Digital Offerings Continue To Rise

Digital transformation is all around us. Autonomous tractors, smart elevators, and robot lawnmowers are examples of how purpose-built machinery has been integrated with technology to offer increased value to buyers and users. Other digital products such as employee mobile support applications, executive dashboards, and online tax software have improved the speed and flexibility of business user journeys. Even digital offerings such as a firewall service, an insurance quoting engine, and an internet router management application are just as important for user engagement and the overall digital experience, yet these are sometimes not thought of as digital offerings.

What is causing this rise? First, B2B buyers expect the products we use at work to be just as easy, intuitive, and pleasing to use as the products we use in our consumer lives. The pandemic has increased the demand for offerings that provide touchless engagement. Additionally, with the democratization of software development, it is easier than ever for non-tech organizations to create and launch digital solutions. Finally, in industries such as financial services, where traditional products are somewhat commoditized, organizations that add digital offerings can stand out from the competition.

Digital Product Management Drives Successful Digital Offerings

Organizations expect digital offerings to drive organizational growth and customer-centricity. Not all digital offerings are managed like traditional offerings, however. Digital offerings may have project managers to oversee day-to-day tasks such as adding new capabilities or fixing bugs, and product marketing may be involved in go-to-market activities. While these roles are important for the overall lifecycle of a digital offering, product management responsibilities can ensure long-term success.

When product management is deployed to oversee digital offerings, organizations will have a resource to evaluate customer and stakeholder feedback and to identify evolving customer needs. These key activities are required to ensure that digital offerings continue to provide value. Additionally, product management will also guide the management of trade-offs through the development process and ensure that the evolution of a digital offering aligns with overall product and business strategy. Organizations that put product management at the center of balancing discovery and delivery for their key digital offerings will drive better decision-making, resulting in greater customer-centricity and commercial success.

Improve Customer-Centric Growth Of Digital Offerings

An organization can have many types of digital solutions (e.g., commercial, value-add, internal), and product leaders must decide the level of digital product management responsibilities that are beneficial for each. Consider the following key steps to leverage digital product management within your organization:

  1. Catalog digital offerings by long-term customer value. Catalog the current set of digital offerings and seek to define the customer value they each provide. Product leaders can then organize digital offerings by the level of long-term customer value delivered, as offerings that provide customer value at length will have a deeper need for digital product management.
  2. Select digital offerings that need product management. From the catalogued list, product leaders can now select the offerings for which product management responsibilities are critical for success. Product leaders should review each digital offering to determine the number of users served and the regular pace of change in customer needs. This information identifies digital offerings that engage multiple end users and whose capabilities have a medium-to-high regular pace of change.
  3. Focus on key digital product management responsibilities. The selected list of offerings will need digital product management to sustain high growth, manage costs, and deliver value to customers and stakeholders. Product leaders should deploy continuous product management upskilling to develop key competencies around identifying market opportunities, defining the digital offerings to address those opportunities, establishing the strategy and roadmap, and managing continuous growth.

To continue the conversation and learn more about how to effectively manage digital offerings and develop strong digital product managers, reach out to us.