Product Planning Order

1
Product Planning Order

• Concept review
• Technical review
• Product planning analysis
• Marketing overlay/research
• Sales feasibility
• Budget and timeline development
• Go/No Go Review
• Monthly update meeting
• Launch process integration
• Product launch/market intro

2
The High Tech Product Team

• Product Manager/Marketer
• Product Planner
• Program Manager
• Product Unit Manager
• Lead S/W
• Lead H/W
• Channel Mktg

• S/W UI Lead
• User Ed
• Firmware Mgr
• EE Lead
• ID Lead
• Test Lead
• Mfg Ops
• Sales Director

3
Keys to successful PD environment

• Product is king attitude
• Autonomy, independent decision making backed up
  by formal touch points
• Entrepreneurial climate within PD team
• Recognition/rewards for PD teams
• Ship It awards from WWPG
• Foster/fund 1 think tank teams at all times
• If matrix, allow team deliverables to take
  precedence over functional needs

4
Where do ideas come from?

• Customers feedback
• Vendors
• RD, Technology
• Competitors
• Market trends
• Channel partners
• Sales force
• Consultants

• Internal email aliases
• Legal
• Manufacturing
• Industry press
• Customer use patterns
• Product support group
• Historical perspectives
• International trends

5
Sizing The Market

• Crucial to all aspects of project
• Mfg ops, EE for chips, channel, sales, PL
• Methodology can differ
• PC Data on existing products
• Choice Modeling
• Quantitative Surveys
• Focus Group Qualitative
• Channel and Sales review

6
Customer Definition

• Defining Like products
• Purchasing channels
• Purchase Behavior Decision process
• Demographics Pyschographics
• Trends in target group
• Influentials, early adopters, and latents

7
Clarify customer needs

• What need/want do you satisfy?
• Does the customer easily see the benefits?
  (driven from specific product features/attributes)
  
• How likely is the customer to ACT on it?

8
Positioning

• Its the piece of your targets mind you want to
  own
• Be the first source in your product category to
  come to mind
• Get the entire tech dev team behind you on this
  early in the project

9
Product Value

• What matters is the customers viewpoint of the
  price/quality tradeoff
• Focus on providing customer value
• This is a sustainable competitive advantage
• Maintain measurement from customers view

10
Competition

• All current key players
• Emerging players
• Technology threats
• Much harder to define in high tech

11
Defining Product FeaturesCan be significant
challenge

• Marketing must take lead role in this
• Often program mgmt is the lead and driven more by
  technical input than customer benefit
• Spec MUST close at predefined point in project.
  This is challenge for mktg
• Competitive set has moved by now
• Sufficient technical know-how by mktg to gain
  respect on team is key
• Also what can be done?

12
Schedules and Timelines

• One of the most significant issues in high tech
• Technology and dev issues control this to a great
  degree.
• Educate and involve yourself in high tech dev team

13
Budget

• Discipline to establish and live to it
• s to each element
• Discretionary budget is key
• ROI on investment needs to be mapped out

14
New Product Development

• Gotchas
• It worked there, it will work here
• It worked once, it will work again
• Product development is affected by all aspects of
  the org structure
• Is it market driven or internally driven?
• Moving too far outside of core expertise across
  all aspects of the development and launch

15
Causes For New Product Failure

• Customer doesnt get benefit, act on it, or want
  it.
• Competitive response was swift and unaccounted
  for
• Product doesnt deliver the promise
• Quality, oversold/overpositioned
• Marketing wrong or too little

16
More reasons for failure

• Distribution channels not prepped and supporting
  properly
• Market size is misjudged
• Production/manufacturing problems
• Market was mistimed
• Costs/margins/profits dont map to corp
  guidelines/requirements