Product Plan

Product marketing strategic planning has never been more difficult or more essential. Strategic planning can be lost in a myriad of non strategic details, simply become part of an annual ritual because of a formal procedure guide, or be nothing more than a wish list of potential projects. Effective strategic plans have a clear and logical structure that brings clarity to the major product marketing issues that must be addressed to ensure that new products delivers real and improving value to the business. Based on our experiences in helping clients to develop major product marketing strategic plans, we present a checklist of the most critical ingredients of effective strategic plans. 

1.      Where does the business want to be? Are the business drivers and directions defined? Is the focus on reducing internal costs, mergers and acquisitions, new markets, and new customer services and products? What are the key information and customer requirements to support these business strategies? Enterprises that can articulate these forces have a good starting point to develop a product marketing strategy. 

2.      Is the vision clear? The best visions capture the overarching purpose in a few memorable words. For example: 1) Superior memory yields intelligent products 2) leading-edge technology to maintain a competitive advantage; and 3) Internet information services meets global business needs. Visions are often confused, with competing objectives of lowest-cost-yet-leading-edge technologies, or technology driven with no linkage to business drivers. A good product marketing vision statement will require some robust debate with business leaders as part of an effective product marketing governance process. 

3.      Where are we today? Before charting the future, it is important to document the current product marketing environment, describing the key applications and the supporting product marketing infrastructure, and listing the strengths and weaknesses. How well do applications meet business needs? What are their life expectancies, how diverse are the technologies, what is the degree of integration? What projects are in progress, and are they on track? Has the efficiency of service delivery been measured through benchmarking? Applications portfolio and product platform analysis is one tool for categorizing different types of applications.  

4.      Are the major product marketing strategies clearly stated? This should always start with strategies for the key business applications, even if the strategy is just to exploit and maintain. Then the strategy should address the overall product marketing architecture and product marketing infrastructure requirements to support the business applications. The plan must convey a broad overview of costs and benefits, and identify key milestones and metrics that will be used to monitor progress. A sourcing strategy should be presented, identifying how the skills required for implementing the strategies will be secured. An effective strategy will always be a "work in progress," providing a framework within which specific projects are developed and business cases assessed. 

5.      What are the risks? Will the technologies develop as forecast? Are the required technologies mainstream or leading edge? Will we able to secure and retain the skills required? How robust/flexible are our plans, including reliance on critical vendors? Are there any alternatives that should be considered? Which technologies and solutions are not currently part of the strategy, but warrant being on the "watch list" because they may become significant? 

Bottom Line: Effective strategic plans stand out because of their clarity of focus, a vision that aligns product marketing and business drivers, and an explanation of how to move from today's environment to the desired future state.