product management & strategy

Business unit and product strategy (e.g., market entry evaluation, roadmap planning)

Client: Top 5 enterprise software company
Challenge: Identify a vision for the future of the application infrastructure market based on a fact-based review of trends and competitive activity driving market evolution
Resolution: Identified the key platform drivers based on customer needs and technology advances.  Prioritized drivers according to vendor readiness and immediacy of driver.  Categorized 5 key emerging battlefronts in application platforms and mapped these to the key platform drivers.  Based on the emerging battlefronts, identified and prioritized functional opportunities according to 3 vertical categories: profit drivers, growth drivers, and strategic battlegrounds.
Results: Recommendations incorporated into long range product plan

Client: Global leader in enterprise application software
Challenge: Defend against the primary competitors who have dominant market shares in middleware
Resolution: Determined opportunities and threats for strategic middleware platform. Articulated differentiators for following 3-5 years. Identified the key initiatives that leverage the company’s indisputable strengths and that can influence purchase decisions.
Results: Initiatives approved and prioritized with product development

Market requirements definition (e.g., technology evaluation, use case development, market sizing, GTM strategy)

Client: Top 5 enterprise software company
Challenge: Expand into a new class of applications that reach information workers, beyond vendor’s core traditional transactional worker user base
Resolution: Defined high-level roadmap and market requirements. Created set of use cases outlining how information workers are likely to interact with applications.  Provided high-level breakdown of the services required to deliver those applications.  Defined adoption and deployment models for each of the services.  Outlined monetization strategy for each of the product/service bundles, e.g. extension of the platform, service with new pricing model.  Defined overall impact on vendor in terms of users, usage, and financial benefit.
Results: Recommendations incorporated into product roadmap

Product management effectiveness (e.g., requirements prioritization, new product introduction process)

Client: Global leader in enterprise application software
Challenge: Leverage the customer insights of the product marketing organization for feedback into product development
Resolution: Created and institutionalized a process to bring “the voice of the market” into the product planning process
Results: Better balance in requirements definition between market-backed vs. technology-driven decisions

Client: Global leader in storage and security
Challenge: Improve effectiveness of the product management function in the global services division
Resolution: Created and institutionalized a new service introduction process that clearly defined a governance model between the field and the product groups. Determined default product management deliverables depending on importance of the launch
Results: Better alignment between product- and customer-driven service needs and the ability of the field to deliver on these needs