Analytics is crucial to product management for one significant purpose: product improvement. Without the measurements taken by metrics and the insights provided by analytics, product teams will not know how well their products are meeting the needs of users.
If metrics are the vehicle that drives product development, then analytics is the gasoline that provides the power. Without product analytics, the information generated by metrics is just a pile of data.
Analytics is crucial to product management for one significant purpose: product improvement. Without the measurements taken by metrics and the insights provided by analytics, product teams will not know how well their products are meeting the needs of users. They cannot make informed decisions about upgrading product functionality or adding capabilities. And if they make changes to the product without measuring and analyzing the results, they’ll have no idea if the revisions implemented are effective or even necessary. They would be operating in the dark.
It may surprise some to learn that, despite the spotlight brought to bear here on the product development side of analytics, that is only half of the analytics story. The other half concerns overall business strategy and the need to balance analysis of the business side with the technical side for an even broader holistic view of the organization.
This analytical yin and yang is often overlooked by manufacturers as well as outside product consultants retained to help companies innovate new products. But to ignore the business context of product development and management invites failure. You cannot launch and grow a successful product without understanding the business environment in which it exists. Any product development consultant worth their salt will insist upon business and market analysis to develop a picture of where the client company stands in relation to their competition, the marketplace in general, and their own ability to successfully go-to-market with the product under consideration.
Over the past decade or so, data generated by metrics and the analytical tools used to tease insights out of it have transformed product development and management. While some product team members may lament the demise of “seat-of-the-pants” engineering, the reality today is that without data and the analytics to understand it, effective product development and successful product management are simply not possible.
We find ourselves now at the beginning of a new age of product analytics. Advances in data management, cloud computing, and the wholehearted embrace of Big Data by virtually every industry and organization is fueling a revolution in new product development processes and methodologies.
It’s now possible to improve product development and the chances of success by classifying and analyzing key characteristics of past product successes – attributes such as customer involvement level, sales force collaboration, and key metrics to model the relationship between product development factors and eventual product success. The trick is to collect the relevant product development attributes data and relate it all to product success in the marketplace. This can be a challenge because much of the data related to customer demand and response as well as competitive reactions reside outside the organization.
Still, the power of product analytics is reason enough to put it to work for your next product development project, despite whatever shortcomings may exist. Analytics are critical for telling you what’s going on with your products – from development, to launch, to customer satisfaction.
Product analytics can reveal the cold, hard truth about the capabilities and functionality of your product and how people really use it. Analytics gives you the most complete picture possible so you can build the best product possible.