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ONDC – Is it the next game changer for Digital India?

If you have not come across ONDC – Open Network for Digital Commerce, its time you know about it and this post is to help better understand what problem it addresses, how it operates, and the value that it brings to consumers, businesses, retailers, existing e-commerce platforms and the state.

Problem statement

There are a number of pain points around current digital commerce:

  • Its dominated by a few players e.g. Amazon, Flipkart, Zomato, MakeMyTrip, etc.
  • Consumers have to go to multiple platforms to search and explore the products/services they would like
  • Consumers are restricted to only a subset of products/services available on the platforms
  • Consumers need to go to multiple places for different products/services
  • Penetration is not widespread across the country and small towns
  • Small businesses are not able to participate and sell in the digital commerce space

Solution

Open Network for Digital Commerce is a network of e-commerce. It is a network-centric model where, so long as platforms/applications are connected to this open network, buyers and sellers can transact irrespective of the platforms/applications they use. It’s like “UPI of e-commerce”

Source: ONDC.org

ONDC works on 3 important use cases to solve the problems, which explained very well by ThinkSchool

Discoverability – allows you to discover products across different platforms using a common catalog

Interoperability – where you can combine multiple platforms to accomplish different services e.g. product with delivery, services with payments etc.

Price comparison – allows you to compare prices across these platforms e.g. ticket prices across different ticketing platforms.

How does it work?

Through an open protocol network, various selling /buying apps such as flipkart, dunzo, airtel, paytm will connect to the network and the consumer will be able to access the product/services through any of the apps.

You can either connect to the buyer network or seller network. One of the important aspects of ONDC is to standardize the product/services catalog so that consumers get a common experience. All the technical specifications are available here

Role of ONDC

ONDC will play three roles as laid out by their CEO

Development – Build and sustain the network with cutting-edge tech and facilitation widespread participation of ecosystem players

Network Management – Establish a code of conduct for the network, with policies and rules for the network

Service Delivery – Foundation services for operations of the network e.g. registry, certification, grievances redressal

Value for stakeholders

Consumers – amazing way to explore and get the best product/services across platforms, sellers

eCommerce Companies – Gets a wide reach with Govt. backing to get to a large user footprint, make them more competitive

Small Businesses – Gets them to sell products and services across the country, without having to be associated with a single platform

Government – Accomplish the mission of connecting India digitally and enhancing the economy significantly

Challenges

This is a massive and ambitious project, balancing of different stakeholders is going to be huge, as well as connecting all of them. Also ensuring the quality of service is going to be a big factor, as the trust factor of the platform plays a big role in deciding where to buy.

But given the Government backing and really smart think tank behind this, these challenges may likely be overcome.

Key Takeaway

ONDC looks to be a huge potential and another game changer for an Atmanirbhar Bharat.

More Resources

ONDC Strategy Paper

ONDC on twitter

ONDC CEO Blog on ONDC 101

Nandan Nilekani ONDC Keynote

ThinkSchool on ONDC

Benefits and Glitches explained in detail

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Ten key considerations for Build vs Buy in your product journey

As we begin 2021, let’s explore some salient points and key considerations for a build vs buy decision in your product journey. If you come from an engineering mindset, the natural inclination is to build things as that is what you take pride in. If you come from a business perspective, the interest is to get a profitable product, often leaning towards a buy to make an impact in the market. As a product manager, let’s take a balanced approach to making the right decision or advising to build or buy.

Penned down some 10 Key considerations that can be useful in making this decision based on my experience of doing some due diligence as well as being part of the decision making process. The focus of this blog is in the context of software products companies, but could be applicable for other products as well.

  1. Faster to market: as pointed in one of my earlier blog, timing to market is a key aspect for products. Let’s consider the current pandemic situation and one of the areas is digital foray including video / online platforms. Many companies have looked at getting to the market faster and may lean towards a buy as it could get them faster by 2-3 years.
  2. Solved vs Unsolved Problem: solved problems are another area for usual buy whereas for unsolved problems you may need more R & D, and therefore a build approach may be more suitable. Solved problems with a good market could be bought over and integrated for better penetration.
  3. Unique IP: connected to the previous consideration, there may be a unique solution IP that solves some unique problems, while it may make sense to invent and build if you find that unique IP, it’s very much possible that you can consider buying out for the IP. We have seen a lot of such things in ML / AI area or in other emerging tech.
  4. Aligned Tech architecture: in software, one of the other consideration when making a buy decision is to understand the tech architecture and if it would be easy to align and integrate the tech into the overall architecture, how much effort is it to integrate, whether the buy would stay standalone, etc. Many times, while the decision may be towards buy to get faster to market if the tech is too different and if there is enormous effort to integrate, it may be more suitable to build it.
  5. Culture fit: the faster to market is ticked, the tech architecture is also ticked, but when you buy it’s not just the product but also the culture that matters a lot. Lot of buy decisions may make sense, but have failed with a misfit in culture of the companies that are buying vs that is being bought. The company that is buying may be a large company and the company that is being bought is a small startup but with some passionate folks, or they may be having a risk-taking vs risk-averse culture.
  6. Price of buy vs cost to build: beautiful, the reasoning is all good, there is tech alignment, and sounds like the culture will be good – but what about the price. What is the viability of investments? This is more of a financial decision, sometimes it could be based on product-market fit, and the timing balanced with price of the buy. What would it take to build this, whether the market is going to grow after a certain period, so building would be better option?
  7. Customers or Users: this is another clear business reason to buy a product. A certain product may be a very successful product, has a huge user base, the buyer company sees a huge synergy of upselling their other products to this customer base or users. This may be useful when you want to expand to a new user base e.g. selling to Sales while you have momentum with Finance.
  8. Talent: we have seen this sometimes, there is a niche product or a popular product, but more than the product, the consideration is the talented engineers or the founder behind the product, their knowledge of the domain, their unique understanding of the problem statement or their reach to the customer network. When you have to build something, it’s going to be hard to build a product team that runs together in unison. Another side of the argument here is if you have a talented team that has a great understanding of the problem statement as well as the technical acumen, it may make more sense to build the product.
  9. Expansion front and back: often product needs more features or needs certain areas for vertical/horizontal expansion on the front or back of existing products. It could be some failed attempt at building that will lead to buy or could be an unsuccessful buy that would lead to build. Sometimes it could be buying an application that showcases an use-case for your product  and at other times it could be building a platform that is behind your application to bid adieu a competitor dependency
  10. Data: this is another new area for buy decisions. To expand your platform you need data, for which another product acquisition can help. Leaving aside any legal implication, this has become an important consideration in a buy vs build decision

Making a buy or build decision is a key aspect of software product lifecycle and growth. Hope the above helps a bit

Wishing you all a great 2021!

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Timing is key for Product Market Fit

PC: sochapki.com

I wanted to write a post on how timing is important for a product-market fit – but with the covid19 times, this has become even more important as the leading indicators change superfast.  Usually, such events create massive opportunities for certain products, and if you have that product, you are bound to win.

Marc Anderssen needs to be quoted whenever we talk about Product Market Fit, as I certainly view him the father of this concept, especially for the software products. Marc says that no product idea is bad, but the timing of the product is the most important factor.

In this post, I will just pick on 5 examples to explain why timing is so important and then go into some factors that makes the timing so important.

To explain the significance of timing Paytm is a great example. Paytm was making good traction in the digital payment space. But they were still being only used by the digitally savvy. In came 8 Nov 2016, when the Indian government announced demonetization and slowly tried to promote digital payments. This really made for a great opportunity for Paytm, and it went into an amazing growth trajectory. Of course, since the product and the platform was already scalable, it could really fulfil the huge demand, and it doubled its user base in just a year.

Microsoft office took super advantage of the spike in the PC revolution, they had individual products that were created for different purposes e.g. Excel – spreadsheets, Powerpoint – presentations and Word – documents. The evolution of these individual products were timed very well, constantly innovated but the timing of combining them and offering them together turned out to be a blockbuster.

Priced attractively or bundled with windows, it took the market both consumers as well as business market by a storm. The timing of this was so profound that, the market it had created or the potential it leveraged is still unmatched. While the products were well-engineered and simple to use, I feel the market traction was because of the timing, when the users and businesses were ready to consume and pay for such productivity software.

Who would have imagined that such a simple use case of handling your small accounts or ledger for shops would become such a big hit? I feel the real reason for this is timing. Khatabook came about to solve a real problem that exists with Kirana stores and small businesses in India. But its timing was so good, that this was the time when Jio got launched, and you all know how Jio has penetrated the mobile data usage or how these small business owners could afford a smartphone. Khatabook came out big at the same time and it was perfect use of a smartphone you owned to solve a painful problem of udhaar and khata (loan and books).  

Dr E. F. Codd published the paper, “A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks”, in June 1970 in the Association of Computer Machinery (ACM) journal. This was the inspiration to build out a relational database management system (RDBMS) and SQL by Oracle founder Larry Ellison and a couple of his colleagues. While the initial versions was developed in 1977, it became more prevalent later in the mid 80s to 90s. Client-server technologies became very popular in 80s and 90s. This is the time, many needed a more sophisticated database to run on these client-server technologies. Especially companies and businesses looked to leverage technologies and build robust business applications. The timing of Oracle’s database was perfect, and hence the ideal product-market fit.

This is something of a no brainer in the current covid19 situation. Who would have imagined that the whole world gets locked up in a room and most of the business works through zoom. Can’t be a better example to explain the timing effect of such a product that matches the needs of the market. You could say it all luck, but remember the product was designed to scale to a significant level, a reason it could stand the test of times.

Hope the above examples were easy to understand how timing is so important for you to reach product-market fit.

I would like to summarize my post with 5 factors that make timing so important

Market – there is going to be market for every solution at a point in time. But you need to really identify that problem you are solving and whether there is going to be people who are willing to pay for solving that problem. The market always exists, but when does the market mature to become sizeable is all based on timing.

Event – always contributes significantly to certain products. It could be great foresight for some, could be mere luck for others, could be of different types such as current covid19, government actions e.g. GST/Demonetization, competitive action etc.

How long before – In all the examples above, you see that products don’t hit product-market fit instantly, it takes time, perseverance and understanding problem statement deeply. Ideally the products should be built at least a few years before it becomes mainstream, and built to scale. Also, it’s not important to be first in there to become big, often many of the products have done better in catch up and been able to lead

Pivot and survive – while the examples are all success stories, there are many more that have not been able to make there as lack of hitting that timing. If you time your product very late, there are others who have solved the problem, or the problem has gone beyond its useful time. A good example would be that of building a webcam and waiting for the timing to happen on that, while the world has moved on having a webcam in all laptops. In these situations, it’s better to pivot and survive.

Technology and Innovation – finally the kind of technology and innovations that are coming through is fast, and its important to time your usecases based on the innovations that are forthcoming. Sometimes it could be luck, sometimes you saw that coming, sometimes it didn’t make that mark. Remember AI has been in news for the last 25 years, probably it’s just hitting the potential for a product-market fit.

Hope this post helped you understand this critical factor for product market fit – Timing!

Stay Safe.

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R&D Revolution from Rural India – Rendezvous with Vembu

When constellation research published the best award for enterprise software to Zoho, I was thinking its yet another Silicon Valley startup that is kind of making some mark. But I was really surprised and it was a bit of a shame when I found out that its an Indian company – how could I have missed such a company that originated and grew from my home city and now fast becoming a saas Boomi – Chennai.

As I dig deep into this Enterprise software company, I come across more surprises, about its mission, vision, purpose and its founder. Now fascinated by watching an interview and a speech of Sridhar Vembu, the founder – it was a pleasure to meet him in Tenkasi, Tamil nadu, and this post is a rendezvous with Sridhar Vembu, and a few key takeaways from my day at Zoho, Tenkasi.

In front of Zoho, Tenkasi office with Sridhar Vembu

Rural and Semi-Urban revolution: Sridhar believes in economic development around small towns and semi-urban areas. We discussed SAP in Waldorf, and how that village became a global HQ of the German giant. With bandwidth and technology, Sridhar really believes that he would get Zoho products designed, built and supported by small towns. Tenkasi, a small town in Tamil Nadu houses Zoho’s development and Labs with about 500+ people. It was heartening to see an end-to-end product Zoho desk built and managed right from there – I even met with the product managers there who build and take these products to global markets. Other parallel examples that we have for such a non-urban revolution were Jamshedpur and BHEL townships, which housed and build excellence from small towns. Glad we are doing this for product software as well now.

Skill oriented education: Now while the rural revolution looks interesting, how will the software talent that is usually US bound, join such remote places. Sridhar’s answer to this is Zoho University. Zoho University is a unique education, follow a gurukul Indian approach, where students are pulled from government schools, and trained into important technical skills, English and Maths, Design skills, as well as business skills.I had some great discussions with Anand Ramachandran, who heads Zoho University in Tenkasi. Zoho University now contributes to more than 20% of the 8,000+ employees in Zoho, and it’s heartening to see students from villages, Tamil medium government schools very effectively groomed to build world-class products. The analogy I have for this kind of education is chartered accountancy, which combines knowledge and hands-on skills together. But this takes it to the next level.

Price sensitive products: One of the big benefits of the above focus helps Zoho come out with very price-sensitive products. Products are priced at a level that is affordable for any size business, most importantly SMBs, both for developed and emerging markets. The goal of Zoho seems to be like that of Amazon, where they offer superior products, better customer service at decreasing prices, by bringing productivity, as well as the product revolution from rural and skill-based talent.

R&D in India: Sridhar Vembu is a big fan of Japan and Germany. We spoke about several examples of how products from these countries make it to our country – up to our villages. Products such as the knife that is used to cut coconuts, motors that go into our pump sets, glasses that go into spectacles. This is such an important element he highlights that we have to go to the core of what we make, we should really get our engineers to build products – research and development from India, not just assemble. Zoho has that clear focus, going and building out the core platform, based on which its applications are built. It’s not only Make In India but R&D In India. Sridhar also highlighted that its also important for lot of Indians to stay back in the country, instead of migrating to US or other countries. Each one of them can create huge value, employment and make India proud by making products out of here.

Bootstrapped to date: Another area that was important and make all the above mission happen is the fact that Zoho is completely bootstrapped, and its till now not funded by VCs. Like many large software enterprise giants, Zoho is built ground-up bootstrapped and grew by investing back the surplus. This gives them a lot of freedom, freedom to run their endeavors and also with a long term view. It’s great learning for a lot of startup entrepreneurs. They are more of a revenue unicorn than a market cap unicorn.

In summary, what Sridhar Vembu has created and grown is a fascinating story, a story that we need to celebrate, learn and cherish, its more powerful than the stories of Indians who have done this abroad. For me, it was huge learning on Engineering, Economics & Education, it was one of the memorable day of my life!  

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Focus – Essential ingredient for product success

As we enter 2020 and a new decade, I wanted to touch upon an essential ingredient for startup entrepreneurs and product managers – Focus.

In India, we all know about the great archer Arjuna. When asked by his guru Drona on what he sees during an archery session, he replies that he just sees the left eye of the bird – precisely his target. Arjuna had a laser focus on his target.  He was one of the greatest archers.

As a startup entrepreneur or a product manager – it’s very important to really have a clear focus on one product goal or idea, rather than spreading thin. I have seen many people struggle when they pursue parallel initiatives and pivot too much. While it’s fine to deviate a bit on the means to the end, without a focus on the goal and giving it the necessary time to accomplish, it’s going to be hard to succeed.

David Frey, a marketing thought leader lays out the below for FOCUS, which is a great one

F – follow

O – one

C – course

U – until

S – successful

Once you have identified the market potential for an idea, its important you focus your attention on achieving this precisely and not distribute your energy.

While you can get a lot of tips to keep the focus at a micro level, here are some thoughts related to building products or for a product company relating to focus.

Focus brings out the purpose of the company or the direction that they have to embark on. Often in building products – priority is the most critical decision point – where to prioritize. Focus drives priorities.

I did research on the word focus with some of the top companies and here are the results

  • Microsoft is focused squarely on turning every company into a tech company: Satya Nadella
  • I’m excited about Alphabet’s long term focus on tackling big challenges through technology: Sunder Pichai
  • Quality rooms at a low price: OYO Founder
  • We have been payments champion and will continue to focus on payments: paytm founder
  •  A privacy-focused vision for social networking: Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder
  • Focus more on solving a specific problem that’s close to you. Paul Graham used to tell us, “Make something 100 people love, not something a million people kind of like.” So we did not go into this to start a business. We did not go into this to figure out travel distribution or this or that. We only tried to get into this to try and make something really great that we would want ourselves and for our friends. – Brian Chesky, Airbnb founder

So the message is simple :

Focus on one idea or use case, have the team align to the focus, give it the best shot & time and make the market love it

Wishing you a great new year and decade ahead!

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Obsessive Focus To Product Market Fit – Tricks of the Trade and 5 Case Studies

As we begin 2019, for many startups the big question is – have they reached Product-Market fit or what should they do to reach Product-Market Fit.

Market it is!

There are 3 important ingredients for making a product – the actual product, the people who build this product and the market for which the product is built. The point of getting the right intersection of the three with success gets you to product market fit.

Marc Andreessen, whom I consider as the Father of Product Market fit, describes Market as the most important of the above 3, and Product Market fit is more likely to be achieved when you have a market – “In a great market – a market with lots of real potential customers – the market pulls product out of the startup”.

So the most important thing in your journey is to identify what market you are addressing. Basically, it means customers – businesses or consumers – who are seeking a solution, a better solution or cheaper solution to a problem.

The market definition has to be very clear and focused – as that would drive the product directions and help you get to the product – market fit.

Here are some questions you can get answered to validate the existence of the market:

Why need? – why do the customers want to solve the particular problem – what’s the real need. Is the problem that you are solving is a painkiller, vitamin or vaccine?

Why buy? – are they ready to pay for it – many solutions are liked by customers, but they could back off if they have to pay for it. So value hypothesis of this would help. Also if you are not expecting the users to pay for it, who will pay for it e.g. ads pay for social media users

Why now? – is this the right time for the product – timing is very important as customers have many solutions and many problems, and they care to address only some problems that have higher priority for them to solve – so timing is an important element to understand if there is a market that exists.

It’s happening vs not happening

How do you know if your product has hit the product market fit? Here are some nice indications

Isn’t Happening It’s Happening
Not getting any customers Customers are buying your product – at least few in B2B and many in B2C
The problem you are solving is not a high priority for your customers Usage is growing
Word of mouth is not happening You have to hire sales and support people
Customer feel your product price is not giving them enough value You are called out by the press, analyst – get good social media mentions
Press reviews are not happening, no tweets or mentions Customers send feedback and complaints – issues

Obsessive focus for Product-Market Fit

For any entrepreneur or product leader, there should be an obsessive focus to get to product market fit. The below is a Create > Prove > Iterate process that can help you to get to product market fit. Also, it’s not going to happen very fast, it needs perseverance and constant focus to move the needle – it’s a long-term journey.

During the process, you may have to do any of the following change to get to the product market fit

  • Rewrite your PRODUCT
  • GO AFTER a Different MARKET
  • REPLACE your PEOPLE or Hire SPECIALIST
  • IMPROVE THE USABILITY
  • CHANGE THE TECH ARCHITECTURE
  • UPDATE YOUR Deployment MODEL
  • Revisit PRICING STRATEGY
  • Fix Quality issues or Customer grievances

5 Takeaway case studies of Successful Product-Market Fit

I wanted to lay out few examples, all Indian, on things that will help you validate your market hypothesis as well as give some references on some generic areas that have worked. I am picking three examples in software tech and two non-software to broaden the horizon of how we should think product-market fit.

Transformation of Existing Product: Royal Enfield – You may notice in the Indian roads a lot more Royal Enfield Bullets plying which was not a case for many years when the 100cc bikes became the hot thing. This is a huge success story when it comes to finding the right Product Market Fit. Royal Enfield was in a do or die situation in the early 2000s – the discussion was around whether to sell off or shut down and its next-gen leader Siddhartha Lal stood up and asked for the last chance to revive. Here are the things they did to reach product-market fit – and the success is big case study now

  • Leisure Segment – The bike had its reputation, a cult following, an instantly recognisable build, and aspirational value. So it was given not to go to the commuter segment
  • Innovate with new tech but still keep the old charm that customers loved. They changed the engine which had 30 % fewer parts, and 30% better power, plus fuel efficient
  • Fix the quality process and problem – formed a field quality rapid action force to bridge the gap between customer expectations and the reality
  • Sales Experience had to be improved – new company-owned showrooms were launched and dealer network was expanded
  • Get the best talent – the company hired top talent – a new CEO who had enormous experience in transformation and revival, with auto experience

So as you can see over the years, there were very visible actions taken and we know how Royal Enfield is such a huge success. You can read the full case study here

Clear Definition of Market and Problem Statement: Career360 – When I was doing some innovation projects to leverage big data a few years back on EduCareer, I bumped into this startup that I thought had a very clear differentiation of their market and huge potential in India which has a huge number of young students – seeking to know what, where, why and how they should study something in order for them to reach their dreams.

The problem that they laid out to solve, is a huge one – as every student and parents of the student have this as their top priority – which validates the market need.

The objective as laid out by their founder Peri Maheshwar really makes the problem statement very clear – “

– To ensure that every student makes an informed career choice.

– To force institutions to greater transparency with their data and achievements

– To create an Information eco system suited for the 98% Indians than the 2% most meritorious one’s.

For us, a career is a life. A student isn’t any other customer. He is a life. He needs to be protected.”

As the market is clear and exists, once the focused founder is on a mission to build a product for this market (Student), they were naturally able to get there. Offcourse their journey has been with a lot of hard work, innovations – it’s been great to observe from what they have started out with to how they have really transformed their product and tools to address the market. With a high school going daughter, we have been personally benefitted by them, so are the millions of students/parents in India. The best part of their offering is that they are multi-platform – Careers360’s has been reaching out to students through multiple platforms viz. print, web, mobile and TV. So it’s a case of great omnichannel experience for the student through traditional and tech channels.

Career360 is a clear example of how Marc A says “In a great market – a market with lots of real potential customers – the market pulls the product out of the startup”.

Leverage similar idea to validate market: SeekSherpa – I met this startup in one of the Google Launchpad events, and I straightaway was blown away with the idea. I have been personally tracking the travel industry very closely and how tech is helping this further. In that Airbnb, story is amazing, as it really was a huge vaccine product to address a market that existed for the “tired of hotels”travellers. SeekSherpa was a great offshoot of Airbnb type idea – in the same industry but for a different product offering. SeekSherpa connect “real” local tour guides and Sherpa’s for the “tired of regular guides” travellers.

So with the market validation, obviously the offering/product has to be compelling – and I saw their Lazor focus on great UX being a killer differentiator initially, and the ability to connect the local guides to travellers as a way to get to product-market fit. Its been a fantastic journey by Dhruv and Sukhmani who founders of this great startup, they have also addressed different channels that appeals to connect the traveller with the sherpa.  And once again, the most important thing here is that the market existed, very well validated with a similar idea which makes it easy to explain, and it’s a problem better addressed by tech.

 

Expanding product capabilities to reach market: Schoolpad – I met with this startup through iSpirit, and what really caught my attention was the way the founder Abhiraj Malhotra explained to me how he transformed his product features to make it a viable option for Schools to buy it. Schoolpad started off with a USP of improving the Parent – Teacher collaboration. Soon they realized that while this is a great capability, it cannot on its own sell. So they expanded the product to include the core School management features. So essentially it became a solid School ERP with the differentiator of the collaboration feature which was the original capability. This has helped them reach a great market – as Schools are now willing to embrace this solution.

A great story of innovating and expanding the product to get to the market – and therefore reach product-market fit.

Price point to reach market: Xiaomi Mi – Apple products are aspirational, but many cannot afford it or they don’t see the value. So customers are always looking for alternatives that are cheaper and provides near equal features. This is where a company like Xiaomi comes in, where they really penetrated into the mobile market with a great product at a very affordable price, as that then opens up a huge market.

In order to do that, they had to initially sell through only online channels – Mi sold only through Flipkart initially. Also, they couldn’t spend a lot on marketing, so they leveraged the flash sale idea to promote their products. Over the years, as others started copying their model, they have now gone into the physical store – to sell through new channels. They also make a lot of the parts locally to get a cost advantage. Finally, now they are looking to penetrate rural markets as their phones are affordable.

To read more on their story, look for their original china story and then the India story.

So again here, the market is the winner – the market here is affordable smartphones, which was not addressed by Apple.

Products do not have to be original, you can always build products to address market based on Price.

In summary, getting to a product market fit is a journey, it may take time, but most important is to identify and get the market definition right, and channel your resources to build the product to address that market.

Happy New Year 2019!

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Product Roadmap considerations

Roadmap1

 

Roadmap is a key part of a software product company, especially Enterprise Software (B2B) software. When you sell your software to a customer, it is not just on the current capabilities but lot of emphasis is made on the Roadmap. Especially with cloud based software this is becoming super important, as the innovation and capabilities come out incrementally, in frequent cycles.

In my interaction with startup founders, one of the aspect they want to manage better is Reliable Product Roadmap – to ensure they do not over or under promise.

There are two steps to Product Roadmap –

  • Creating or documenting the product roadmap
  • Communicating the product roadmap to various internal and external stakeholders

In this post, I would like to share some key areas to focus for effectively create and communicate roadmaps that may have different flavors.

Vision vs. Execution

roadmap2

 

Logically split Roadmap into the above two areas in order to communicate to right stakeholders. One part should cover the Product vision – or even a higher vision of the product segment or umbrella. This would be the driving factor based on which the customers should perceive the product, of how problems are solved today and into the future.  As an example, Microsoft Office vision would be to improve productivity – and how they plan to leverage future technologies to improve productivity. The other part is around the Execution – more of delivery plan, more of product capabilities that are coming in, more of the details. A clear link should exists between the vision and execution – but it is important to have this as two parts.

Long term vs. Near term

Roadmap3

 

Another important distinction to cover in roadmap is what is going to be covered in the long term and what is planned in the near term (short and medium term). Depending on the product lifecycle – long term could be between 2-4 years while near term can range from 3 months to 2 years. The long term ones are still ideas that has been experimented through some proof of concepts or things that would take a longer term to realize or productize, but they are important innovations or things that are coming to get near to the vision. Near terms are the ones which are almost getting completed or is under development, with reasonable predictability of getting them out sooner.

Rigid vs Flexible

Roadmap4

We live in ever changing world, where priorities keep changing. It is important to balance the roadmap priorities between being too rigid or too flexible. The roadmap often changes due to customer needs not being met, competitive action driving some changes, internal priorities and investments, lack of market for certain investment. On the other hand, if you keep the roadmap too dynamic and flexible, you will lose focus and probably trust from your stakeholders. It is very important to keep the roadmap and investments spread between certain areas where you can be a bit rigid, whereas keeping some open-ended areas for ability to change the plans. For this reason, it is critical to keep the future roadmap not covered in any legal or contractual commitments.

Incremental vs Disruptive

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Roadmap should consist of both incremental features as well as disruptive ones. Often we get into this innovators dilemma wherein the focus is on many minor incremental features that improves the product, satisfies the customer needs, solves the problem in a better way, bring better usability – so on and so forth. But in regular intervals – atleast once a year – its important to think about the next wave, the next big thing and start working in parallel to solve some new business problems, that could eventually eliminate a problem totally. Read my post on “what product are you making – pain killer, vitamin or vaccine” – once in a way you should experiment something disruptive, create and prove , and show what’s coming. Whatsapp is an amazing example of such a disruptive technology – in the past we have seen things like Google, ipad etc which are disruptive. Many smaller, less popular products have also been disruptive. In your roadmap, while it would be hard to communicate the disruptive ideas when they are in Labs, depending on its maturity, its best to prove some of the lab ideas with few handful of customers and validate them with real life use cases and scenarios. For such create /prove situations, a more restricted roadmap with NDAs are discussed with select customers. So use your roadmap to think and cover both incremental and disruptive solutions to problems.

Objectives (the what) vs Activities (the How)

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Product Roadmap is not a Project Plan. Many a times we come across some of the roadmap that looks like a project plan, listing out different activities and milestones. Instead of being a list of activities with milestones, roadmap should lay out the objectives of the product – the vision, the capabilities and the tentative timelines those are going to be made available. This is important because the activities may vary based on the approach taken to a solution but the objectives of the product may still be same.

Solution bound vs Time bound

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Another question that keeps coming back is whether a roadmap is solution bound or time bound. Roadmap is always time bound, as the user of the roadmap is looking to or planning based on the roadmap. The time need not be exactly accurate, but it needs to be indicative with an acceptable minor deviation. Usually indicating a period of short term, medium term and long term with a usual timeline fixed for each of them would be a good way to represent the roadmap. This helps customers plan better.

External vs Internal

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Finally, while Roadmaps are drafted based on common vision and solution, Roadmaps have to be slightly different for external and internal stakeholders – especially with respect to the level of details presented, the timelines and the goals. For customers, Roadmap should address solution to the problem, with rough estimate of the time and the benefits that will bring by adopting them. For other external stakeholders such as investors or partners, it may go further into details of the market potential, and the ROI of investing in a certain set of roadmap items for the business. And for internal stakeholders it could go into more details on the strategy, more specific timelines, risks, competitive reasoning and few other internal only information may be laid out.  Communicating the roadmap to different stakeholders is one of the key. Roadmaps should be clearly planned at an appropriate level of details with each of the stakeholders.

Product Roadmaps are living document and most important one for any product company. Lot of engaged time should be dedicated on documenting and communicating the roadmap.

Wishing you all Happy New Year 2018 !

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Product Manager as the Wicket Keeper

Wishing you all a very happy 2017, may you get the guts and courage to make the change this year.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni, one of the most successful cricketers is certainly an inspiration for all of us – cricket fans and Indians. While he is a famous and winning captain, probably being a wicket keeper has helped him to shape up his instincts, strategy and execution.

Being a product manager for few years now, I often relate to being a wicket keeper, who really wears multiple hats to help his team and win in the market. Often there is lack of clarity on the role of a Product Manager and why are they needed. In this post I would like to focus on drawing some parallels between Wicket keeper and Product Manager , especially differentiating the greats from good ones.

Pitch reader (Market)

Understanding the pitch is a key aspect to winning a cricket match – so is the understanding of the market to win with a product. Wicket keepers are great pitch readers, as they stay close to it always. So is the product manager, as understanding the market is a very significant success factor for products. If product managers can read the pitch (market) well, they can certainly guide the team very well to shape the right product that fits the market.

Supporting the bowler (Development)

One of the primary roles of product managers is to work very closely with development to shape and release the product. They are involved every ball, they need to be attentive to every detail, they need a great presence of mind, they need to keep motivating and appreciating every milestone. They also support the bowlers on field placements – read as key reviews of every aspect of the design of the product. They can give instant feedback and suggest changes, on the spot to ensure success. They also catch to take wickets – similar to some key contributions by product managers on prototyping and closing loop on the product.

Alert with fielders (Quality Assurance)

Wicket keepers stay alert with fielders and set an example in the field, as well as guide the field on what’s coming from the bowlers. Product managers similarly are one of the initial quality assurance /testers of the product, and guide the QA on how to ensure the quality of the product.

Close to opponent (Competitive insights)

Wicket keepers stay very close to the opponent batsman. They know whats their strength and weakness by closely following and watching them. This can certainly help share their insights to the bowlers. Similarly Product Managers have to stay very close to whats being done by competition, and how the products they build can surpass the competitor products, by understanding their strengths and weakness.

Handy batsman (Sales)

Finally wicket keepers can also support with the bat. While they are not the strike batsman, they may be useful handy batsman as they know the pitch and the opponents, and in some situations could single handed win with their extra batting abilities (like a Dhoni or Gilchrist). Product Manager similarly can support Sales to win in the market. Product managers know all the details of the product, the market and the competition – so they can certainly help win in sales. While they are not the strike sales man, they can be an effective supporting person for the striker. Some Product Managers have a very high success rate of closing business when they are involved.

There could be more parallels…but hope the above helped you understand the critical role of product manager, as critical as a wicket keeper in a cricket match, and some of the key ingredients and potential contribution they can make to your product.

When we all started playing (read startup), we may not need a full time wicket keeper as someone wears that hat in rotation, but to make it big (beyond early stage startup) you probably need one.

Great Product Managers move on to become Great Product Leaders and are winners….Adam Gilchrist or our MS Dhoni !

PS : Never thought MS Dhoni will resign captaincy when i wrote this blog post (he resigned on same day when this post was published). Anyway hoping he will continue to be a wicket keeper for a some more period, and great team player 🙂

Update on 15 Aug 2020 : M S Dhoni retires from international cricket, and the above post is a reflection of how his skills, or skills of a wicket keeper is so important, like how a product manager would contribute to a product !

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3 Levels of Product Training for growth

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You have crossed the initial milestone of proving your product has seen some initial success, covered the MVP and now its time for growth…what is one key ingredient for growth ?

You are the rockstar founder or product manager…you have the urge to be omnipresent in every customer discussion or support call…you do a good job on this…but it’s a major deterrent for growth as you become the bottleneck…

The best solution for this problem is to put together a strategy for your product training.  Based on interaction with a startup growth entrepreneur’s request I had put few things, and sharing that in this post.

I plan to cover 3 levels of product training that I have personally learnt or done over the years to make products scale and be successful, the examples are more relevant to B2B but some of this can be used for B2C as well….

The analogy i have used here is of movies

Level 1 : Trailer – Targeted to people that engage with the Decision Makers who buy the product

Level 2 : Movie – Targeted to people that interact with users of the product

Level 3 : Making of Movie – Targeted to people that interact with administrators or consultants that configure, implement or support the product

Lets look at each of them in detail

Level 1 : Trailer training

This training is usually provided to Sales & Marketing teams who have the responsibility to engage and influence the decision makers, to buy the product. Certainly while the content stays high level , I have come across 3 questions to be covered in this training, that will help Sales to effectively position the product and get the interests

The three questions

Why buy ?  – This question establishes what is the real need for the product. What is the real problem that the product solves and why is it important for the customer

Why me ? – Having established the need to buy, the next question that needs to be answered is why me, why your product vs. other choices available in the market, what are differentiators, how is your product better in solving the problems and other objection handling

Why now ? – Assuming the need is established, and the fact that your product is the best fit, the next convincing part is the timing of the buy. The “why now” training should facilitate content that will help the trainee to engage with establishing the urgency, to get the decision to be made in a realistic time.

Coverage of the content

The content should cover the following to help with the above three questions

  • Benefits – the benefits of using the product , to improve the process, derive top line or bottom line savings or any others
  • Customer case studies – this is an amazing content to help sell. How are other customers using the product, their experiences, quotes, videos and other documents
  • Competitors – its important to know your competitors and how your product differentiates from them, this is an important area of coverage in your training
  • Unique differentiators – the product may have 100s of features, but there maybe certain ones which are the outliers or differentiators, there should be specific focus to highlight these in the training
  • Pricing and ROI – how is your product pricing done, what are the flexible options, what is the discounting policy, how do you combine products , how do you optimize revenue opportunity are some of the things that should be covered. Creating presentations and videos to explain the pricing with examples would be an important tool. In addition you also should have ROI templates that can help sales to justify the ROI for the customer, using relevant metrics that is aligned to the product’s benefits
  • Short demos – 2 to 3 minutes – This is the eye catcher demo (The Trailers), as its typically done to the decision makers, the demo should highlight the most important capability and it should also try to cover the overall value proposition of the solution. Remember this is the main tool that can help sales to create the initial interest or close the opportunity for approval.
  • Role plays – This is another extremely successful way to train people – the role play enacts how a customer facing person engages with the customer, bringing in relevant questions and dictate the engagement style to bring out answering the 3 questions
  • FAQs – you know answers to several questions, but its important that this knowledge gets out. A Frequently Asked Questions document or video should be a must have.

Level 2 : The movie training

This is to do with the actual product in more detail on how the users would use them. So this is essentially a training that is usually provided to Sales Consultants , Partners and Others who are likely interacting and engaging with the customer users – both during pre-sales as well as post sales.

Coverage of this training

  • Product feature functionality – going into details of the features and functionality of the product, focused towards customer users
  • Use cases – talk about different use cases that the product solves, every product may solve 100s of use cases, so its important to highlight different usage scenarios
  • Benefits in detail – while you cover the benefits already in level 1, this could further explain the details with more deep dives and examples
  • Product differentiators vs competition – detailed product differentiators, on various facets of the product and how this can help especially to cover the functional scenarios
  • Detailed demos (like the actual movie) – 30 minutes to 2 hours focusing on end user functionality
  • Role plays to explain usage of the product – detailed role play videos or depiction of how customers will use the product or how you can convince the users, for them to become influencers

Level 3 : The making of the movie training 

The third level of the training is for the people that engage administrators, implementer, partners and consultants. This covers variety of areas and really detailed and deep dive into the “how to aspects”. This is usually done to consultants , support staff and Business/IT administrators. This training is for mostly people who engage post sales, but essentially they should also have good understanding of the level 2 training, before getting here.

Coverage of content

  • How to configure the application, security, data, master data etc
  • How to trouble shoot
  • Detailed functional and technical architecture
  • How to demos or videos – detailed 2 hours to a day or even multiple days
  • Technical FAQs

So as you can see, if you can create the above training content and start training, it will certainly help you in your growth endeavors.

Offcourse you will also have to keep updating these content as you enhance your product.

Product Training , these days can be delivered in different formats – in person, webcast or through videos. But its essential for you to understand the importance of this and make it as a priority if your goal is growth

 ProdTraining1

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Write up the Business Plan !

Most of us have read the famous story about Jeff Bezos’s cross country trip from New  York to Seattle. Bezos founded Amazon.com in 1994, writing up the  Amazon business plan on the way. Jeff’s important advise for startup company or any   company is to write up the business plan.

CrossCountryJeffBezosadvise

Now if Jeff Bezos has done it, and become one of the most successful entrepreneur in the internet era, why not just do it ? By writing it down, you will certainly get a lot of clarity and reference point for what you want to achieve….

Here are some thoughts of what and how should this business plan be written to become a continuous reference point for your startup and growth story. The examples and references of this is more on Software Products in B2B (Enterprise) based on my own experience of writing business plans and working with startups whom I have mentored, however many of this can be relevant for Software Product in B2C (consumer) as well. Also this business plan should be ideally written by founder or a product manager…

What it is and some guidelines?

  • It’s an internal and confidential write-up – Don’t confuse it with presentations and business plans to be shared with people who will fund this – that should just be a subset of this
  • Is reference plan, and should be revisited frequently to change
  • Prepare it in word /excel, bit free form with text (power points constraints you)
  • Prepare atleast 3 scenarios – aggressive, best estimate, conservative plans
  • Do it for 1 year (short term – in greater detail), 3 years (medium – bit higher level) and 5-10 years (long – very high level) – Remember Bill Gates quote “Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.”
  • Write it free form, and then organize it later, go through several iterations, review, review and review

Start with a summary:

Like an executive summary, this is the place you start jotting down the highlights of your road ahead – covering Introduction of yourself and the team, your idea, product space, history and market definition (presuming you have researched it), clear USP & value, challenges & risks, and overall KPIs that will come out of the rest of the business plan. The summary is most likely to change once you have written the rest of the plan.

Customers & Personas:

Who are the users, what are their current problems and how does your solution solve this problems.

Who pays for the software, what are their challenges and what are their company /career goals that the software would help solve

What are the financial/non financial benefits for the customer based on using this product or the cost reduction using the software, measured by productivity etc. Can there be a customer ROI estimated

Market:

Define the market category and market size ie today, and in the future that you want to focus. Try to break down into 2 – 3 levels of hierarchy and in a multi dimensional way by Business type /Geography / Revenue potential of customer/Size of the customer or any other business context.

Define the share of the market you would like to achieve of the market size, on key market segments in 1/3/5 years. What’s the customer IT spends planned for solving such problems

Market is the most key aspect that is going to drive you to successful product, so understand the potential market, research and put it in there

Product:

Now on to the product – write up about the product, to cater to the above market opportunity, with lot of details and value propositions, differentiations and what problem it solves.

Whether the product you are planning is a pain killer, vitamin or vaccine…

Product priorities and use cases – focus is the key, focus on the key market, focus on the design and so on and so forth…

Product Roadmap – at level 1 (vision), at level 2 (product category ) , at level 3 (feature /function level). Product roadmap is your product in the growth face

Competitors and other players in the market, and what they have today, in their roadmap or what they are trying to do. Your differentiation against each of them,plans to differentiate. If you don’t know it, some tips for this are here

When will your product be available , the minimum viable product and is there enough time to get the baby out ?

Monetization:

How do you plan to monetize your product, don’t build a plan that ignores monetization.

Revenue and Customer Goals – Quarterly, yearly and medium/long term goals, subscription revenue including projection of drop offs etc.

Pricing model description – different options to be considered, domestic vs international, subscription based vs fixed etc

Risks , probability and dependencies to achieve these goals

Technology:

Explain the technology used for the product, how it would scale, Ux differentiations, clear differentiations due to tech architecture, performance, simplicity, implementation effort. Important this is not technical architecture , so keep this high level.

Talent:

What the skills required to sustain the business – development, design, sales, customer support, channels marketing etc. Challenges & risks associated with this.

Identify gap in availability of talent.

Layout if its important for you to relocate to be successful, due to availability of talent. Place is super important for success – what are the options – what are the pros and cons.

Customer support & feedback:

What is the strategy around customer support & feedback, how product roadmaps are affected by feedback. Level of engagement required initially and as the product matures.

Past learning’s from customers, what went right and what went wrong. How was it addressed?

Challenges of remote support and how it was addressed /planned to be addressed

Draw your effort, cost and cash flows:

You don’t have be finance person – its like putting forth your personal finances, or just google for templates  – put together your estimate of people cost, server /cloud Operating costs, sales & marketing costs, other infrastructure cost – space/communication/support/software etc,  any other expenses required to do scale the product. Link this with your monetization plan, to ascertain your overall profit or loss over the years.

As you see above, there is a lot that can be written up – as you write up in detail, your thoughts on what you are setting forth gets clearer….

But don’t worry if what you plan is not exactly how it’s all turning out to be in reality…..but its important to have a plan, adjust it for reality…

NYCtoSeattle

So now pack up and start off on your cross country trip from Mumbai to Bangalore, to write your Business Plan in Bezos style  !!!

 

 

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Kamal Rajini Analogy : Entrepreneur vs Intrapreneurs

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There is heavy pressure in our industry for everyone to get on the train of entrepreneurship or startup, startup mode is on, Govt is supporting this, communities are on it, and now even banks are starting fund startup. This is all great news.

But should everyone having a entrepreneurial spirit, become an Entrepreneur?

Not necessarily. Many prefer to be, but different circumstances in career, money , family and culture make them not venture into that. So whats the option for them.

Here is where I would like to introduce my Kamal and Rajini analogy. I am sure most of you know about these cinema stalwarts from south india. They both had a completely different style and both were successful in their own way

Kamal , the startup guy – Entrepreneur :  Kamal Hassan always tried like a startup guy, tried new things, ventured into unexplored territories, ahead of times, reinvested most of earnings in his movies, and his movies (product) appealed to a certain set of audience (market). Lot of his movies were commercial failures when they were made , but when you go back and watch them after several years, they are gems. He is like Jeff Bezos, not caring about short term, about profits, but only the long term impact his movies creates.

Rajini, the commercial superstar – Intrepreneur : Rajinikanth on the other hand mostly went for the trusted entertainers, big banner , big investment movies, he built his unique differentiation with punch dialogues, style and tricks, and many movie themes were already successful themes elsewhere. He partnered with big cinema houses who would bank on him for delivering what the audience wants, a mass market. Most of his movies were commercial hits.

Having provided this analogy, I often can relate to each of us, with an entrepreneurial spirit, mostly falling into a bucket of Kamal Hassan or Rajinikanth – and we can learn from how these personalities carved their path to success for so many decades.

While most of us have lot of understanding on the Entrepreneur part, I thought of spending more time in Intreprenuer journey. How do you identify them.

In a Forbes article, its nicely highlighted as “those highly valuable executives and team members who will perhaps never become a company founder, but who have learned to apply the essential principles of entrepreneurship to the roles they fill within a company.”

 

Understand Money : Intrapreneurs -while do not put in their money into the business, they think like its their own business, and strive to make every rupee or dollar count. Often they are the pillars for success of the company. Also they expect to be rewarded well for this

Idea mongers – Greeehousing : Intraprenuers are often thinking like owners when trying to carry the ideas forward, the ideas never goes away from them, they make sure that they can deliver on them or bring in the plan /action to do it

Into the future : Intraprenuers are forward thinkers, thinking what’s next, not satisfied with what is today. They are someone the founders and leaders love to brainstorm and take guidance for investing.

Disruptive thinking : Intrapreneurs are out of box thinkers, often challenge the conventional wisdom, often carve out the next course of investment

Don’t miss these great articles on Intreprenuers in Forbes and HBR from where I picked some of the attributes.

So in conclusion, Stay happy as an Intrapreneur – you have lot of company – and if you are the owner, please take care of your Intraprenuers  – and think about success of Rajinikanth 🙂

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Should experts be limited to an organization?

Expert01

 I am a great fan of analogy, and one of the things I have been pondering for past year or so is comparing our software industry with that of medical and film industry.

In this post, I plan to share some thoughts on how our software industry can consider the evolution of medical and film industry, and probably evolve in that direction.

Expert0 Expert2

In Medical industry, the ecosystem contains Doctors, Surgeons, Physicians, Specialists, Hospitals, Clinics, Life Science companies, research labs and further other associated entities to serve the patients.

In film industry, the ecosystem is made up of producers, directors, actors, cameraman, music director, editor, choreographer, stunt master,other specialized technicians.

Similarly in our software industry, the ecosystem is made up of VCs, founders, techies, designers, product managers, and sales/marketing folks.

Specialization

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One of the striking aspects of the whole evolution is the Specialization part, where medical industry has evolved and recognized the need for deep specialization, and doctors and the ecosystem surrounding have focused on specialization. While you still see some general physicians, we all know who are in more demand – the specialist.

In the film industry, specialization has become very key. Whether you are a screen play writer of dramas, you are specializing in romantic comedies, you are an action director etc. Offcourse there are few folks who are versatile especially in acting, but every film needs a bunch of specialist.

Similarly in our industry, specialization has taken off and it’s a great sign of the industry maturing. We see specialists in design, Ux vs backend techies, architects, B2B vs B2C product managers, industry experts such banking, government, healthcare who bridge industry knowledge with technology, we see further more big data, cloud, database, IoT, mobile etc experts.

 

Should Specialist be limited to an organization or department?

With the above background, the key thought I had for writing this post is how our industry can evolve to leverage the specialist expertise, to go beyond just one organization.

Take the case of medical industry, an important attribute is that the specialist are usually not associated to one hospital but consult in multiple different places. There also exists several communities where specialist come together to discuss the challenges, problems, solutions and experiences in their area of specialization. We have seen several doctors consult with others to get second opinions. The ecosystem is well setup in such a way that its not just honorary service, but it’s a win win for everyone, and takes care of “what’s in it for me ?” very well

In case of film industry, most of the people work independently and come together for a specific film. Over the period of time, many work together in multiple such film projects over several years. There are specialist and actors (not the main heros) who work on multiple projects. Its left to the potential, interest and capability of individual on how much he or she can leverage their time, how they want to pace their career, and how they really are on the toes to differentiate or find their winning formula, as individual or as a team. One of the nice talk you should watch to understand it is when our versatile actor Kamal Hassan spoke at NASSCHOM event, sharing some of the interesting aspects of film industry.

The above 2 industry are a great example for us to consider as we evolve our industry. We have several experts and specialist out there in our industry, but their talents are often not leveraged to full potential for lack of the right setup – they are bound by their employment contracts, or merely don’t have avenues to share, engage, contribute and gain. Most of the folks in our industry land up into mundane jobs, standard career path, leading to becoming some people managers or stop reinventing ourselves.

The boundary laid out for experts is not just being able to do with multiple projects outside, but even within the company many of the experts do not have an opportunity to showcase their potential as they are bound by their departments and hierarchies.

Here are my thoughts on how our industry can evolve around better leveraging specialist:

  • Expert clubs that can bring together specialist by different areas of specialization e.g. by specific functional areas, deployment expertise, industry expertise, cultural expertise, skills – product management /design/architecture, GTM expertise etc.
  • Answering the ‘whats in it for me ?’ question – not to expect specialist to come and engage always for free
  • Employment contracts have clauses that allows experts to do other pursuits beyond their employment e.g. like a doctor who can consult beyond the hospital he is assigned to, experts should be able to consult for other products /projects
  • Creating an environment where its safe for experts to be sharing and working independently to take risks
  • Entrepreneurs to recognize the need for experts /specialization for rolling out products that excel, instead of relying on do it all jack of all – this will drive towards the products that excel
  • An environment or community that facilitates experts to be easily accessible and able to work on a product/project for a given time, including possibility for them to engage in multiple projects based on their appetite …think of the movie analogy here
  • Crowd sourcing for expert skills would be a great way to enable experts to be fully engaged, leverage potential and create more products
  • Mentor programs are a stepping stone in this direction for many experts, we see lot of mentor programs already run…but this needs to get to the next level where these experts contribute more rigorously

 

List of Experts that we would like to see in our product industry being part of expert club, not exhaustive:

  • Ux Designers – Interation /visual design
  • Mobile designers
  • Internet Security experts
  • Product Managers for B2C
  • Product Managers for B2B
  • Product marketers
  • Industry Specialist
  • SaaS Pricing experts
  • Growth Hacking experts
  • Technical writers /Product Documentation writers
  • Intellectual Property Experts
  • Social Media Marketers
  • Solution Architects
  • Performance Optimization Experts
  • Scalability Experts

What are your views on this… can our software industry switch gears to enable experts to contribute more…and get awesome products that excel  …working beyond organization boundaries like a doctor or cinema artiste ?

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What you need to make a Sholay?

I am a great fan of analogies and for software products that we make, I always try to get an analogy as we grow through the journey. In a recent post I had shared the medical analogy of classifying how software products can be classified as vitamin, pain killer or vaccines.

One of the favorites for we Indians is cinemas, whether hindi or tamil or telugu, and here is another analogy I would like to share connecting the world of software products – with world of cinemas. We all set out to make a hit, a Sholay !

Sholay

Now let’s discuss what we would need to make, a Sholay:

Place – First thing, choosing the place to make it is very important. In movies, the destination is Mumbai and most of the folks who aspire for film career move to Mumbai, and the next best destination is Chennai for south indian movies. Bollywood gains its name from its global cinema hub – Hollywood in California.

mumbai bangaloreSV  For software products, destination is Bangalore, where many across the country migrate for an aspiring career in software, considered as silicon valley of india. Especially with the software product startup momentum, Bangalore is certainly the place for the ecosystem. Other locations such as Hyderabad and Pune are the other smaller hubs catching up in this front. In the global context, its bay area or seatle in US, the land where amazing software products have been made or being made.

So if you are a startup, start to think and put a lot of importance for where you want to operate. These days Govt. policies also is an important factor for you to seek help for building the products

BangaloreTopDestination

But the main consideration for choice of the place is offcourse the talent and the people, and the people who are willing to invest. In a recent article, India and Bangalore took places in top 5 global destinations for VC funding

People

Analogy gets interesting here, as there is always a belief that people with best coding skills can get out successful product. And it’s the same perception with movies where many think a Shah Rukh or Rajinikanth or other actors/actress are all about for the success of movies. But over the years, directors, screenplay writers, music directors, cameraman and many others who are behind the scenes have carved a name and gained significance for success of the movies.

Here is a fun way to connect the who’s who of movies to that of software products, as the goal is here is to establish the fact that “The Team” of people wins it all

Actors – Developers: Whatever is visualized or conceived, comes to life only when actors actually perform the way it should come through. The actual delivery or execution is completely based on what/how these people (actors or developers) really do it. Some actors do it in one shot, some need more shots, understanding the full picture and working with other co-actors. Same is the case with developers who can understand the full picture and do their parts well.actoractress

Cameraman – Designer: Camera men give shape to the movie that gives a visual appeal. This is a key ingredient and skill for success of the movie. Same is the case with Ux designers who really depict how the product should work and interact. Even the best of scripts and stories will not make an impact without a visual impact. cameraman

Producer – Business Sponsor or Venture Capitalist : These are the guys who put the money. They determine how big or small the movie or product can be. They also reap the benefits of the business success of the movie or product. Production houses in cinema are equivalent of companies or venture capital firms. VC-Logos

Editor – Quality Assurance : Movies are made to great lengths, probably for a 2 hours movie, there are many hours made of movie that gets produced. But this gets edited to capture the key parts, making sure the movie comes out in best quality to capture the story and screenplay. In product development context, quality assurance does a similar function of testing and providing suggestions to cut the irrelevant. Especially when different pieces of the product are integrated and tested, it exactly resembles editing. editing

Media & Promotions – Product Marketer : Trailers, promos are very important in exciting movie buffs to get attracted to particular movie. Especially when there are several options and competing movies releasing around the same time, its important to do the right promotion focused on the right audience. Same is the case with products, while you may have the best products, if its not marketed well, you are bound to miss getting the attention. In the current world promotions needs to be across multi-channels. mediapromotions

Screenplay – Architect: Screenplay is exactly what defines the “how” part of the movie and all the details. Few times this is done by the same person who directs the movie, but is different in most cases. Architect defines that in product development. He works on the how part to realize and lays out the path to realizing the same. screenplay

Story & Director – Product Manager : Director in movies is central orchestrator and often the guy who has the real vision of what he or she is making, works to get best out of different available talent and gets involved in every aspect of the movie. Product manager does this role in product development working with different stakeholders – and key person responsible for success or failure of the movie or product. In case of startups, typically founders dawn this role.director

Movie Critics – Analyst: When the movie is out, there are several critics who provide rating, comments and reviews about the movie. They are key influencers that bring audiences to theaters. Now with social media we see every one becoming a critic or reviewer. In case of products, there are several analyst out there who review and provide comments on the product.moviecritic

Movie Audience – Customer/Market: And ultimately the audience to the movie or the customer of the product consumes and provides their feedback, they are the voice to propagate it to wider (references in case of products). There are different types of audience and the tastes differ significantly based on demographic, motivation, interests etc. Also there are categories of markets for movies – A,B, C city audience whose tastes vary. There are movies that are made in keeping what audiences want and some other movies are made which audience may dream. Products also go through the same evolution, some are made based on current customers’ needs and some are made for the future that customers get wowed, some works well in developed markets, some better in emerging. audience

Each of the above persons may go onto do one of the other roles, or remain as experts in their area. The people associated to a movie or products are emotionally attached to it forever. Usually startups have founders and few people doing multiple roles in the beginning.

Product

The movie – The product

Finally the product – the movie is the output. It can be a huge success or failure. It can appeal to some audience and may not appeal to others. There are few that appeal to everyone. Some become classics, some are short term flicks, some stay for eternity as best sellers. Same is for products.

http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-image-indian-cinema-handmade-posters-displayed-as-part-mumbai-facade-indside-kingdom-dreams-its-indias-first-live-image30141091

Sequel –  An interesting point about the market is like in movies where we have seen sequels of successful movies remade with a new flavor, we see the same with software products where hit products get remade with a different theme. And always the original ideas or themes has always a value, but sequels also have good market.

Even if you don’t have all the skills, its necessary you have to get the necessary skills beyond just development to make a successful one

Are your ready in the right Place, with right people and to make that thumping hit product for right market ?

Thing Big, Think of Making a Sholay !!!

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Is your product vitamin, pain killer or vaccine?

2014 has been a year of great momentum for software products in India and its going north in 2015. As the momentum picks up, thought of sharing some thoughts on a thumb rule that we can apply for products that we plan to build

Picking the medical analogy, the one way of classifying where your product fits in would be when you answer if your product is a vitamin, pain killer or vaccine – and how you innovate around them.

vitaminvaacine

Pain killers

The must haves are the pain killers, you can’t survive without drugs that cures fever or other painful diseases. In software products area, an equivalent is the automation software that will help you bill your customers, keep your accounts, communicate through emails, build professional or personal network etc. These are very basic, been there for a while and there is always market for these products. But the challenge with these products is that you are not the first one building it and you have tons of competitive products. A funny example I came across when a team mentioned they are building a product for traffic problem that exists in Bangalore, but the how part was not convincing enough to believe it can solve the problem. While the problem is clearly understood, and is a pain, the pain killer solution is key.

Often referred as commodity market, the only success factor here is “how” you solve the problems in a different way, leveraging latest technologies such as mobile, cloud or internet of things. Value of such products, in order to be successful, needs significant go-to-market investment. Nevertheless, if you have found the right product – market fit, there is still scope for this as everyone needs these products, as there is no question “why you need these products”, as long as you can differentiate and sell.

Vitamin

The nice to haves are vitamins, we all know that. You will agree that to sell vitamins, you really need to first establish “why you need that product”.  We do see the benefits, but we can live without it. Analytics and big data products are good examples of vitamins analogy. It would certainly help for your data driven decision making, but you need to convince someone a lot as he or she is already getting the insights in different forms, maybe through a good team that he or she has. But like how we get addicted to some vitamins, you can tend to get addicted to software products that can help businesses or life better. Also over a period of time, vitamins become pain killers as we can’t live without them. A good example for me is Google or Mobile phones or ipads. We have lived without google or mobile phones few years back, but they are no more an option. Ipads is still a vitamin, but still sells very well.

Vitamins need a different kind of expertise in your sales and go to market organization. You need experts to sell these solutions. They really need to uncover the invisible need that the buyer would have and offcourse your product needs to fulfill their aspirations by educating them. Vitamins can be sold at a very premium price if we can convince the customers.

 

While painkillers take care of the visible need, vitamins have to discover the invisible needs

productInvisibleneed

As you build products that fall in the vitamin category, it would be great to see the end vision of these products, and if they can eventually create a new category that can get into a pain killer or vaccine.

Vaccine

They are preventive; they address solutions to problems that exist today or likely to arise in the future. They are must haves, but they get into territory of unsolved problems, so if you have a solution that solves an unsolved problem or even prevents the problem to occur, they would fall into this category. Vaccines type products are real innovations – as they are needed and they can help businesses or improve life.

Business networks are a great example of vaccines, as they remove the hurdles of problems such as intercompany reconciliation or payments by cheques. Knowing your customer is great problem that exists and you want to sell the right product/services, at the right time and at right price based on what customers are seeking. If you understand the customer better, it’s a no brainer that your revenue is going to increase. Next generation customer engagement solutions are a good bet, which personally can fall into the vaccine bucket.  I was super impressed by the Health care cloud mobile products developed by Lifeplot, and many of their products certainly fall into the vaccine category as they can prevent diseases at an affordable cost.

While vaccines are game changers, they also need certain degree of convincing to sell, as the problem is not obvious to many.  One example for me in software products is digital commerce such as web and mobile. There is a huge opportunity to tap into selling in these channels and having products to support them. But it still needs to convince the buyers, as certain level of education is required for this.

Criteria Pain Killer Vitamin Vaccine 
Need Must have – Visible Nice to have – invisible Must have – Visible
Problem statement Well defined Need to be explained In certain cases defined but needs education
Main value prop to sell How its solved Why its needed How its solved and sometimes why its needed 
Sales approach Non Experts but with clear differentiators for product – market fit and lot of investment Experts required to explain value with lot of investment More education required, and once convinced less investment
Revenue and Pricing Standard Premium Standard 
Examples ERP, Emails Analytics, Messenger Business Network, Digital Commerce

 

So where does your product fit in – is it a pain killer, vitamin or vaccine ? 

 

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Competition – Research and Share

As we build (software) products, the competition is something that we need to stay ahead of, but how?

competition1

 

Especially building products for different markets, you always have others building similar products for probably same or different markets. There are already established products that you have to compete with, there are other products that are getting built as you build your product, there are new technologies that throw up new opportunities or challenges that will help new products to build that could surpass yours.

How it’s different from services ?

In services business, you just have a few competitors that you are competing for “a customer”.  You know what this one customer is looking for and its often not very difficult to create a competitive strategy. But in case of products, it’s a huge challenge to identify first of all who could be your competitor and if you are lucky to identify all of them, how your products stand out in the market, not just a customer.

So what you need to know to stay ahead of competition ?  I try to share couple of key elements that I have focused on in this area, as part of building software products : Research and Communication

Competitive Research:

competition2

 

As software product leaders or product managers, one of the key activities that we need to be focusing on is Competitive Research.  This cannot be optional and has to be mandatory task with clear deliverables. If you are lucky, especially working with larger enterprises, there are focused research colleagues who track and share insights about competition. If not there are external agencies that you can engage who can research a bit and share insights about competition. But personally I feel that as the product owners, its best for product leaders or product managers to be closely doing their own research as the expertise that you carry or the interest to get your products successful lies with you.

Tools, Tips and Techniques for Competitive Research:

  1. Don’t cross legal boundaries – while researching your competition, one of the most critical and important aspect of what you can find out should be based on publically available information and within the legal boundaries of access. This is super critical, while it’s a no brainer, its best to understand legal guidelines laid out by company and if you are startup, better to get some legal advise or attend a course to understand the Dos and Don’t
  2. Competitors website  – Thanks to internet, there is already enormous information available about the competition, especially if you are looking at existing established products.  Checking the websites of the competition helps a bit, taking at their value proposition and what customers are talking about the products are very important.
  3. Social media – This is an interesting channel in last few years where we get lot of information about the competition. From youtube, linkedin, twitter, we can follow and understand what the competitors are doing, what leadership in the competition are doing as well as some of the key stakeholders involved with the competition are saying. From whom they are hiring, which location they are talking from and tit bits are very valueable information you can know about the product
  4. Community and Blogs – Another great channel to understand competitors is through communities and blogs written by users, partners and employees about the competitive products. There are forums where products are discussed and there are blogs that are written that helps get an informal view of the products
  5. Analyst – IT industry analyst are a great source of information to understand competitors and their strengths and weakness. Its always better to understand different perspectives of the industry analyst. Your product may still not be in the overall review in the space, but you may want to analyze the market potential through whats being said about the analyst reports.
  6. Partners website – partners or implementors of software website is key source of information for research. This helps us to understand products better as partners are typically very close to the products and often share some details. Typically a demo of the product posted by partner is often more detailed and really very helpful
  7. Knowing and following competitor key people – one of the opportunity we have with internet is to know the people better. From a competitive research perspective, one of the important aspect would be to know and follow the key people who are involved in the competition. It could be the CEO of that company, few of the key technology folks there who are involved in the solution area. This gives a great perspective on what they are trying to do and help understand whats in store
  8. Involving in sales cycles – One of the best way, especially if your product is already out, is to involve in sales cycles. Talking to sales /presales as well as customers. You definitely get insights on how your competitor products is addressing the problems. This can also be done by listening to sales calls as well as just being part of some of the meetings or conference calls. Sometimes customers give you direct feedback on how your products fare and at other times you may get indirect inferences. Participating and contributing in some of the win loss analysis can help take back some of this information.

Having done the research, what do we do with this information to use this effectively as you build your products. While you can have a structure way to incorporate this information into your knowledge base, the important aspect of sharing and communicating this information. Often I have noticed that we share one set of information for different stakeholders, which may be not a good approach.

Prepare and Share

1. Sharing with Sales and Field : Sales organization in your company would like to know exactly how your products are better from your competitors products. What is the key value propositions and some differentiations. This could be addressed at different levels, at the overall product strategy level, on product feature /functionality and the fit with respect to solving key business problem in a better way, and based on customer usage.  How competitive fud can be resolved with a capability that exists or likely to addressed in the road map.

The communication here needs to be very broad based, especially if you are selling to different markets or user base. Some                   information of the regional competitors may also be very useful

2. Sharing with Development : Product Development including product managers are very emotional and close to their products and its often difficult for them to digest to hear that the competitive products are better than your products.  But here the communication and comparisons should focus on where the products are weaker then competition, don’t have to be highlighting the strengths but focus on where differentiations can be fulfilled, or how products can catch up with competition. Even an equally good product could be very successful due to other considerations such as price, market and geography focus, as well as mere ability of sales people. So its important to compare and highlight lagging product areas, and get to focus on competitive catch ups or differentiations. Some of the information collected from Analyst could be very useful as it could lead to good insights of competitive products.  All of this information also helps in prioritizing backlogs.

3. Sharing with Top Management: Assuming you are not the founder, its important that competitive insights are regularly shared with top management in order for them to get a feel of specifics that competitors are doing in this area. This will help getting the attention for investment into those areas, potential acquisitions as well as help them engage better in their customer/investor interactions.

Competitive Research and Sharing is a key activity that needs good time investment to stay ahead in the race as make Software Products.

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