Enterprise software product management lessons learnt
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Feb 2012.
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Enterprise software product management lessons learnt
- 1. Lessons we learnt running a software product business Nag VP – Strategy & Marketing (ThoughtWorks Studios)
- 3. 600+ customers, 30+ countries in 5 years Retail, Banking, Telco, Media + Publishing, High-tech, Energy, Government, Consumer…
- 4. 20 lessons • Targetting • Product Features • Pricing • Messaging • Business + Ops
- 5. TARGETTING
- 6. Markets are groups of people, not abstract entities. Built target personas and think about how you can solve their problems.
- 7. Product team Marketing Sales Management must keep these vital departments pulling in the same direction.
- 8. It’s better to be loved by a few than to be liked by all.
- 10. You don’t really know what will work in the market. Envision and explore; don’t plan too much up-front.
- 11. Compete on value and uniqueness. Don’t chase features unless you’re the best funded player in the market.
- 12. Make your product aesthetically pleasing and fun Only then will people evangelise it.
- 13. No Enterprise software is an island. Your product has to work with other software, especially when you sell to Pragmatic customers. They expect the “whole product”.
- 14. It’s hard (but vital) to balance the immediate needs of your customers with your long-term product vision.
- 15. Make it friction-free to try and buy.
- 16. PRICING
- 17. It’s far easier to start with a high price and then cut, rather than the other way around.
- 18. The customer always thinks Total Cost of Ownership.
- 19. When the market matures, make an offering for every price and purpose. There is usually a market for an affordable, good-enough offering, and for a full-featured, premium one. Investigate price bundles.
- 20. MESSAGING
- 21. User Economic Functional Buyer Buyer All three constituents are important. Have different messages for each.
- 22. You must effectively answer the question, “why now”? Create a sense of urgency.
- 24. Required to create and expand a category: lots of patience, evangelism and competitors.
- 25. Work towards your category becoming part of the standard infrastructure ASAP.
- 26. When the market matures, you had better be #1, #2 or in a strong niche.
- 27. After you’ve established an early market, ask “who can I partner with?” Your reach will expand dramatically if you find a partner with a complementary product.
- 28. Map out the value stream (interest -> trials -> conversions -> repeats) early and monitor the metrics carefully.
- 29. Lower costs by co-opting your super-users to provide support.
- 30. Unfortunately, there aren’t that many early adopters in India.
- 31. THANK YOU
Editor's Notes
- We’ve had a product group since 2007.While the product categories are different, lessons apply.We’ll discuss some of them.
- There products – covering development lifecycle.One of them (Mingle) was a relatively late entrant in a relatively established category.Twist and Go were trying to establish new product categories, just like ClimIT.And like ClimIT, we compete, albeit indirectly, with IBM, CA and MS.
- In five years, we’ve had a lot of successCompanies of all sizes and geographiesWe did it out of India.
- A few talking points across these areas of the software product business.We believe the software product business is unique, and almost nothing prepares you for it.
- Have a very clear idea of who your target user and buyer is.It’s hard to build a product for an abstract market. Humanise your prospect with tales, securities and aspirations.Have three profiles and hard wire them into everyone in the company.
- Mingle: Product team (early adopters)Marketing (SMB)Sales (Enterprise)Chaos. Morale etc.
- Related point. Don’t be stuck in the middle.Mingle: SMB and Enterprise.
- Go.We had the vision of making software releases automatic.But who to target, what features to put inWe started to become viable in the 3rd year. No amount of MR would have gotten us there.Emergence is important.
- Purchasing departments want to reduce everyone to a commodity.But we must resist. MS Office – 90% of features are not used. Ok for a monopoly, but not for the rest of us.Mingle: never going to win feature check-lists against IBM, but we could be different and more valuable.Three questions: can you build it, can you turn a profit, will be target market buy it?
- Mingle.Murmurs in project management.It’s strictly useful, but we get lots of recommendation ClimIT – integration with social media?
- Explain MooreWhole productMingle: APIs, training, connectors, training
- Customers will want to drag you off in different directionsLarge Telco: features only they could possibly wantWhat do you do?1. Charge a lot of money for customisations. 2. Have a separate product team.
- Mingle.Downloads, bundling.Improved by 30%.
- Price quality association.Early days: Mingle was the most expensive, even though it has few features.The premiumness stuck.
- Customers always think TCO.Cost of hardware etc.
- More segments emerge.We made the mistake of thinking that the same product will scale.Usually it doesn’t.
- Especially true for complex purchases. Earlier, you could afford not to have a message for
- Go and Twist -> no one absolutely needed them.Especially for ClimIT.
- 3 years.
- No one questions the need.
- 90% gross margins