Benefits of Choosing a Structured Method
The task of innovating and bringing the next line of goods to market, together with the anticipated digital assets, to support the sales and marketing efforts of the firm, their channel partners, and their clients, is ongoing and unrelenting. In sectors where a large proportion of new products are introduced or released seasonally or more often, structured product development is essential. These items have a brief lifecycles from conception to debut to obsolescence and retirement.
It’s possible that some businesses don’t have a clear structure or procedure for product creation. A systematic approach could be necessary when a firm expands and ownership of product development shifts from a relatively small group of individuals to a larger range of stakeholders.
An organisation may create a consistent approach to product creation that can be applied, evaluated, adjusted, and improved with the use of a structured product development process. This is crucial for managing the product lifecycle’s stages, timeframe, activities, and deliverables as well as the innovation pipeline.
Product development steps may include:
- Product ideation and concept evaluation
- Business analysis to verify the product with the market
- Product sourcing, product development or product adaptation
- Packaging development
- Finalize product specification, landed costs, and product pricing
- Sample and limited production runs
- Test, evaluation, certification
- Sign-off on product and packaging
- Get product into stock
- Launch product
A cross-functional team may need to be formed for a structured product development activity in order to represent different corporate departments and geographical regions and carry out the activities necessary for the development process. In accordance with best practises, it may also be necessary to create a separate governance and approval team. This team would typically be composed of senior executive management resources, and its duties would include deciding whether to approve or reject new product development as well as monitoring the development team’s adherence to the organization’s established product development process.
With different degrees of effectiveness, product development has typically been handled using project management software, Excel spreadsheets, electronic file sharing, document management, and other technologies. To handle these disjointed instruments, a high degree of supervision and coordination is necessary.
The design of organised procedures or workflows to assist the product development process is supported by modern ERP and CRM systems. These workflows may be used to specify the steps, tasks, and deliverables that must be completed throughout each stage of the product development process. At phase or milestone reviews, they additionally provide capabilities for warnings and electronic sign-off by authorised people. In the material master of the ERP system, product information may be put up and modified directly as field values or characteristics. Some systems make it possible to obtain product information through links to files kept in electronic file management programmes.
A increasing amount of digital assets are needed in the market today to support Product Development, Marketing, Sales, and Operations operations.
A Product Information Management system may hold digital documents and data such as product numbers, descriptions, costs, target prices, technical product specification data sheets, photographic pictures, and video. There are various non-product related digital marketing assets that need to be handled, such as building signs, business cards, email signatures, and other brand material.
Product Development and Marketing teams are looking towards alternative specialized best of breed solutions for Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and Product Information Management (PIM) as their needs and requirements become more complex. A combination of structured processes and best of breed PLM and PIM systems should enable the realization of the following benefits:
- Improved management of product development pipeline
- Better and consistent alignment of product and business strategy
- Improved control through task management and phased reviews to verify design and market assumptions
- Shorter and more predictable development cycles
- Improved ability to meet launch dates and manage market expectations
- Reduction in the cost of late product launches.
Integration with ERP and CRM solutions and the transfer of data also need to be considered. The security features of these applications, data governance and the change management process will ensure that there is a co-ordinated and controlled transfer or change of data between the PLM, PIM, and the ERP system during the lifecycle of a product.