Product management is an organizational lifecycle function within a company dealing with the planning or forecasting or marketing of a product or products at all stages of the product lifecycle.
Product management (inbound focused) and product marketing (outbound focused) are different yet complementary efforts with the objective of maximizing sales revenues, market share, and profit margins. The role of product management spans many activities from strategic to tactical and varies based on the organizational structure of the company. Product management can be a function separate on its own and a member of marketing or engineering.
While involved with the entire product lifecycle, product management's main focus is on driving new product development In business and engineering, new product development is the term used to describe the complete process of bringing a new product or service to market. There are two parallel paths involved in the NPD process: one involves the idea generation, product design and detail engineering; the other involves market research and marketing analysis. According to the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA), superior and differentiated new products - ones that deliver unique benefits and superior value to the customer - is the number one driver of success and product profitability.[1]
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Aspects of product management
Depending on the company size and history, product management has a variety of functions and roles. Sometimes there is a product manager, and sometimes the role of product manager is held by others. Frequently there is Profit and Loss (P&L) responsibility as a key metric for evaluating product manager performance. In some companies, the product management function is the hub of many other activities around the product. In others, it is one of many things that need to happen to bring a product to market.
Product management often serves an inter-disciplinary role, bridging gaps within the company between teams of different expertise, most notably between engineering-oriented teams and business-oriented teams. For example product managers often translate business objectives set for a product by Marketing or Sales into engineering requirements. Conversely they may work to explain the capabilities and limitations of the finished product back to Marketing and Sales. Product Managers may also have one or more direct reports such as a Product Executive who can manage operational tasks or a Change Manager who can oversee new initiatives.
Product planning
- Identifying new product candidates
- Gathering market requirements
- Determine business-case and feasibility
- Scoping and defining new products at high level
- Evangelizing new products within the company
- Building product roadmaps, particularly Technology roadmaps
- Working to a critical path and ensuring all products are produced on schedule
- Ensuring products are within price margins and up to spec
- Product Life Cycle Product life cycle management is the succession of strategies used by management and as a product goes through its product life cycle. The conditions in which a product is sold changes over time and must be managed as it moves through its succession of stages considerations
- Product differentiation A concept in Economics and Marketing proposed by Edward Chamberlin in his 1933 Theory of Monopolistic Competition
- Detailed Product planning
- 7 functions of marketing
Product marketing
- Product positioning and outbound messaging
- Promoting the product externally with press, customers, and partners
- Bringing new products to market
- Monitoring the competition
- more detail on Product marketing Product marketing deals with the first of the "4P"'s of marketing, which are Product, Pricing, Place, and Promotion
See also
- Technology roadmap
- Brand management The annual list of the world’s most valuable brands, published by Interbrand and Business Week, indicates that the market value of companies often consists largely of brand equity. Research by McKinsey & Company, a global consulting firm, in 2000 suggested that strong, well-leveraged brands produce higher returns to shareholders than weaker,
- Crossing the Chasm
- Marketing management Marketing Management is a business discipline which is focused on the practical application of marketing techniques and the management of a firm's marketing resources and activities. Rapidly emerging forces of globalization have compelled firms to market beyond the borders of their home country making International marketing highly significant and
- Product (business) The noun product is defined as a "thing produced by labor or effort" or the "result of an act or a process", and stems from the verb produce, from the Latin prōdūce '(to) lead or bring forth'. Since 1575, the word "product" has referred to anything produced. Since 1695, the word has referred to "thing or things
- Product catalogue management
- Product documentation A document management system is a computer system (or set of computer programs) used to track and store electronic documents and/or images of paper documents. The term has some overlap with the concepts of content management systems. It is often viewed as a component of enterprise content management (ECM) systems and related to digital asset
- Product lifecycle management Product lifecycle management is the process of managing the entire lifecycle of a product from its conception, through design and manufacture, to service and disposal. PLM integrates people, data, processes and business systems and provides a product information backbone for companies and their extended enterprise
- Product manager A product manager considers numerous factors such as target demographic, the products offered by the competition, and how well the product fits in with the company's business model. Generally, a product manager manages one or more tangible products. However, the term may be used to describe a person who manages intangible products, such as music,
- Product marketing Product marketing deals with the first of the "4P"'s of marketing, which are Product, Pricing, Place, and Promotion
- Product planning
- Requirements management Requirements management is the process of identifying, eliciting, documenting, analyzing, tracing, prioritizing and agreeing on requirements and then controlling change and communicating to relevant stakeholders. It is a continuous process throughout a project. A requirement is a capability to which a project outcome should conform
- Software product management Software product management is the process of managing software that is built and implemented as a product, taking into account lifecycle considerations and generally with a wide audience. It is the discipline and business process which governs a product from its inception to the market or customer delivery and service in order to generate biggest
- Service product management
- Product teardown A product teardown, or simply teardown, is the act of disassembling a product, such as a television set, to identify its component parts. The results are typically disseminated through photographs and component lists so that others can make use of the information without having to disassemble the product themselves
- Enterprise
References
- ^ Kahn, Kenneth B. (Editor). The PDMA Handbook of New Product Development. Second Edition. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2005. ISBN 0-471-48524-1
External links
- PDMA: Product Development and Management Association
- AIPMM: Association of International Product Marketing and Product Management
Categories: Product management
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