Strategic Marketing Consultancy

New Products are the lifeblood of Companies. Innovation and New Product Development are now widely recognised as key sources of competitive advantage; understanding how to make things better (faster, cheaper, more reliably) will transform the ability of your Business to meet the needs of your Markets and Customers.

The rapid emergence of core Technologies over the last thirty years has been the catalyst for a deluge of Products across a wide range of Industries. But the majority of New Product Developments either fail or fall short in some way from the original specification (typically by being lower Quality, or by being ready much later than planned, or by costing more than budgeted). These issues are common to Technology and Product companies of all sizes; the difference between the number of good ideas and the number of successful Products is almost as great as the number of good ideas.

This is on first look an odd outcome; after all, Products are designed by competent, qualified, professional Engineers, so why do so few good Product ideas make it to mass Market deployment?

In almost every case the reason a Product Development Project fails (in one or more of the ways mentioned above) has little or nothing to do with the Engineering or Product Development phase; the time taken to Design and Develop something (Hardware or Software) is relatively predictable (once a set of Requirements has been agreed).

Failures can most often be attributed to problems at the start of a Project (poor Requirements Capture, unrealistic timescale-setting, incomplete understanding of Risk) or at the end (little or no Marketing Planning, poor grasp of Channel structures, insufficient understanding of how to Price, incomplete Market Introduction Planning).

Fixing these problems is the biggest challenge for the aspiring Product Company.

The disciplines of Engineering and Product Design are well-understood, properly structured and taught widely to recognised Standards. The disciplines of Strategic Marketing and Product Management are similarly organised, but there is a fundamental disjoint that is so common it is almost invisible – Engineering involves following paying close attention to rules, Standards and practices, exactly like Marketing; but here’s the issue – when it comes to Marketing these disciplines are very rarely applied. One of the causes, particularly prevalent in strongly Engineering-focused organisations, is that Marketing is seen as ‘easy’, certainly when compared to Engineering; this perception is unfortunate because it leads to the view that anyone can do it (they can’t), that it’s less formal a discipline (it isn’t) and that it can be done independently of Engineering activity (it certainly cannot).

Where might we begin to understand how to address this? A good start is to examine how the best Product Companies behave, but first we should be clear about what we are trying to achieve (the basic Objectives of the Product Development Company). For our current purposes let’s assume that most Technology and Product companies will aim to deliver the highest Quality Product in the shortest possible time.

The most successful Product Companies (those who most frequently bring to market new Products effectively and cost-efficiently) from all industry sectors exhibit a strikingly common set of characteristics and behaviours: -

1. They maintain an absolute focus on Product Quality
2. They continuously Innovate
3. They start and stop many new Projects
4. They put Product Management at the heart of the organization
5. They place huge emphasis on Marketing Plans, and …
6. They ensure these drive the Product Development Roadmap, and …
7. They define Priorities for the Product Development Groups
8. They manage Projects through a formal Product Development Lifecycle Model
9. They endlessly Plan
10. They focus on driving out cost, in all areas
11. They drive to reduce Time-to-Market
12. They adhere strongly to well-proven Processes
13. They measure things
14. They have an ‘open’ Culture
15. They generally take a longer-term view of the Business Case for New Product Development (NPD), but …
16. They tend to decide more quickly whether or not to go ahead with a NPD
17. They know how to compete to win profitable Business ...
18. They tend not to change Plans to address short-term opportunities (or, to put it another way, they tend to be less flexible, perhaps slower to react)
19. They place strong Trust in their Staff, giving them a lot of responsibility and control over how they achieve their Targets