companies comprised of sales, marketing, operations/support, development, and finance, the lowest level of management where accountability exists for profitability and long-term strategic issues is amazingly the COO, if one exists, or the CEO if not. Think about it. The sales organization is primarily concerned with revenue and tends to be short-term focused. Marketing typically supports sales objectives. Operations and support keep the services running well, maintain customer satisfaction and are primarily cost centers. Development focuses on delivering quality products on schedule and is also managed as an expense. Finance tracks revenues and costs but is in a limited position to influence them. So, who is thinking about profitability and achieving long-term goals? If it is nobody other than the CEO or COO, then there is a real danger that the myriad of decisions made every day by managers across the company will not be made with the right focus. One increasingly popular solution I am seeing employed is to elevate the role of the product management function, given its critical strategic responsibilities, and have it report directly to the COO or CEO (or for larger companies, the relevant business-accountable executive). This makes product management a direct member of the leadership team making strategic decisions about the business. This product management function will be chartered with providing market intelligence to inform the executive team, managing product profitability, and determining and driving product strategy consistent with corporate strategy. This function becomes a resource for the CEO/COO/business leader to explore and manage long-term opportunities. It is the function that has P&L responsibility and will drive business decisions deeper into the organization. It is a function that gives business leaders greater control over the plans that drive so many of the resources of the company, the roadmaps and product plans. Since product management is in such an influential position to execute the strategy, and needs to work with so many of the other functional organizations during product development and delivery, it may be desirable to include other cross-functional delivery teams in this function as well, for example project managers and business analysts. Some companies create a “Products” organization reporting tot he CEO/COO that has a general manager heading up each major product line with product management, product marketing, business analysts, and project management reporting into it. In one case I have seen, a large enterprise software company initially had their product management department report into the product development organization. When they felt they weren’t being market focused enough, they moved it under marketing. When product requirements appeared to be chasing short-term sales opportunities, they eventually settled on an independent products organization such as the one just described. One cautionary note. It may be tempting to use this new organization to manage all issues related to the product and to stuff it with too many related functions. Care must be applied to keep it motivated to improve P&L and stay market focused. It would be tempting to say that if there is a quality problem, give it to the products organization to fix. If revenue is slipping below its goals, have the products organization investigate. If a big customer is having a problem, give it to the products group to handle. In a product company, most issues are product issues. Having the products organization handle all of them will create a bottleneck and will divert resources away from its primary job, to be the eyes and ears of the company to the market. The other functions of the company are accountable for issues such as product quality (development), revenue (sales and marketing), and customer issues (support). So let them handle it. What is a vision of product strategic? The vision of the product strategy is a fundamental component of its strategic product or strategic product line. It also determines the direction in which the strategic product or final status of the strategic product will be determined in the future. And an academic and deliberate view of the successful production of the strategic product in the market. Your vision serves as the north star for every action taken to enhance the product; if adding a feature will not help your product achieve its vision, then the value of that feature should be diminished. To write and share a strategic product vision, you must start with your product’s end user in mind. A strong product vision is supported by details of who the customers are, what they need, and your go-to-market plan. It captures the essence of what you aim to achieve, the opportunities you have, and the threats that you face. This is crucial information that your team must understand to develop and maintain a winning product. Whether you are using SWOT, a basic market assessment, or a business canvas planning approach, product vision provides a framework for you to create your strategy and visually share it with key product stakeholders. Your product vision provides a repository that is easily accessible, and can be shared with your team and key stakeholders. Product vision is also the first step towards creating strategic goals and initiatives. After all, if you don’t know where you are going, how will you get there? Goals and Initiatives create a bridge between your overall product strategy and your releases and features. Strategic Goals enable you to focus the team on the top 3 - 5 business drivers that you want to accomplish with your product over the next 3 - 12 months. Strategic Initiatives focus on which efforts you must complete to accomplish your goals, and can be mapped to releases and features. It is crucial that goals and initiatives follow a product vision that has been confirmed by customers and shared with stakeholders. Many products fail before developers have written their first line of code. This is not due to lack of talent or ambition; most frequently, there is too much alienation between product managers and their products’ end users. When product managers fail to speak one-on-one with these users, they cannot confirm market potential. This leads to misguided goals and initiatives – the result of an unclear product vision. The good news is that once you know what's missing from your market, you can write a product vision to deliver a winning solution. Total quality management and strategic product Impact of Total Quality Management (TQM) on strategic product innovation. It addresses the apparent tension between quality management and innovation management and seeks empirical support for the suggestion that quality management resources can be used to support strategic innovation. Based on the resource-based vision, it identifies the key resources that companies develop during the implementation of TQM systems: the culture of TQM, product design capacity, and the ability to improve processes - and assess the role of these resources in the success of product innovation. The most important point is that TQM in all its aspects must be in the service of the strategic product and the development of a successful management plan for its success in the market and in the competition. A tentative definition of Strategic Product Management Strategic product management is the process in which you define the goal of your business in such a way that it determines its survival. In turn, this will help product managers to draw the characteristics of a product. The philosopher Lao Tzu is credited with saying: “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Strategic product management determines which journey or where do you go. Product Management takes care of defining what you need to go there. Project Management takes care of defining the plan that implements the items you need to go on that path (defined by product managers) and the journey itself. SPM basically answers to this question: What kind of product or service should you create that obviously, customers love and are willing to pay for? Strategic Product Management Has the mandate to drive organic revenue growth by enhancing product development and innovation and by bringing greater strategic discipline and insight to the products we offer our clients. SPM is a small and nimble team that partners closely with the various Investment Strategies Groups and Client Business Groups to achieve the firm’s goals and objectives. Strategic Product Management is responsible for delivering five core activities: * Provide strategic direction and focus themes for the product offerings across all asset classes from active to passive and including alternatives * Ensure that innovation remains a core competency and build an incubation capability * Support the product management and approvals process * Conduct regular and comprehensive product health reviews * Understand product economics and rationalize product offerings. Responsibilities: The responsibilities of Strategic Product Management team include: * Focusing on identifying market trends and designing and implementing a product priorities strategy, including critical gap analysis. * Synthesis, and dissemination of product performance and sales information. * Prepare analysis of investment and commercial performance of existing products. * Contribute to the preparation of management reporting and presentation materials. provides the discipline and methodology that companies need to manage risks during product development. Yet the most powerful levers of the methodology apply early in the design process. It is at this initial step that many companies go wrong, burning through significant time and capital on products without an explicit understanding of specific features that the customer wants — articulated or unarticulated — or, more critically, a sense of what those customers will pay for such features. Strategic product value management uses commercial and design levers to provide the discipline and methodology required to manage risks during product development. It adds significant value early in the process, particularly through two aspects: design to value (DTV) and design to cost (DTC). Design to value entails analyzing what customers need in terms of features, efficacy, or other attributes (i.e., the value proposition of a particular product, including pricing). Design to cost, by contrast, entails analyzing all costs of a particular product and developing rigorous models to reduce those costs at every possible juncture. Risks and benefits The challenge in the strategic product value management process is usually a lack of the rigor and discipline required to drive costs out. The initial assumptions that many companies make at the outset regarding product development and production costs are frequently inaccurate. And companies tend to underestimate shrinkage during the process due to inevitable trade-offs. However, the potential gains from applying a systematic approach for managing risks are greater at the beginning of the process. Achievable cost reductions from strategic product value management vary based on volume, industry, and the regulatory environment. In the automotive industry, for example, achievable cost savings range from 15 to 20 percent. Organizations that have a strong mechanical engineering heritage and are shifting to integrated electronic systems can usually realize greater cost savings in those noncore systems. It is important to understand that strategic product value management is an ongoing process that runs throughout a product’s life cycle and doesn’t stop until the product becomes obsolete. Whether in new ventures or in a corporate setting, what drives innovation forward is the ability to identify, prioritize, and systematically manage risks. The strategic product value management process provides a robust framework to manage risks throughout the innovation process along the product life cycle. Success requires developing three capabilities: an organizational structure that supports DTV and DTC; robust analytics to understand customer demand and price sensitivity as well as product cost drivers; and a cross-functional approach. Implemented correctly, this methodology does not limit creativity, but rather puts in place a structure that helps companies focus on the innovations that promise the highest return on investment. Strategic Product Design … ! Great strategic products and services don’t just happen. While behind them lies a development process that starts with careful consideration of market needs, the competitive environment, company resources, the brand image, and the style and function of the new strategic product or service to be created too. What is a planning process for strategic product … ? Planning for Strategic product is the process of defining how you will achieve your vision for implementing true, future strategic product. By working backward from your desired end state, you can set goals and initiatives to guide the implementation of your strategy and a timeline to achieve them. That timeline is often referred to as a product roadmap. Why is it important to have a strategic plan? Your strategic products are the revenue engine for your company at now and for the future. So it is essential to have a unified plan that ties company-level objectives (e.g. grow sales in Europe by 20 percent) to the products (e.g. provide multi-level language support). This ensures alignment between your overarching goals and the day-to-day work, which is often referred to as the "execution." Without a strategic plan, you risk overlooking important business opportunities and making poor investment decisions and not true strategic product. Internal confusion around what to focus on leads to funding work that is not strategic. Having a complete view of how your goals connect at every level of your organization ensures efficient use of people, money, and time — ultimately, a more successful company. What is the process for creating a strategic plan … ? Strategic planning should follow a top-down approach that starts with the overall company goals and ties together supporting strategies at the division, product line, and individual product level. Executive and product leaders typically assume a leadership role to acknowledge the importance of strategic planning and to kick off the process. While you can create successful products from the bottom up, it is more effective and efficient to determine where you would like to go first and then build your way there. That said, strategic planning can be very challenging to navigate if your organization does not already have a defined process in place. Creating a framework for success is essential because it is complex and demanding work that requires dedication and commitment to do it well. Creating a Strategic Product Plan Most technology companies have a product management department serving as the “voice of the customer” and helping to better understand market needs. This function typically generates an extensive roadmap of new strategic products and enhancements, but is product management really being used strategically? For example, what is the product strategy that is driving roadmap priorities? And how is the product strategy linked to the company’s overall strategy? Since most technology companies’ revenues come primarily from their products or services, you would think that the product strategy would be carefully crafted with the close scrutiny of the executive team and that it would be meticulously aligned with an overarching corporate strategy. But this is often not the case. Without the engagement of the leadership team most responsible (and presumably most qualified) for determining strategy and direction, the risk is suboptimal financial performance at best, and complete company failure at worst. Let’s take a look at some practical approaches to making product management more strategic by engaging executives in key product strategy decisions and encouraging better corporate strategic planning. The real strategic product in the corporate's goal Before your team starts to work on your strategic product plan, you must have a clear understanding of your company vision and goals. As mentioned above, this work needs executive-level involvement. Without a clear vision and an agreed upon answer to "why are we here?" it is nearly impossible to align your product plans to higher level goals and a corporate mission. Your vision defines your view of the future. It is the north star for the company and should drive all downstream corporate and product strategic decisions. Ideally, your company and product leaders have already defined and communicated a clear set of business goals. But if they have not (or if you need to work with them to refresh them), consider the following questions to build a vision that is unique to you and will delight both customers and employees: • Why are we in business? • What do we do better than anyone else? • What do our customers think of us? • What do our employees think of us? • What is the opportunity in our market over the next one, three, and five years? • Are there new market opportunities? • What are our revenue goals? • What are our expense goals? • Is technology changing the market or our business? • What are our competitors doing? • What are the top three most critical challenges our company will face in the next few years? The responses to these questions will help you better understand the overall direction of the company and give you the clarity you need to set a winning strategy. Divisions and strategic product lines If you have divisions, suites, or families of strategic products, then the next layer of strategic planning needs to happen at the multi-product level. Companies use many different names to describe how they aggregate products. (Note: If you are in a single product company or do not go to market with a portfolio of related products or services, you can skip this section.) If you do have a portfolio of products, product leaders typically define an umbrella set of goals and initiatives that span across related products. These should align to the higher level corporate goals and provide clear direction for individual strategic product planning. The releases at the individual-product level are rolling up to the initiatives at the divisional level. Portfolio planning provides an opportunity to align around strategic initiatives that will impact multiple child products. It also gives you the opportunity to: • Consider enhancements to the core platform infrastructure. • Highlight dependencies between strategic products. • Identify the delivery capabilities needed to meet your goals. This approach helps you to make investment decisions and coordinate a release schedule that serves all of your products. How to lead a strategic product To help enforce strategic behaviors, here are five questions strategic product leaders should ask their colleagues and themselves: 1. What problem we are trying to solve? Strategic product managers take the time to clearly understand the customer’s business problem from their point of view so they can truly offer products that add value instead of just improving on currently available, often substandard solutions. Additionally, they take a thoughtful approach to investigate market opportunities in order to find attractive, strong candidates – based on the organization’s sales, marketing and product competencies. 2. How can we best solve the problem and create sustainable value? The strategic product manager uses critical thinking skills and enterprising ways to not only get at the root of problems, but also to find new and innovative ways to solve them. With their boundary-less style, strategic product managers are not afraid to cross business and functional silos and work with external partners – even the competition. 3. What is my offering’s specific purpose? Most product managers are great at articulating what their offerings do, but the strategic product leaders are also great at identifying what the product does not do. They focus on a specific area and ensure the resources are there to execute on that vision. 4. How can I ensure my product is successful every day? Strategic product managers remember that their responsibility every day is to drive sales results for the company. A highly strategic product manager does not simply “leave sales to the sales people” but takes full responsibility, ensuring the most relevant data is collected monthly, and that revenue generating functions (product, marketing and sales) review and analyze the data and plan for action as needed. 5. How might the landscape change tomorrow? Next month? Next year? This area looks at how well the product manager can adjust and change course as a result of business results or external events. This is important because no plan – however well thought out – can withstand all contingencies. And when things do not go as planned, product managers need to reinvent and affect (sometimes painful) changes. Strategic product process and SWOT analysis: The process of the strategic product from the beginning of the formation of the idea as the starting point and then design, management and strategy to the extent of production, and then marketing products and adapting the marketing environment and face competitors. All these processes need to study carefully detailed success of the production of these strategic products and continuity And how consumers and customers interact with these strategic products. The aim is to identify the effects of the power factor and vulnerability factor as the internal environment of the source of production and to determine the factor of opportunity and the threat factor on production, success and continuity through “SWOT analyze”. Strategic product production strategy is not a simple process but a complex process relative to non-strategic products, so the process of strategic products if it fails is in this case a huge damage and leads the company to its goal, so we can not start producing strategic products without “SWOT analyze”. is a strategic planning technique used to help a person or organization identify the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats related to business competition or project planning. The following is an illustration “SWOT Analyze”. Conclusion For a product or services technology company, the success of the company is determined by the success of its products. Effective product plans address market and customer needs AND support the company’s growth strategy. Creating effective product plans can only be accomplished with strong communications between the product management team and the executive team because: 1.Product management has critical market information that executives need to develop effective strategies; 2.Product management can help develop strategies by asking key questions and discussing product implications; and 3.Product management must clearly understand the company’s objectives and direction in order to create product strategies and roadmaps that will help them to be achieved. By leveraging the product management team as a strategic resource, you will ensure that your products have been influenced by the best minds and information your company has available and you will gain greater control in driving your company’s success. The importance of the strategic product is shown as the success of the strategic product in the market gives an accurate indication of the success of the marketing strategy in: 1. Its ability to reach buyers, and 2. Achieve superiority over competitors. These two points indicate that the product has received interest and acceptance of the markets. The importance of the product strategy to its obvious impact on other strategies of the marketing mix has grown, since the essence of the marketing process is to deliver (commodity, service, idea) from producers to consumers. References * AMARAL, D. C. & ROZENFELD, H. Integrating new product development process references with maturity and change management models. International Conference on Engineering Design, ICED`07, Cite Des Sciences et de L´Industrie, Paris, France, 2007. * ROBSON, C. & McCARTAN, K. Real World Research, 4th Edition, Wiley, 2016. * ROZENFELD, H. . Reference model for managing product development. In: Günther Seliger. (Org.). Sustainability in Manufacturng. 1 ed. Berlim: Springer, 2007, v. , p. 193-206. * VEZZOLI, C.; KOHTALA, C.; SRINIVASAN, A.; DIEHL, J.C.; FUSAKUL, S. M.; XIN, L.; SATEESH, D. Product-Service System Design for Sustainability. Greenleaf, 2014. * YIN, R. Case Study Research: Design and Methods (Applied Social Research Methods), SAGE Publications, Inc; 4th edition, 2008. * "SWOT Analysis: Discover New Opportunities, Manage and Eliminate Threats". www.mindtools.com. 1006. Retrieved 24 February 2018. * Jump up ^ Humphrey, Albert (December 2005). "SWOT Analysis for Management Consulting" (PDF). SRI Alumni Newsletter. SRI International. * Blake, Martin; Wijetilaka, Shehan (26 February 2015). "5 tips to grow your start-up using SWOT analysis". Sydney. Retrieved 10 August 2015. * Osita, Christian; Onyebuchi, Idoko; Justina, Nzekwe (31 January 2014). "Organization's stability and productivity: the role of SWOT analysis" (PDF). 2 (9). International Journal of Innovative and Applied Research (2014): 23–32. Retrieved 17 March 2016. * Armstrong. M. 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