What is exactly product management? What’s the role of the product manager in product management? According to the concise conclusion drawn by ProductPlan, product management is the practice of strategically driving the development, product launch, continual support and improvement of the company’s product. Regardless of the nature of the products, product management encompasses a spectrum of responsibilities ranging from product discovery to product strategies and product marketing/operation. To me, product management is more of a strategic function. It externalises the outputs of product activities by answering 3W1H questions: what (the product you would like to build), why (the product-market fit, competitors and customer needs), who (customer segment) and how (logistics and resources to facilitate the delivery and distribution of the product; services to support product operations).
There is no standard product management process as it can evolve quickly and can be adapted in different product organisations based on the stage of the product lifecycle. However, no matter what best practices you are going to adopt, it always begins with understanding your customers’ pain points and identifying the opportunities. In B2B product development, those customer needs are likely to stem from the lack of automation in operation and labour-intensive or inefficient business process. Product managers will turn these nuances into a well-articulated goal by listing the problem statement. The next step is to quantify the market. In order to justify investment in building a new product (or a series of features), you will need to address the following questions in your business case:
· The addressable market size
· What problem do you aim to tackle and which customer segment do you aim to target
· Customer profile
· The competitor landscape: by product/service offerings
With product goals and the intelligence collected from the market, customers and competitors, you can devise potential solutions. This is where product discovery kicks in. It doesn’t mean you need to start collecting requirements and validating solutions with your customers. Given the complexity of B2B products, you may want to understand your user persona and their current operational process in order to help you narrow down the solution scope whilst looking at the opportunity to leverage your current infrastructure to harness the potential solutions somehow. When evaluating the feasibility of the potential solutions, I would suggest involving legal, development, procurement and finance in the discussion as any problem triggered by these aspects could be a deal breaker later at the implementation stage if they are not identified or addressed in the feasibility study.
The next step is to set the product strategies. The product squad now knows they can get the ball rolling based on the established product goals and objectives. They understand how the solution could address customer needs by delivering quality products. As for the product manager, it’s important to ensure that the product strategies are aligned with business strategies so that you can secure stakeholder buy-in or at least a shared understanding of the product fundamentals in the following aspects:
· Value proposition
· Pricing strategies and cost structure
· Product scalability and profitability
· Product marketing and operation plan
· Product technology and solution design
Execution is the last piece of the puzzle. It’s time to turn product concepts into something tangible. With the initial priorities set, product management can build the product map, stakeholder management plan and product delivery plan, launch strategies and post-launch operation plan. Surely you will need support from other stakeholders to help you drive the product launch, facilitate/expand the product reach and streamline the post-rollout operations. More importantly, product management also needs to define the OKR for each product-related initiative in order to evaluate the performance of product development, product sales and product operations.
Important Skills in B2B Product Management
Unlike B2C product management being user-focused and data-obsessive, industry knowledge and domain expertise play a more important role in building a B2B product. Understanding the business operation process and workflows from the customer's perspective will help you quickly identify the customer's needs as well as the challenges encountered in their day-to-day operations.
· Research and business analysis skills (in the market, competitors, customers, end users)
· Planning and prioritisation skills (project management, stakeholder engagement, product roadmap)
· Technical skills (understand the tech trends and how they affect the roadmap, understand the existing technical capabilities as well as offerings and how they affect the product solution, improve the communication between the development team and business)
· Commercial awareness and business sense (a little bit of every aspect ranging from finance, legal to marketing and support operation)
· Stakeholder management (manage customer expectations and demands, anticipate internal stakeholder requirements, stakeholder communication)
