Future-Proofing Products

Future-proofing products and earning long-term customers by creating Product Roadmaps

The Need

Client is a medium-sized organization in the software industry with an aging product portfolio. They have been very successful for a number of years with their current products but as technology, especially mobile, has become more prevalent they find their customer base has become smaller and has an older demographic. The “old school” customers are satisfied while the “new school” customers have not embraced the Client as a long-term solution for their needs. They are fearful of becoming obsolete in a few years due to their shrinking number of customers.

Our Approach

Through both primary and secondary research we were able to better understand the needs of the Clients’ customers and both the current and future directions of the industry. We were also able to perform performance analyses of the current products compared to the past and against the Clients’ competitors. This information helped us develop a comprehensive product roadmap that would allow current products to evolve with the market and prioritize limited resources appropriately. This level of organizational focus and coordination, which never previously existed, meant that the Client was able to optimize current profitable products, reduce/retire unprofitable products and develop future products that would align with three- and five-year company goals.

The Results

After implementing our recommendations we worked with the Client over the next year on measuring performance based on the changes. Highlights include:

• Revenue per product increased 17%
  
• Cost per product decreased 22%
  
• Number of new customers within key demographics increased 55%
  
• Number of products in portfolio decreased 45%, drastically reducing internal administrative resources; all unprofitable products were retired
• Number of customers who feel the company will meet their long-term (3-5 years) future needs increased 34%