Building An Enterprise-Wide Innovation Process
Customer Driven Product Design – Innovation – New Product Evaluation Process
Executive Summary
Designed and developed a collaborative, cross-functional product development process for a mature $ 100 million business to help expedite and unfold new digital growth opportunities.
Client: Information Services -Financial Services Business Intelligence/ Analytics
Business Challenge
A company rich in customers, but slow to innovate and bring new products to market sought to lessen the chaos around product development, add to its product portfolio and speed up revenue generation.
Insights
Product development was de-centralized with technology being pulled many ways and had confusion around priorities. Many junior through senior new product point people were not classically trained in marketing which indicated a definitive need for some basic marketing structure, supplemented with education/coaching. Senior Management was frustrated by spending too much time reviewing incomplete business cases/pitches from too many people.
Actions
- Developed a standard new product development process and fill in the blank business case template.
- Communicated process throughout organization and trained junior to senior management on marketing, new product development.
- Formed a cross-functional senior advisory council with technology, sales, finance partners to review, approve and defer/re-mediate new business ideas vis a vis stated strategic business plan.
- Designed and managed all market research pertaining to new product validation, including beta testing.
- Evaluated third-party alliances with mutual fund vendors and led team on design of internet based product for investment managers, retail brokerage, consumers.
Value/Impact
- New processes and open transparent, status communication allowed everyone in organization to be informed about priorities, expectations and organization’s collective next steps.
- Newly implemented product development processes reduced cycle times and decreased resource costs more than 15% by transitioning to a customer-driven e-tools/solutions focus.
- Narrowed team focus and new process was instrumental in transforming business from print to more valued, e-based products that contributed to top-line revenue growth of 50% over 2 years.
