Planning and Definition
With a solid and clear business strategy, companies develop detailed and very specific actionable plans. Questions such as "What do we need to do?" "What do we need to build?" "When do we need it?" need to be answered, and organizational agreement and support obtained.Whether you are considering new markets or a new product line or simply maintaining the status quo, it is essential to have this plan.
Defining the specific product or service to be developed needs to be the result of a systematic, creative, well thought-out process that is designed to uncover new business opportunities or to effectively respond to existing ones. This type of planning is a difficult task due to numerous uncontrollable external factors that influence an organization, and the need to anticipate shifts in customer, market, competition, and technology. "You need to bat where the ball will be, not where it is now".
Some of the questions typically asked when developing this plan include:
- Target Customers: Who are they?
- What benefit will we deliver to the customer?
- What is the competition likely to do?
- What is the market window?
- What is the market sizing and opportunity?
- What are the barriers to entry?
- How are we going to market it?
How We Can Help
Strategic planning is an area of particular expertise; and in this area solid experience is essential. Our experience ranges from software products to high-velocity consumer products; from solutions to services. Projects in the past have included products varying from a few tens of dollars, to hundreds and thousands. Even though the markets and the offerings differ greatly, the core marketing activities to ensure a successful outcome are very similar. Typical activities include:- Market segmentation
- New technology assessment
- Investigating, testing, and piloting concepts
- Product line extensions
- New product definition
- Pricing analysis and objective-setting
- Competitive analysis
- Cross-functional project management