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How Companies Use Big Data to Help Their Customers?

Big Data has gotten a lot of attention over the past 18 months as retail, manufacturing, and technology companies realize the gold mines they’re sitting on and rush to scour them for competitive advantage. Nearly all of this discussion, though, revolves around consumer trends, marketing guidance, new product planning, and other market-level insights.

Here are how companies are using big data to treat customers more like individuals — and build better long-term relationships so those customers happily buy more and more.

EBay turns big data into intelligent information

EBay conducts a wide variety of activities such as machine learning, data mining, economics, user behaviour analytics, information retrieval and visualization using big data. And the data they work with is of a wide variety: user, user behaviour, transaction, items, feedback, searches.

GE uses big data to power machine services business

GE, one of the UK’s largest manufacturers, is using big data analytics to predict maintenance needs. GE is a big fan of big data, investing more than $100 million in tech companies this year alone. GE manufactures jet engines, turbines and medical scanners. It is using operational data from sensors on its machinery and engines for pattern analysis.

Amazon predicts exactly what customers want before they ask for it

Amazon long ago mastered the recommendation of books, toys, or kitchen utensils that their customers might be interested in. Other companies have followed suit, such as recommending music on Spotify, movies on Netflix, or Pins on Pinterest. Amazon uses big data also to offer a superb service to its customers. This could be the effect of the purchase of Zapos in 2009, but it clearly helps that it ensures that customer representatives have all the information they need the moment a customer needs support. They can do this because they use all the data they have collected from their customers to build and constantly improve the relationship with its customers. This is something many e-tailers can learn from.

But Amazon is expanding its usage of Big Data since it notices that the competition is nearing closer. As such, Amazon added a remote computing service, via Amazon Web Services (AWS), to their already massive product and service offering.

Catching swine flu: how big data helped doctors to understand a pandemic

In the health care industry, big data is being put to work to improve the quality of patient treatment — and save lives. Health care providers in Singapore have gathered big data insights from analytics platforms to transform how they manage chronic diseases.

The swine flu pandemic was an early example of how mobile phone data can be used to analyse trends and patterns of movement. A specialist team from Telefónica used mobile network data to understand how people moved around during the swine flu pandemic. Their findings helped to validate a government’s response to the crisis.

Delta Airlines identified customer pain points and resolve them using Big Data

Most companies know what some of their customers’ pain points are (if they don’t, they aren’t paying attention to their customers.) Those who are digging deep into the data to solve those difficulties are improving their customers’ experience.

For example, take Delta Airlines. All airlines know a top concern for passengers is lost baggage, particularly when they are on a flight that’s delayed and missed connections involved. Delta Airlines looked further into their data and created a solution that would remove the uncertainty of where a passenger’s bag might be.

Customers can now snap a photo of their baggage tag using the “Track My Bag” feature on the Delta app and then keep tabs on their luggage as it makes its way to the final destination. Even if a bag doesn’t make it on the intended flight, passengers save time tracking it down. Finding a new way to put big data to use for the benefit of their passengers put Delta out front in a competitive market.

Why do Product leaders need to understand “Big Data” science?

One of the benefits of Big Data is the opportunity to explore and discover trends in our same ‘ol data. As Product Managers, we should understand the use case and provide some basic reports and views. But we can’t assume to know everything that the user will want to know or do. Instead, we should provide tools that enable the user to explore the data at will. Leveraging big data capabilities can help to form instant strategy decision, spur innovation, inspire new product and services so on and build competitive advantages

Understand how big data can help you make better product decisions, come join the industry connect event on September 13, 2014 at CMR University Campus, Bangalore.

With inputs from Shweta Bisarya

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3 Easy Pointers to Keep In Mind While Creating Delight Through User Experience

Get the Mental Model right

Mental Models are essentially set of best practices in understanding users’ reason for doing things. Designing around it will create delight

While Aesthetics play a big role in the immediate impression might be very important as a “buying” feature, often it will fail as a “using” feature if not done in the  mental  model for a given customer context or usage scenario.

Good book on the topic is Indi Young’s Mental Models –Aligning Design Strategy with  User Behavior

Here is a summary blog post for the topic – Getting Mental Models Right  –  CrazyEggblogpost

“Nobody is complaining” – that doesn’t mean there is no problem

User adaptability is surprisingly high when it comes to dealing with inefficiencies.
A high tech enterprise software product (especially ERP) takes 6 months and 1 M$ to  learn and operationalize, TV remote has 84 buttons on it, the latest microwave oven can cook food in 101 styles (didn’t know there were 100 ways to cook idli!) etc. and yet after a while USERS ADAPT. They compromise & accept the product with its inherent  inefficiencies until someone comes around and solves it (think Apple!)

A good Product Manager and User Experience Designer will uncover those inherent  inefficiencies and create opportunities to simplify things, bringing the “aha” moment  with less capabilities!

One of the roadmap prioritization techniques we advocate as part of our Customer Insights courses at the Institute is Kano Analysis which basically suggests that every product has basic attributes, performance features and delighting features.  Most successful product releases will have atleast a few “delighters”

Integrate UX into the development process

User Experience (UX) is lot more than User  Interface Design and User Interface Design is lot more than pretty fonts and cool colors!

If you plot the maturity of R&D teams across the UX continuum you will find 3 stages of maturity

  1. UX as Styling
    Define the visual elements that determine look of the application

       2.  UX as Process
             Design as a method integrated early into the development process 

       3.  UX as Innovation
             Redefine product concepts based on user insights

Here is a typical interlock/flow of how engineering & design teams work together during a development process of product!

Any thoughts?

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Are Product Managers Future Entrepreneurs?

Prof. Rahul Abhyankar, Director of ICPM Programs at the Institute of Product Leadership summarized it well in his message to the Graduating Class, “Product Management is more of a mindset change merely skillset”

Product Management has many definitions but most experts will agree that its essentially the art & science of delivering delighting solutions to real market problems and doing it rather predictably.

So if a Product Manager is supposed to
1. Get Customer Insights
2. Validate a proposed solution
3. Develop a Business/Monetization Model
4. Develop specifications/requirements for teams to build a delighting solution
5. Help launch and figure out the GoToMarket Strategy

how is it different from what an entrepreneur ends up doing?!

Here is my take on how Product Managers need slightly different skills than a startup entrepreneur –

a. Leadership Skills – Conflict management, stakeholder management, influence building. Product Managers have to influence multiple stake holders for decision making, leadership skills are more critical.

b. Internal vs External – Product Managers have to spend more time internal to the company compared to an entrepreneur who might be completely customer/market focused (funded startups have Boards to answer as well but time investments are lower)

c. Plumber vs Oil Digger – As a Product Manager you have potentially lots of resources that one needs to be aware of and know how to leverage (existing customers, brand, sales force, budgets etc.). So the key thing here is to “connect” the right pipes in the organization so oil falls in your bucket as opposed to dig for oil (find early adopters, investors etc.)

d. Risk Appetite– Emotionally a Product Manager might be less attached to the business as personal wealth is not at stake (reputation is on the line though!). A good product manager should have the right passion for the product and a good entrepreneur knows when to quit and pivot based on market feedback!

While there are differences in skillsets, the end goal for both seems to be aligned – delivering value.

So is it fair at the end to say that Product Managers are Future Entrepreneurs?

We will be asking this question to 10+ senior product industry veterans on Jan 30th at the Graduation Party for ICPM Class of Fall 2012. Come grab a beer with them if you are in Bangalore!

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12 learnings from the launch of Institute of Product Leadership – Bschool for software techies in India

Seems only apt to summarize our 12 learning’s on 12-12-12

#1 – ‘Kitna detee hai’ ?

Maruti car runs a campaign in India around “keetna deti hai” (means in local language – how much mileage will i get in?). The first question on the applicant’s mind was – post program will I get a better pay or shift into a company of my dreams. Very few (23% of them to be precise) reported that learning is more important to them than placement assistance.

My take – People seem to forget that getting inside is easier than staying & growing inside. On the bright side its good that we have companies willingly wanting to hire the first batch immediately on graduation.

#2 – “Code Centric to Customer Centric”

The idea of transitioning from being technology centric to customer centric does seem to resonate the most with individual participants who cited “Project Management to Product Management” as the #1 desired transformation – to be able to understand the customer and the business context of what they are already doing.

My take – Business programs can only be valuable if they accelerate that transformation. Knowledge dissemination cant be the driver!

#3 – “Badge is important”

The idea of getting a diploma or a degree is rather important as a take away from the program. Brand is clearly important.. Interestingly enough compared to “Guaranteed Career Path” this was voted lower though.

My take – With liberal badge printing machines in the country most hiring managers see through it and at best use as a filtering criteria.It is even less valuable for senior R&D professionals

#4 – “Have you done this before?”

Surprisingly (at least to us) companies who wanted to nominate people to the program asked this question more often than the participant themselves. Companies (both senior HR/L&D & Engineering leaders) as well as participants appreciated the fact that the curriculum is relevant and faculty is world class but the risk appetite for companies seemed to be lower than participants who pledged nominations for the “next” batch!

My take – first movers almost always benefit. That’s why the early bird gets the worm. The program’s pilot batch will have the best foot forward to establish a brand and move the offering to higher price points for next batch.

#5 – “Better seat at the table”

Most R&D leaders showed frustration around why they were not able to add value with their global partners and wanted to equip themselves with the right knowledge and immersions to be able to have a better seat at the table and enjoy broader responsibilities.

My take – unless people make an effort to understand the productizing process all those frustrations will continue to rise. Intent and ability to help are two different things!

#6 – “I don’t want to become a Product Manager”

Interestingly enough not all senior R&D managers (64%) wanted to learn the “business” & “customer” context to become a Product Manager, instead they wanted to differentiate themselves and build a better career path on the Product Engineering Leadership track with the role models being cited as CTO and Head of R&D.

My take – Product Management as a process should be everybody’s business to understand, playing the role of a real Product Manager not so much as it’s a harder role to play than one thinks!

#7 – Its better if its hard to get in

The moment they heard that only 20% of applicants will be selected to the program the value of the program went up by a factor of 2 (Price to Value Analysis)

#8 – Relevance of MBA to their Product Leadership Growth

Majority of the Product Professionals who had done their MBA from Top B-schools cite around 21% of the subjects/topics being relevant to them in their current role. 35% of them believe that the degree gave them the necessary break/promotion/new role.

My take – General Purpose MBAs (even from top B schools) are great for people who don’t know what they want in life and hence want to get the exposure to HR, Finance, Operations, Marketing etc. Institute’s Board have actually factored this in and designed the curriculum to map to industry’s expectations.

#9 – Influence Building skills are missing

Across 5 categories of the curriculum, leadership skills were rated 3rd most desired after Customer Connect & Insights and User Experience & Product Innovation. Within leadership skills leading by influence was ranked higher than other soft skills like negotiation, presentation, cross culture communication and conflict resolution.

My take – One’s Influentiality Index (II) is actually the biggest propeller for career path acceleration, functional skills for an average R&D product professional is actually fairly high.

#10 – Relevance is good but I want my exec education to be personal

Relevance of the program resonated overwhelmingly with the target audience but most also desired personal mentoring 1:1 with industry execs and a personalized leadership development plan with necessary psychometric assessments. Interestingly 92% have never gone through such personalized assessment at their company.

My take – I wish I had done assessments like MBTI, DISC, Product Leadership Influentiality Index (PLII) etc to really know my gaps and build a plan to bridge them faster as opposed to rely on accidental growth.

#11 – Free money – take it or not take it?

Several industry reports suggest that 26% of educational tuition reimbursement budgets goes underutilized with global R&D centers in India. Most (97%) desired to get tuition reimbursement from their company to pay for the program, however it dropped to 52% the moment it was disclosed that only self sponsored candidates will be offered placement assistance.

My take – With retention being the driver for some companies to sponsor education this is bound to happen..

#12 – Scaling Startups vs Large Companies

Management teams from both groups desire better product leaders (91% – Agree + Strongly Agree) however their approach of solving is starkly different. Global R&D Centers want a longer program (underlying theme being retention) vs Scaling Startups want a menu of courses to select from.

Would love to hear your thoughts – especially if you are a product professional wanting to accelerate your career path with atleast 8 years of experience or part of the exec management team who wants to develop strong product leaders in the India R&D center! More info at www.productleadership.in

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Do we really need a Product Manager?

Instead of a consultant’s usual response to things “it depends”, I will choose to give an enthusiastic affirmative – Absolutely YES! But before I give you my reasons for it, let me first give a context for this term Product Manager (PM).

For any product business that is trying to turn an idea into a successful enterprise the management team channels their energy essentially into two macro functions – building stuff and selling stuff. If engineering is primarily tasked with building and sales is tasked with selling somebody has to be focused for everything in between – that’s where the Product management role comes in!

Here are 5 basic reasons on why companies need somebody playing the role of product management

1. Bringing the Market Context into the Company
Successful companies build products that actually solve real problems. Somebody needs to identify the market problems through rigorous market research, qualify and quantify them and validate the proposed solution to ensure it indeed solves their problem and can be feasibly delivered to the customer. Product Managers ensure that we build products that ultimately people want to buy, they are the messengers of the market and represent the voice of the customer and prospects in all strategic decision making inside the company

2. Productizing Innovation
Engineering has come up with the most brilliant innovation – now how do you “productize” it? What segments of the market would this appeal to and would customers actually pay for it? What is the competitive landscape for the product and what alternatives available to that segment of the market? How should this be priced and packaged to turn it into a profitable business? What should be the primary route to market for such solutions? As you can see there is a lot more that happens between building and selling and somebody needs to be responsible for productizing innovation

3. Customer Research vs. Market Research
Companies, especially early stage, often fall into the trap of concluding what market needs by just talking to a few prospects/customers (usually friends!). The trap becomes even vicious when you find yourself doing custom work for each of those initial customers. If the business model is to focus on generating huge revenues from a few customers this model might work but for companies who want to be market driven, you want a champion that focuses on broader market research by talking to several customers and identifying a trend by normalizing one offs (even though they represent to be a very attractive customer opportunity)

4. Pricing, Packaging for Profitability
If the ultimate goal for the venture is to become profitable, this is probably one of the most important exercise that typically is owned by the Product Manager. While there are several methodologies to price a product and package it with others in the portfolio, they all revolve around a strong understanding of the buyer and user personas in the target market segment. Leavings this up to the builders (engineering) could be dangerous as they will be the experts on the cost side but not the value to the customers and leaving it up to the sellers (sales) to decide this is even more so dangerous as they would more focused on revenue and not profits! In the IT services sector where commoditization is in fashion, finding the next valued added feature/service in the packaged offering is even more so critical to continue to grow and differentiate the offering

5. Communicating values over features
Product managers are the defacto product experts which make them the perfect candidates for developing the positioning strategy for the product that sales and marketing can use to communicate values over features. Organizations typically have invested into marketing and communication functions like brand building, PR/AR (Press/Analyst Relationships) etc. to help sales but few in India actually have a more formal marketing department with dedicated Product Marketing Managers (PMM) to help with sales/SE training, generating leads, customer retention and acquisition, thought leadership activities, launch plans etc. Essentially helping the sales team to effectively sell with the right message that resonates with the customer becomes a function of the product management role in those scenarios.

Some companies have distributed these functions with different roles like VP Engineering, CTO, VP Sales, VP Marketing etc. and often the CEO is the PM of the company. Not only are there inherent risks in such fragmented execution, this model doesn’t really scale in the long run.

Different names for the same end game

Due to the versatility and the nature of the role for a Product Manager, different organizations globally have called this role differently. Titles like product manager (PM), program manager (PrM), product line manager (PLM), product marketing manager (PMM), Technical Product Manager (TPM), business analyst. Also due to the strategic nature of the role coupled with a lot of decision making, the Product Manager role is often found to be residing in different organizations – reporting into engineering, sales, marketing and often directly into the CEO.

Product management function in India is still in its infancy. Lot of MNCs have started hiring product managers in India to improve operational efficiency by tightly aligning a PM who decides on “what to build” with the engineering team actually building it. Lot of services companies and startups might not have a dedicated Product Manager but the role is split between different members of the management team.

I wonder that, as India Inc gets ready to build more products for the global markets and as global companies get ready to see India more than an engineering center, do we need more Product managers in the industry than what we have today?

We would love to hear from you so do respond with your ideas and quires in the comments below.

Original Post can be accessed at Adaptive Marketing