How to Define a Whole Product
pg.4
By Arnold Alderman
Lessons Learned
A valuable part of the process was delineating the lessons learned at the various stages of the project.
- Management must be committed to the entire project including implementation. They must recognize that resources must be allocated to provide the new support levels. Traditional ROI type investment justification methods are difficult to use when implementing the whole product analysis, but can be derived through team discussion.
- During the process a 5th influencer - the customer's marketing management – was discovered to be exceedingly helpful in identifying market needs, especially for augmented product opportunities.
- The whole product process needs to be integrated into existing company infrastructure and not take on a role of its own.
- A structured relationship is more successfully implemented if driven from customer to supplier rather than driven from supplier to customer.
- It is critical that information harvesting becomes part of the marketing process rather than having to be a major separate or special initiative, otherwise defocused parallel effort occurs.
