What does customer-oriented product development mean? It means consistently using the innovative ideas obtained from customers and incorporating them directly into the product development process (PDP). The individual value and overall customer experience of a wealth of functions is central. What does this mean for you? The product development should be as customer-oriented as possible, but how do you turn your customers into integrated partners in the PDP?
If you want to launch successful products, you should no longer be developing these for your customers, but with them.
Shorter innovation cycles. More complex functions. Cost pressures. What is your recipe for being one step ahead of the competition? Linearity no longer exists in the product development process. Successful products and innovations are characterized by one thing: they are developed in the digital world and together with the customer. This applies to end-consumers as well as internal users. The customer is already involved in the product vision - in person or as a digital twin. During product development and product use, they continuously provide feedback at the level of development. The transformation into product improvements and added value for the customer is becoming the core capability of successful companies. Are you prepared?
Who said this will be easy: Cultural change. Process networking. Analytical intelligence.
Digital or physical products: What determines whether a promising product idea becomes a market success or flop? It is the essence of Customer Driven Product Development: The customer becomes a developer in an agile organization. What this can look like and which challenges need to be solved, can be read below:
Undetected defects in the development process cost companies one thing above all - a lot of money. With each additional step in the value-creation chain, costs for correcting errors increase by a factor of 10. The most common sources of error in the development process are: data inconsistencies, a deficient geometry protection and incomplete BOM configurations. Increase the quality of your virtual development levels by introducing a customizable hardware mock-up or a central data platform.
The only way a product developer can assess their product from the customer's point of view is by using new technologies, such as mixed reality, the developer is able to change the perspective. Hardware construction and VR glasses make it possible to immediately validate conceptual and constructive changes. At the same time, the possibilities of the Internet of Things (IoT) should be exploited too, because intelligent components return information about their use and environmental conditions (e.g. temperature, duration) via RFID chips. The cloud is a central information platform and makes the ubiquitous retrieval of data possible. It is your task to integrate this data directly into your PEP.
Specification, design, implementation, test - waterfall is a thing of the past. Currently, the lifetime of software products decreases quickly and the latest “App” of today is already outdated tomorrow. The customer expects a reconsideration. They want to write their requirements directly into the backlog of the development project. They want to try new product features early. Agile approaches form an ideal framework for this. Feedback loops are designed by individual target groups of self-organized and cross-functional teams. PEP synchronization takes place in shorter cycles. In many companies, a reevaluation of the process has already taken place. The focus: offering customers a beta version of the new product features for testing at an early stage. During use, the company receives valuable data on technical maturity and system stability and not to mention the knowledge of real customer needs and wishes.
Traditional manufacturers of hardware and software products are losing their unique selling propositions due to increasing competition. They need to create new added value for their customers. Hybrid products are increasingly popular and successfully developing them is even more complex. Various areas of product, software and service development are involved. An agile PEP offers the possibility of optimally aligning the various development cycles with the respective components. Proven agile approaches also enable customer-oriented product development in hardware development. This shortens the entire development process and creates added value for the customer at a significantly earlier point in time.
Customer Driven Product Development: Our services in a nutshell.
- A customer-oriented product development requires willingness to open up the PDP to customers.
- We ensure an interactive and interdisciplinary product development.
- We bring agility into your PDP - for software, hardware and hybrid products.
- With Data Analytics you already know the customer of tomorrow.
If you want to develop unique products in a fast and cost-effective way in the future, turn your customers into collaborative partners in the product development process. Use the interaction with the customers as a compass for new product innovations and initiate the internal change to an agile organization.
