Applying Product Management to Cost Centres for Innovation and Growth

Executive Summary

  • Organizations that deliver products and services face challenges such as siloed development, lack of cost transparency, duplication of efforts, inconsistent service quality, and slow time to market. 

  • Product management practices can help organizations overcome these challenges by establishing a global platform of standardized, scalable, and reusable products, supported by a centralized governance, funding, and resource model. 

  • Product management practices can deliver benefits such as improved user experience, consistency of service, reduced cost of development and maintenance, increased speed of development, and enhanced innovation opportunities. 

  • Seamus Birch Solutions is a product management expert with a proven track record of helping organizations transform their technology development and optimize their product portfolio. 

  • Seamus Birch Solutions can help your company implement product management practices by providing end-to-end services, including strategy, architecture, engineering, finance, and relationship management. 

  • Seamus Birch Solutions can help your company achieve cost savings, increased agility, and consistent service quality.

Challenges

Too many products are developed to satisfy the desires, urges, and hunches of people within the company, rather than to meet the specific needs of the market external to the company. Products grow out of the desire to tinker, or because an engineer sees a purely technical challenge.

- Albert Ehrenfried, IEEE paper, 1955

  • Organizations that deliver products and services often develop applications based on independent and local business requirements, without considering the common and global needs of the organization. 

  • This leads to siloed development, where project teams create single-purpose products that are not standardized, scalable, or reusable across the organization. 

  • Siloed development also results in lack of cost transparency, as there is no clear visibility of the total cost of ownership, allocation, and usage of the applications. 

  • Moreover, siloed development causes duplication of efforts, as different teams may develop similar or overlapping products, without sharing or reusing existing components. 

  • Duplication of efforts not only increases the cost of development and maintenance, but also reduces the quality and consistency of service, as different products may have different features, performance, and reliability. 

  • Furthermore, siloed development slows down the time to market, as teams have to build products from scratch, without leveraging pre-built components or best practices. 

Benefits

Product management practices can deliver significant benefits to the organization, such as: 

  • Improved user experience: By developing products that meet the needs and expectations of the customers, and provide consistent and reliable service across channels and geographies. 

  • Consistency of service: By ensuring that the products have the same features, performance, and quality across the organization, and comply with the global standards and regulations. 

  • Reduced cost of development and maintenance: By avoiding duplication of efforts, and reusing existing components and best practices, and by optimizing the resources and processes involved in the product lifecycle. 

  • Increased speed of development: By reducing the time to market, and enabling faster and more frequent delivery of products, by using pre-built components and agile methodologies. 

  • Enhanced innovation opportunities: By creating a culture of collaboration and learning, and by providing opportunities for experimentation and feedback, and by leveraging the collective intelligence and creativity of the global technology team. 

How Product Management Can Help

Product management practices can help organizations overcome the challenges of siloed development by establishing a global platform of standardized, scalable, and reusable products, supported by a centralized governance, funding, and resource model. 

  • Product management practices involve working with business and technology teams to identify and prioritize the common and global business requirements across the organization, and to align them with the technology strategy and roadmap. 

  • Product management practices also involve coordinating the development of standardized and reusable products that meet the shared requirements, and adhere to the global standards and architecture. 

  • Product management practices also involve facilitating the appropriate funding model to transparently allocate the cost of development and usage of the products, based on the value and efficiency they provide. 

  • Product management practices also involve managing the global resource model that supports the development and maintenance of the products, by leveraging the expertise and capabilities of the global technology team. 

Why us?

Seamus Birch Solutions is a product management expert with a proven track record of helping organizations transform their technology development and optimize their product portfolio. We can help your company implement product management practices by providing end-to-end services, including: 

  • Strategy: We can help you define and align your product vision, strategy, and roadmap, with your business goals and customer needs. 

  • Architecture: We can help you design and implement your product architecture, and ensure that it is aligned with the global standards and best practices. 

  • Engineering: We can help you develop and deliver your products, using the latest technologies and methodologies, and ensure that they are scalable, reliable, and secure. 

  • Finance: We can help you establish and operate your product funding model, and provide you with the visibility and transparency of your product costs and value. 

  • Relationship management: We can help you manage your product stakeholders, and communicate and collaborate with your business and technology teams, and your customers and partners. 

Seamus Birch Solutions can help you achieve cost savings, increased agility, and consistent service quality. We have the experience, expertise, and resources to help you transform your technology development and deliver products that meet your needs and expectations. 

We look forward to working with you and helping you implement product management practices in your company.