How to Deliver More of What Customers Want with Product-Led Growth
By Malte Scholz, the founder and CEO of airfocus
Financial service providers need to be ready for the growing shift towards product-led growth in 2022, but how should they go about it and why has it become so important? Here, Malte Scholz at airfocus, discusses important new research from airfocus into the phenomenon.
For decades, Financial Service (FS) providers relied on a sales-led model. But the advent of fintech firms, with more defined product propositions mapped closely to the evolving priorities of customers, has created a shift towards product-led growth.
Because of the intrinsic link with digital channels, the trend has accelerated during the pandemic – as the emphasis has shifted to remote service delivery. In its Market Guide for Product Management and Roadmapping Tools, Gartner® indicates “by 2022, organisations focusing on product-centric delivery will experience twice the average rate of success in recovery and renewal from the economic downturn”.
Yet, remarkably, many product teams remain poorly served by tools for organising and prioritising the work they do. Often, ad-hoc manual processes are still the norm.
This was confirmed recently in new independent research conducted for airfocus in the UK and in the US. The survey, conducted in September 2021, polled 300 product managers/owners/directors across sectors, about their changing roles and requirements.
Reflecting the shift towards product-based business growth, four in 10 product managers said they believed the role of product management was becoming more prominent strategically, and its value is now better understood by business leaders. Yet this hasn’t yet translated into adoption of appropriate tools to equip product teams to better balance their time and priorities.
A gap in capability
Today, almost as many product owners/managers/directors rely on a system of Post-It notes on the wall (30%) as have access to dedicated product management technology (31%). Even where product teams do have access to relevant technology, these solutions typically have been found to be inadequate – particularly during the continuing pandemic. More than half cited a lack of relevant features and functionality, poor usability, or not being able to adapt the platform to their specific needs.
Other common issues are poor provision for the way product teams work, a lack of support for collating feedback centrally, failure to enable easy collaboration with the different business stakeholders, and a lack of integration with other enterprise applications.
The need for ‘structured product management’
For more than four in 10 product managers, dedicated product management tools are necessary, in particular for addressing key challenges that are expected to intensify over the next 12 months – most notably the pressure for companies to adopt product-led growth strategies, and the growing requirement for product teams to become more focused on business outcomes.
The role of product management technology
To understand more about product managers’ pain points, the survey looked at the tasks currently occupying the most time. These are:
- Collecting and consolidating/centralising customer feedback
- Day-to-day liaison with internal stakeholders (which could range from 12 up to 20 in number)
- Collating and centralising internal feedback
- Preparing documents and presentations for other departments
- Locating product information within the organisation.
By contrast, just 28% of respondents said that formulating product strategy was the task to which they devoted the majority of their time – albeit that this is crucial to business outcomes.
Specific needs identified in the survey
So what, specifically, are the gaps in product managers’ roadmapping and process planning/ management capabilities?
In the survey, respondents pinpointed:
- An improved ability to innovate
- Greater visibility for the team
- Easier communication and alignment with stakeholders
- A holistic view of product strategy.
Part of the requirement around innovation is linked to the ability to prioritise product development requests. Now more than ever, product teams must be able to reliably and impartially assess which requests for new features should be channelled into next releases, to deliver maximum value.
System capabilities most commonly sought
In the survey, the main qualities product managers look for when choosing a product management platform were support for easy and effective prioritisation; the ability to create clear roadmaps; easy adoption by users; modularity/flexibility to choose appropriate features; and seamless and easy integration with everyday office applications.
Overall, simplicity emerged as a particularly strong priority. The need to address the current capability gap is felt quite keenly now, too. Almost four in 10 product managers cited the rising awareness that ineffective product management will lead to poor products, when asked which factors would most shape the future of product management.
Certainly, as product teams command a more central, strategic and visible role within the business, there is a need for product management to take on more of the professional trappings of other business functions. If FS organisations are to adapt and prosper into the future, this is not just desirable, it’s essential.
About the author
Malte Scholz is the founder and CEO of airfocus, the creator of the world’s first flexible and modular product management platform, supporting product strategy and management in firms of any size or sector.
