- Challenge: Establish a strong foundation of the Product Management practices to increase growth and profitability.
- Solution: Redesigned the product management organization by establishing product management practices and leveraging Productside Optimal Product Management Course to train the team on Product Management.
- Outcome: The Product Management team has become more strategic, data-driven, interacts directly with customers, prioritizes according to market needs, and has a focused market-driven new product roadmap with highly improved forecasting.
CLIENT: Privately owned manufacturer of consumables and reference standards for analytical chromatography instruments.
INDUSTRY: Manufacturing
GOAL: Develop the product management function within the organization to have strong product management and product marketing capabilities, making decisions informed by market research and customer needs, to accelerate growth and profitability.
A privately owned manufacturer of chromatography consumables and reference standards for the analytical instruments industry had grown successfully for over 30 but was experiencing some growing pains. Amid expanding direct operations globally and instituting global systems to harmonize processes, competition was intensifying, and core products were trending toward commoditization. With SKUs numbering in the tens of thousands and a complex pricing structure, the product management function became internally focused trying to help the other departments rather than understanding unmet needs in the market and building for the future. The company’s leadership was concerned with the slowing growth and sought to make a change in the product management organization.
Russ Ulbrich joined them as Vice President of Product Management and realized quickly that the company needed a structured approach for managing products and making decisions. He audited the current state and found out that the team had an unmanageable number of ongoing projects, gaps in their stage-gate process, overlapping roles and responsibilities across departments, and no consistent plan in place for launching new products.
He said: “The teams were very tactical. It’s a consumables company with a tremendous number of SKUs to manage. The team’s time was completely consumed with the tactical day-to-day activities trying to help keep the business moving and address burning fires. None of the product managers had time to be strategic or visit customers.“
Although growing, growth slowed in the face of changing market dynamics. The organization was siloed with lack of clarity around roles and responsibilities around portfolio management. There was no clear “owner” of the new product roadmap. New product ideas were flowing in from all directions including sales, business development, product management and R&D. The company’s market data was old and VOC was incomplete. There was a lack of interdepartmental coordination and alignment and no rigorous vetting of ideas. This approach resulted in an unmanageable large list of projects with no clear understanding of market impact or priority and the lack of aligned marketing plans. The pace of new product introductions slowed dramatically and when products were launched, accuracy of forecasts was extremely volatile which complicated planning in operations. This approach was simply no longer working.
Building the Foundation
Russ understood that he was on a mission to change how the company made decisions. Russ says: “Strategy is a fancy word … but really, strategy is simply about making decisions. It’s about understanding where you play and where your opportunity is.”
He knew he had to change the way his team operated- from how they collected market research, to how they made tradeoffs between projects. To implement a product management approach, he started by:
- Restructuring teams: The business managers were retitled as product managers and given a new strategic role in understanding the market, not just executing orders.
- Building knowledge: Implementing monthly training sessions on product management fundamentals.
- Modernizing road mapping: Establishing a process to evaluate and prioritize projects based on market insights.
Initially, Russ led all the monthly training sessions: he is a true lifelong learner and always believed that-“You can’t be a product manager if you’re not passionate about learning. You’ve got to constantly learn.” He created a book club to introduce his team to the principles of strategy and product management. Initially, he saw many improvements in their strategic thinking and approach to monetization. However, he knew that for the team to start behaving differently, he needed to bring in an additional resource: “I wanted the team to hear somebody other than me talk about what product management was – someone outside of the organization, and a professional product management training organization to show them how all the pieces fit.”
Bringing in a Partner for Change
Russ’s goal was to train the team on end-to-end product management process so that they can identify customer centric problems, communicate more effectively across marketing and sales teams and make better trade off decisions that drove revenue growth and profitability.
Russ wanted to bring in a partner who could augment his efforts in teaching the product management team and help them apply these concepts in a learning environment. Russ selected Productside to work with on this mission. He liked the practical approach of our Optimal Product Management course and that there was a balance between discovery and delivery. Productside also matched Russ with an expert that had a background in manufacturing and digital products. The Productside pro customized the course for their company culture and was able to provide actionable feedback on how to take concepts and apply them directly on the job.
Results and Impact
Productside’s trainer delivered the customized Optimal Product Management course to Russ’ team’s level and needs. After the training was completed, the entire class surveyed indicated they had learned new skills and would recommend both the course and the instructor to their colleagues. One respondent also appreciated that “the entire team is working with the same tools now.”
Russ also questioned his team for feedback about the training course and heard: “The training that you gave us was more meaningful than any training that I’ve ever had at this company: it was structured. It was applied.” Russ agreed that “The Productside training took concepts and then had a conversation about how we could apply it and start making it our own…Having a course like yours was critical to get that foundation in product management to where they could start thinking differently. And different concepts resonated with each of the team.”
In the end the hard work that truly transformed this manufacturer’s product organization was done by Russ and his team. They redefined roles and responsibilities, standardized the way they managed products, and implemented a stage gate process that helped their focus and ability to prioritize. Their investment in training enabled them to move much faster on this change curve and address blind spots of their initial efforts. They also could rely on an additional expert to help close any remaining gaps along the way. The impact of these changes was seen across the organization- from increased trust and credibility from their stakeholders to much more accurate revenue and profitability projections.
This story is common- many companies have successfully grown over the years with a relentless focus on the individual customer. The transition to focus on the market is hard yet fundamentally important to scale operations. Training is a powerful tool in service of great product leaders who want to equip their teams with the tools and frameworks to do better work and shift their mindset. A customized course on product management built on practical frameworks and tailored to the company culture and process, is the fastest way to boost the capability of a team to drive business performance and recharge growth.
Do you have similar challenges? Are you looking to improve your ability to drive business results? Get in touch with Productside now!
