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Inside Product Strategy™ shares how experienced practitioners do product strategy and product management. Subscribe to receive regular issues of Inside Product Strategy™ by e-mail for free. Read our privacy policy.

IN THIS ISSUE:

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christinecrandell_ac_21_w600pxSales and Marketing Need to Sleep in
the Same Bed
Bad marriages between the two are epidemic

Differences in the way that sales teams and marketing departments are focused, managed and paid often leads them in conflicting directions. But there are strategies for harmonizing their missions that benefit everyone.  Christine Crandell, executive vice president and chief marketing officer for data center technology provider Egenera, has seen it in some of the nation’s leading technology companies and helped repair their sales-marketing rifts.

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Case Study: How Ariba Became a Market Leader by Getting Sales and Marketing to Cooperate

Coordination between a company’s sales force and its marketing department sometimes requres direct and active intervention.  Christine Crandell, who is currently executive vice president and chief marketing officer for Egenera, was previously a marketing VP for Ariba, where she learned first-hand about bringing the two functions together.

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Looking Around the Corner at the Future
Turning market intelligence into a strategic weapon

Chessboarding and Forward Viewing are powerful tools which, in the right hands, can enable a company to anticipate where its markets and competitors are headed and to prepare itself accordingly.  In her capacity as executive vice president and chief marketing officer for data center technology provider Egenera, Inc., Christine Crandell applies those disciplines to her company’s business development, alliances and global market strategy. Here she explains how and why to use them.

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coticchia_2007_1Earning Your Stripes Every Day
How high-speed SaaS markets force providers to excel

SaaS is more than traditional software delivered online.  It’s a whole different type of business with its own distinctive set of challenges.  Greg Coticchia, who has worked in both types of business, explains the difference. 

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chris-gormleyNext Gen SaaS Strategy
How to enhance online software services for competitive advantage

Chris Gormley, PSN Member and executive with peer-to-peer information technology provider Tiversa, explains three ways to increase stickiness with subscribers to Software-as-a-Service applications. With growing competition among SaaS providers, finding ways to seamlessly deliver human expertise and knowledge assets through a SaaS application can also lead to new sales opportunities and new sources of revenue.

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christinecrandell_ac_21_w600pxFive Steps from Recessionary Turtle to
Rebound Hare
Plan your recovery now, before it’s too late.

Implementing a deliberate strategy for identifying early signs of recovery and changes in the market along with your company’s responses to them, can turn a sour economic time into a period of healthy transformation. Christine Crandell, executive vice president and chief marketing officer for Egenera, explains how to do it.

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bob-meeseSearching for Your Inner Google
Focus on authentic strengths

Particularly during tough times, a company’s ability to survive requires knowing what its core values are and then focusing relentlessly on building the business around them.  At search giant Google, whose profusion of new products has been the awe of American industry, economic contraction has prompted the company to sharpen its focus on projects that match its core strengths.  Google New Business Development Manager Robert Meese explains.

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brian-longHarvesting Good Ideas      
At Bayer, they’re going out into the field

Doing it all yourself is so last century.  And it’s probably going to lead to the wrong answers anyway.  So at Bayer, the quest for innovative ideas has become much more outwardly focused with the wisdom of crowds unseating the solitary inventor in identifying relevant product concepts.  Ten-year Bayer veteran Brian Long, who is charged with managing innovation at the company’s New Business Creative Center, explains.

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revRevving the Product Management Function  
Better company performance requires a better-performing product management team

Transitioning a technically-oriented product management function into a market-focused one requires re-engineering people's expectations as much as reorganizing their workflow.  Veteran product strategist Jason Baim has led that effort at
TeleTracking Technologies and talks about the evolution. 

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andrew_hally_pictureMorphing Maps
The number, substance and detail of a company’s product roadmaps evolve along with it.

Product roadmaps, along with their extended family of product line and company strategy roadmaps, have different applications at different stages in a company’s life. Andrew Hally, Vice President of software maker Unica, tells how.


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Getting the Most Out of Field Interviews
It may look like a casual conversation, but it's not

Okay, so you've figured out who you need to interview to help develop ideas for product design. What now? Where do you go? What do you ask? And how do you get the most useful results? Tom Bonnell, Director of Industrial Design at
Respironics, and Julie Gulick, Product Planner at MEDRAD, have been conducting field interviews for years. Contacted separately, the two offered insights which included strikingly similar recommendations.

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raising-money-smallMaking the Case
Preparing and presenting your business case is serious business
 
Building a compelling business case for creating a new company around a breakthrough product idea is an essential step in securing startup financing.  It’s equally important in securing support for resource-intensive development projects that extend existing product lines for established firms.  So getting the case right is critical.  But it’s almost always addressed to a notoriously tough audience – senior corporate executives and potential investors with famously short attention spans.  At a recent Product Strategy Network forum devoted to building better cases, four seasoned executives, representing the receiving side of the pitch, discussed what worked for them, what didn’t, and why.

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Getting Everyone on Board
Product roadmaps work a lot better when people feel their ideas are on the map.

A product roadmap – even a good one – doesn’t work very well if the people whose work it applies to feel that their point of view has been ignored. At least that was the case at Heatcraft, a well-established manufacturing company whose earlier attempts at roadmapping excluded a number of key players. Product Manager Tameka Brown talks about how the company is now taking a different approach.

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bbarkerThe Right Price
Finding the right price for a technology product is part art, part science, part strategy

A company's pricing strategy is strongly influenced by its larger market strategy.  But for a new type of administrative software,
Philips-Respironics Global Product Manager Bob Barker found that it can also be determined, as well as supported on the sales side, by figuring out the actual dollar value it brings to the paying customer.

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quick-tips-tab

psn_page_arrowOn Becoming an Effective Product Manager

psn_page_arrowPresenting a Business Case

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Building a strong product management organization: The practice (Part I of III)

icon-small-members-onlyAssessing Product Opportunities: Establishing the market value of potential new products

icon-small-members-onlyObservation Research: Making observation research work (Part I of III)

icon-small-members-onlyTuning up your Voice of Customer Research

icon-small-members-onlyField Interviews: Interview questions in the field (Part I of III)

icon-small-members-onlyFinding problems to solve with your core technology: Testing the Marketplace
(Part I of III)


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icon-small-members-onlyStage-Gate Project Model. (Contains 20 documents including process model, details, instructions and examples.)

icon-small-members-onlyCommercialization process (Stage gate process for introducing and developing new products)

icon-small-members-onlyProduct release cycle management

icon-small-members-onlyPlan of record (software product release plans)

icon-small-members-onlyProduct development prioritization model



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icon-small-members-onlyBest Practices for Managing Agile Projects. Presented by Sue McKinney, Vice President – Strategy and Technology, IBM Software Group (Webcast | PDF Slides )

icon-small-members-onlySatisfying Customer Needs and Target Margins. Presented by Andreas Maihoefer, Strategic Marketing Manager, MEDRAD.  (
Webcase | PDF Slides)

icon-small-members-onlyPredicting the Impact of Product Innovation Projects. Presented by Stefanie Lattner, VP Strategy, XL Tech Group. (
Webcast | PDF Slides)

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Taking your technology to a new market. Presented by Roger Byford, CEO, Vocollect (PDF Slides)


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icon-small-members-onlyBuilding the Product Management team. An interview with Blackbaud’s VP Product Management Jay Odell

icon-small-members-onlySoftware as a Service (SaaS) Implementation Practices. Presented by Rick Collison, Director of Solution Marketing, Ariba

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psn_page_arrowWorking through the pain – When and how to split up product management

psn_page_arrowGetting the product right isn’t enough – A good product management team has to get the market right too

psn_page_arrowClimbing the customer value chain at Sterling Commerce – How product management and product marketing can help to recharge an established, successful business

psn_page_arrowThe Solutions Strategy - The Concept (Part I of IV.) Selling solutions has become routine, delivering them rare.

psn_page_arrowHave you checked your toolbox lately? You may find an anthropologist inside.

psn_page_arrowAt Plextronics, heads keep swiveling. Keeping both eyes open for truly great opportunities is essential in emerging markets.

psn_page_arrowHelp! There is an anthropologist in my bathroom. How field observation techniques flushed out the truth about home plumbing fixtures, and how you can do it too.

psn_page_arrowAriba! Ariba! How California’s spend management giant manages to manage its product managers - Tying customers to solutions instead of to products is a key

psn_page_arrowProduct Management: For Adults Only – It takes a certain amount of maturity to professionalize technology product commercialization

psn_page_arrowWhen do you determine your product’s positioning? The sooner, the better


There are many more articles in our Archives. Become a Premium Member and gain access to many more templates, presentations and tips shared by our members.

Inside Product Strategy™

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