What’s my next Product Going to be? A Product Ideation/Extension Toolkit

You have your first product and it’s a success. Success only brings more demand from prospects, clients and customers for features that are not yet in your product. Some of them are not interested in all the features you have in your product but seem to use only some odd features. Or they have found a totally new use for your product that you have not yet thought of, as yet! As an entrepreneur you are sitting there thinking “Why don’t they just use what I have provided them in the way I think they ought to use it?”. These kinds of reactions from prospects and clients are not only normal but indicates that you are on the right path!. All of these can be confusing for a small product start-up. However it need not be. Here’s a toolkit put together with examples seen with various start-ups and mature product companies. Think of it as a set of dimensions along which your own products can be extended or new products ideated. Depending upon the nature of your software product – SaaS or On-Premise, different dimensions for product variations, price points or delivery methods could be applicable. The advantage of this kind of approach is that it makes it a systematic process and makes sure that what you do has exemplars elsewhere, preferably ones that have been successful!

1. Product Variants based on Number of Users 

This model may be  familiar with SaaS product companies. There may be a Free Version, say upto 10 users, Small Business version for  11 to 25 users and an Enterprise Edition for 26 to 400 users, for example. Before you choose this model it is always good to put yourselves in your clients’ shoes and make sure that it makes economic sense. Beyond a certain number of users, clients always prefer a very flat discounted pricing. I speak from personal experience! We once evaluated a SaaS product for a 25 person start-up company.  Beyond 15 users, a per user model did not make any sense for us since the discounts for more users was not steep enough. On-premise software was much less expensive than the SaaS alternative. An on-premise software with an initial steep cost and annual maintenance of 16 to 20% worked out to be much better. Like us, many clients and prospects may have unused server capacity, technical people on the payroll that have extra capacity. So hosting our own software did not add any additional hardware/software/people costs for us. This is a cautionary tale for SaaS product companies that go after large enterprises or elephants. Make sure your flat pricing makes it is still profitable for you with huge numbers of enterprise users after paying for servers, hosting, bandwidth, specialized support, etc. What if this client grew phenomenally?

2. Product Variants based on Additional Features

Most are familiar with Microsoft’s Home, Professional and Enterprise editions of software products. Basic features that made sense for home use would be in component products like Microsoft Word, and Excel. Professional editions added additional features in individual products and they added additional products that made sense in an office setting. Enterprise editions were capable of a lot more and some included server editions where the product is hosted centrally. One caveat is not to leave money on the table when you have a single product and you start adding features. At some point in time, your product needs to split into basic and advanced editions and you need to make sure you get paid additionally for added features. This is a problem you face after you add features. In product management, one of the big conundrums product start-ups face is knowing when to add a feature. If one prospect or client asks for a feature, put it on a running wish list. If two of them ask for a feature, put it in the next release. If three of them ask for it put it in the appropriate product variant and in the next build! When you do a demo and a presentation of your current product, always have Upcoming Features and Upcoming Products slides and solicit feedback.

3. Product Variants on Adjacent and Associated Technologies

In software product companies, there are always adjacent and associated technologies where your next products need to be. If your consumer facing product works in a browser, it may need a mobile version and sometimes,  vice-versa. Document management products may need workflow products to go along with them. An enterprise financial management product needs sales management, manufacturing, people management products to go along with them. This is one of those areas where paying close attention to what other software are used by your users may give you ideas about your next product stops. Clients will readily tell you what other products they need to go along with the one your sold them, if you have not already found them out when they implement your product. Integration services always go along with products, especially in enterprise facing ones.

4. Products based on different characteristics/preferences of users

Not all of your clients or users will use the product the same way. Some may re-purpose features you meant for something for something completely different. As I write this, our client is using an open-source CRM system for internal workflow handling. The reason is not that the workflow features of this CRM system are very strong but because the attachments and document version handling is very strong and 90% of their workflow depends on users submitting documents for verification, validation and formal certification. User Interface skins are based completely on preferences of users and personalization. For inspiration, consumer product companies like Unilever and Proctor and Gamble are great. You can be sure that there are one or two Dove Soap products, White and Pink, that contribute 80% of their sales. They still have Dove Sensitive Skin, Dove soap without any perfume, etc. Software product variants may not be that simple but paying attention to what different types of users or usages can lead to variants that make sense.

5. Products meant for different types of markets

Different markets may have use for some common features but sometimes may need to be completely tailored for a new market. Tax preparation software for the US market may not be of much use in Europe or Australia. Or by architecting the software a certain way, a lot of the software could be reused by including a business rules component and writing different business rules for different markets. Oracle Financials has an Oracle Government Financials parallel, which may have very little in common with it!. Adjacent markets are always good to go after. What are those markets for your product company?

6. Free Trial/Free-Paid Versions

Free Trial versions may be necessary for scaling your user base initially and converting them later on. Free Trials may have expiry dates but free versions without any expiry dates can provide data lock-in. Once a client or a consumer’s data is in your software, inertia may prevent them from switching and you can convert them to a paid one at some point in time. In some cases like LinkedIn, free and paid versions can co-exist and you can still have a profitable company. The free version may have some limits and if the limits are too onerous for intensive users, they may convert to a paid version. However, it is always better to provide as many of the features you can in the free version and not make it too much of cripple-ware! The free version should be fully functional for most of the simple stuff all of your users. If minimum functionality is not there for accomplishing something meaningful, free versions will only put users off. I hated free versions that don’t tell me after I have put in a lot of data in and then I cannot print anything or do something meaningful with it.

7. Service -Product Spin Outs

Tax preparation software companies also provide tax preparation services for consumers that cannot use the software, for whatever reason. This is a good example of spinning out a service from a product. If you are offering a service you may catch yourselves doing the same kinds of activities for your customers. If it can be automated or provided as a self-service online option for a fee, may be there is a product idea in there. That can be a service to product spin out.

When your product starts to take off, it may be time to streamline your offerings and create a road map of product variants and new products. It is better to have a process and some systematic thought put into this activity. Analysis of existing users, careful attention to what they are saying and which features of your product they are using; what they want new in your product or what new products they want,  can all help guide you in creating a product family and a road map. Having a set of dimensions in a tool kit helps  a software product company mix and match whatever is applicable to them to creating and rolling out this roadmap!

If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there! – Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland