Business

Product Development

Companies that look forward to a long-term future must continue to set long-term objectives. One of the most critical objectives is to accelerate the revenue stream from its existing products through introduction to additional market verticals. To achieve this objective, companies must expand their product functionalities and business processes to fit the target market verticals.
Companies face an unprecedented range of pressures. Regulators are requiring companies to comply with the new reporting standards mandated by Sarbanes-Oxley. Shareholders and boards are demanding better insight into the company’s true financial condition. CEOs are asking finance for faster, more accurate analysis of the firm’s current and forecasted performance to enable better business decisions.
Meeting these demands calls for a level of visibility into financial and operational information from across the organization that few finance executives have today. To address these problems, many companies are turning to enterprise performance management (EPM) software. The promise of this technology is appealing: better visibility into corporate data, the ability to perform fast consolidation and reporting, and the ability to conduct more accurate forecasts. But for many companies, EPM software hasn’t lived up to this promise. The problem is that executives often regard the technology as a quick fix—they implement software without first addressing the fundamentals of performance management or the underlying infrastructure problems.

Product Development Methodology

Customers’ needs and wants are the logical place to start in the search for new product lines or enhancement to an existing product. The phase approach to product development is a logical and orderly way for an organization to guide the valuation of the product service enhancement P/S/E in order to institute management procedures and to keep aware of the progress and issues.

Wability’s Product Development Methodology will help our Clients:

1. Provide detail description of the required functionalities, enhancements and a clear road map of the business processes.

2. Simplify the effort to bring the product to a new market vertical

3. Introduce ways to enhance the existing product functionalities

4. Tie together the many pieces of Product Development under a common framework.

There are 5 different phases of the Methodology: The process is broadly defined and the scope and nature of work within the company will determine how the process should apply. Each of these phases has a clear purpose, logical ending and requires a multi disciplinary team working together for a common purpose. Quality Measures and Time to Market can be significantly reduced using this Methodology.

Wability’s Approach

Business Opportunity Assessment (BOA)

1. To be able to advise on the technical requirements of adding a feature or to introduce the product into a new vertical, we will start this assignment by analyzing the architectural and the design documents of the current product.

2. We will start working on one vertical (V) at a time, and will have a deliverable for each vertical.

3. For each vertical, we will collect info on its business requirements and assess the essentiality of each of these requirements. Wability is a part of major Knowledge Management Networks where we have subscription access to major research firms such as Gartner Group, Forrester, AMR Research and Technology Evaluation Inc just to name a few. This will be our vehicle to gather, research and analyze each vertical requirements
   Specifically with respect to Enterprise Productivity Management (EPM) requirements’ and all other main items of evaluation and coverage.

4. Similarly, for each vertical, we will collect info about the rival products. To do it righteously right, we will interview the rivals and we will request access and purchase some of these products.

5. A business opportunity research will be conducted per each Vertical (V) and it will address the following items:

• The business requirements of the vertical (V).

• For each requirement, an assessed degree of essentiality and its value to the customer.

• How the current product fulfills each requirement.

• How each of the rival products fulfills each requirement.

• If the current product does not satisfactorily fulfill a requirement, how it can be made to do so.

• Decision analysis of whether or not to have a separate "sub-product" for that vertical, or cover its requirements in the original product.

• How does the Product Service Enhancement (P/S/E) fulfill customer requirements or market void?

• What are the technical requirements? Impact and feasibilities

• What are the risks associated with the P/S/E?

• What are the preliminary financial impacts?

• How does the product meet legal and regulatory requirements?

• What is the vertical strategy? Size and potential growth

• How the P/S/E will improve Organization’s Market share?

• What is the Impact on the competitive environment?

• How does the P/S/E fit with corporate strategy?

• What skills and resources are required for the development?

The following summarizes our Deliverables per Vertical:

1.0 Vertical Requirements and Business Assessment

   1.0.1 Competitive Situation

• Major competitors strengths and weaknesses

• Marketing strategies for the competitors

• Organization’s strengths and weaknesses

• Major competitors and their P/S/E in the target Vertical

   1.0.2 Vertical Assessment

• Requirements and Trends

• Target Vertical Segments, Size and Potential Growth

• How the P/S/E will meet requirements or fills a Market Void

   1.0.3 Vertical Requirements

• Vertical requirements and perceptions

• Vertical customer profile and Applications

   1.0.4 Product Situation

• General Product /Service description

• Features and Functionalities

• Product Offerings

• P/S/E Strength and Weakness Analysis

• Cross Elasticity Impact

2.0 Strategic Assessment

• Product Positioning Strategy

• Vendor, VAR, VAD, Partnership and Alliance

3.0 Technical Assessment

• Description and Features

• Advantages and Benefits

• Functional and Technical Specifications

• Architecture

• Technical and Vendor Alternatives

• Estimates of Expenses and Capital

• Billing Requirements and Strategy for Licensing

4.0 Risks and Contingencies Assessment

• Impact if the P/S/E is Deployed or not Deployed

• Analysis of Development Time and Costs

• Strength and Weakness Analysis

• Cross elastics with existing Product

5.0 Financial Assessment

• Sales Volumes and Market Share Objectives

6.0 Regulatory and Legal Assessment

• Legal and Regulatory Constraints

7.0 Skills and Resources Assessment

• Estimates of Skills, Capital and Expenses