Table of contents
Courtesy of www.productplan.com
This is a strategy where your company plans and develops new products, or upgrades current products, and introduces them to an existing market. It’s a particularly useful strategy in SaaS due to the need to find differentiators to maintain a competitive edge.
Repeated exposure to cyclical shifts and downturns will affect the growth of your business’ revenue to an extent. Some business owners choose not to change their business strategies during this time. They will instead need to examine new ones in an effort to complement their current progress and ensure the business is at full capacity.
The first step in growing your business is by modifying your current products, and you can add fresh new products that serve demand in your market, to help make your growth curve look healthy.
We highlight the various stages of the product development strategy process by providing examples of this in practice.
Product development strategy
This is a strategy where your company plans and develops new products, or upgrades current products, to be introduced to an existing market. It has great value to an online software company since there is a specific need to find differentiators in addition to pushing new products out to an already-established market.
A successful product development strategy places priorities on the market and consumer research, conceptualizing, building, testing, launching, and marketing to target customers where there is an existing or increasing demand for a solution.
This strategy can be a combination of diverse approaches, such as:
- Developing a new product similar to your current product
- Reinventing or improving your existing product
- Creating a new product based on your customers’ purchasing behaviors
This is a framework that will help organizations develop new products. It includes elements that are useful when companies are planning via product development strategies. These include entering a new or existing market, developing a new or existing product, monitoring and measuring a new or existing product, and learning the factors necessary to be successful.
Analyzing and tracking your new product development strategy
Having your new product development strategy and process written down helps to support each of these ideas and determine how you’ll price your products and services.
If you’re going to build out a new product, it’s important to assess the work that it entails and all the various factors that are at play.
Will the products you develop meet the needs of your customers? Will they match up to a competitor’s products? Can they be used to boost your revenue and profits?
The product development process defines the steps an organization takes to develop a new product. This roadmap has a number of KPIs to monitor. Initially, you may have goals, like saving 10% of product testing costs, but over time logistic needs, like stockpiling certain materials, can take precedence.
Product development strategy and process examples
Planning the development of your product begins with market research. If your business has data on consumer behavior, you can improve the product by addressing their needs or reacting to changes in consumer trends. It’s always valuable reviewing how top-selling brands are solving emerging problems or reacting to changes in consumer trends.
Product development is the process by which new products are created. After a product is made, it is modified slightly to make it a better product, increasing its value. Apple is a great example of this.
Since the release of new generations of iPhones, Apple fans are always on the hunt for the newest model, despite the minimal changes between releases. They are delighted to spend more and more on these new devices and are anxious about the release of any improvements in their phones.
With this creative strategy, Apple continues to do well by focusing on one product, making the singular focus on that product resonate with the target audience, and releasing improvements that gradually evolve over time with the new technology and consumer feedback.
In software development, a product function must adapt to changes in technology and the needs of its users. To get ahead in the online market, SaaS companies must be nimble enough to customize their products to meet the changing demands of a dynamic system. For instance, the CRM feature was a quick way to add more functionality to its already popular email marketing solution as numerous companies use this approach to rise to prominence.
Capitalizing on the right products that meet customers’ demands in the right markets helps drive business sales. Companies cannot do this efficiently without using proper research and an awareness of market changes when you look at the strategies major companies use to develop products.
All companies make a large investment in research and development each year. Even major companies choose to only release those products they hope will succeed.
Research and development is crucial to manufacturing, creating divisions of companies where market data is reviewed in order to create new innovations or prototypes.
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