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Product Management holds a constantly shifting and evolving role in most successful businesses, and the fast-growing nature of technology usage in a company’s processes demands that good Product Management grows right along with the technology to stay relevant and successful. Therefore, the position of the product management team is important because they are advocates for your company’s selling point, and has a vision of what your product’s success will look like and how to get there. From that vision, they create a strategy for product success and work closely with Marketing, Sales, Design and Engineering teams to help make that vision a reality and this results to improved profits and happier customers. Product management is done differently from one business to the next, and it depends on the size of your company, whether you work with software, physical products, or services and if you’re selling to businesses or consumers. These processes are in different stages and are carried out by people in different parts of the organization working closely together.
- The Innovation stage: This is about generating and collating new ideas, prioritizing the ones that look most interesting and coming up with what the customer proposition might be. It’s a phase of ‘discovery’ and if the idea seems like it might be successful, a decision is made to commit resources to investigate it further.
- The Analysis stage: This is about validating if there is a market need for the product and writing the high-level requirements to justify the investment.
- The Development stage: In this stage, the product is designed, built, and tested after it has been analyzed.
- The Go-to-Market stage: The Company prepares for launch by running trials, finalizing the proposition and making sure the company is ready to sell the product.
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Once the product is launched, it is in-life and the focus is on selling, tracking performance and fixing any issues. During the in-life phase, there may be many more product versions, each of which has been through the Innovation, Analysis, Development, and Go-to-Market planning phases. And then, at some point, when the product is no longer needed, it is withdrawn in the End-of-life stage and throughout the whole process, product management needs to track what’s happening in the market and respond to any changes. Therefore when these steps in product management is being utilized effectively, it benefits the business in so many ways which includes:
- Production management helps the business to fulfil its company’s objectives through producing products that meet the needs and wants of customers, leading to an increase in sales.
- Reputation, Goodwill and Image: Production Management helps the company to satisfy its customers and it enhances the reputation, goodwill, and image of companies which helps it to expand and grow.
- Helps to introduce new products: Production management helps to introduce new products to the market. It conducts research and development (R&D) which helps the company to create new and better quality products. These products are successful in the market because they give customers complete satisfaction.
- Supports functional areas: Production management supports other functional areas in an organization such as marketing, finance, and personnel. Selling good quality products will be easier for the marketing department, and with the increase in sales, the financial sector will get more funding such as getting more loans and equity capital for expansion and modernization. Due to the excellent performance of the manufacturing sector, the personnel department can effectively manage human resources.
- Helps to face competition: It helps the production management company to face competition in the market. This is because product management produces the right quantity, the right quality, the right price and the right time. These products are delivered to customers according to their needs.
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