The Top Reasons Mid-Sized Companies Need Product Development Firms
Companies often believe outsourcing product development is something that’s only for small companies just starting out. This simply isn’t true. Product development firms offer a number of advantages that can be a huge help to companies of any size. Here are the top four reasons mid-sized companies need product development firms.
1) Lighten Your Workload
Bringing in an outside product development firm can help you lighten your team’s workload. There’s a good chance that you’re working on multiple projects at the same time and hiring an outside firm to deal with the development of one or more of the products will give your employees the time and energy to focus on other products. Even if you’re only working on developing one product at a time, hiring a product development team will allow your employees to spend more time in other areas of your business.
2) Meet Deadlines
Because your employees are busy with other projects, working with a product development firm can help you stay on track and meet your deadlines. Hiring a product development firm gives you many more resources to draw on. You’ll benefit from added expertise and manpower which will speed up the time it takes to develop your product so you can meet your deadline without sacrificing the quality of your product. You can stop worrying about meeting your deadline and focus on the other areas of your business that require your attention.
3) Increase Resources
The ideal product development team should include experts from various backgrounds but sometimes all areas of the product development process don’t fall within the expertise of in-house staff. Here’s where working with an outside product development team can really help. A product development team will increase the resources available to your team. Product development firms have everything needed to complete the entire product development process so whether you are just getting started or stuck somewhere during the process, a product development firm can help keep you moving forward.
4) Gain a Competitive Edge
A product development firm brings with it the expertise, contacts, and resources to help your company compete on a global level. By today’s standards, competing on a global level is necessary to ensure your product’s success. Product development firms have knowledge of how to design products for global markets, how to meet global product compliance requirements and can provide global manufacturing and distribution services which can save you countless hours of headaches if you’ve never dealt with these things on a global scale.
Partnering with a product development firm can help your company lighten the workload, meet deadlines, increase resources, and gain a competitive edge. Now that you know the benefits of working with product development firms for mid-sized companies, you won’t be surprised to learn that large companies can benefit from outsourcing product development as well.
Whether your company is mid-sized, small, or large, Pivot International can help with your product development. We are a global product design and manufacturing firm specializing in software development, electrical and electronics product design, mechanical and electromechanical product design, and industrial design services. To learn more about how we can help with your product development, contact us today.
How to Make Sure Your Second Product is as Successful as Your First
There’s nothing like the pressure of creating a second product after experiencing major success with your first. Unfortunately, many companies fall into the trap of letting that pressure push them into developing and launching new products before those products have been thoroughly vetted.
This is often called “second product syndrome.” It usually happens a few months after your first product is launched and can result from taking on a second product before the setbacks that happened as a result of the first product are fully resolved.
Don’t let second product syndrome derail your efforts. Here are a few things you can do to make sure your second product is just as good as – or better than – your first.
Keep testing
You need to make sure you test your second product as much as you tested your first. Take your time working with your prototype to make sure you have a solid design. Great design is the foundation of a great product. Conducting adequate testing will make sure any bugs are worked out before taking the product to market.
Having an experienced mentor as a product designer can help identify design problems early on as well as provide objective insights regarding your design. You’ll also benefit from their experience and moral support.
In addition to testing your hypotheses and design, you’ll also want to test the market. Customers don’t purchase things they don’t want so you’ll want to make sure your second product is in demand in your target market.
It’s important not to assume that the market research conducted for your first product is applicable to your second. Market segments for your first and second products might not overlap. Be sure to conduct appropriate and careful market research so you’ll have good feedback as to whether or not there is a demand for your product.
Stay out of your head
Fear of failure can be detrimental to any business – yet so can overconfidence. A good business development strategy can help balance these two opposing issues. A fear of failure leads entrepreneurs and inventors to minimize risk which may lead to testing on a smaller subset of consumers than necessary, not giving a true picture of market demand.
Overconfidence on the other hand, can lead a team to rely too heavily on data obtained during the first product launch. They may decide they already have enough information and neglect to conduct a more thorough, focused analysis. Here’s where hiring an objective product development team can really help.
Keep things lean
Once you have a successful product under your belt, it can be tempting to go all out and spare no expense when creating and launching your second product.
This can be a big mistake. It’s important to be just as cautious with costs while working on your second product, so that you don’t eat up all the profits from your first venture.
At Pivot, we offer many product design and development services as well as business development and market research. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you with your second product.
Mistakes to Avoid in the New Product Development Process
New product development takes a lot of work, but it can result in impressive ROI. It’s important to take your time and make sure the development process is handled properly to avoid costly errors. Here are a few mistakes to avoid during the new product development process to make sure your new product is as successful as possible.
Letting Costs Get Out of Hand
If your product development costs get out of hand, it’s going to be difficult to price your product at a price-point where consumers will purchase it and you’ll still turn a profit. Be sure and create a budget for product development at the start of the process and then check in periodically to make sure you are sticking to the budget.
It’s easier to address budget issues as you go, than to get to the end of the project and realize costs are much higher than expected. At the end of a project, it’s really too late to adjust those costs, and you risk losing money if customers don’t buy your product at the price you want to sell it for. Price is driven by cost, so be sure and keep track of all your costs.
Ignoring Changes in the Market
Getting customers to buy your product is easy if they see your product as having value. The product development process can take a long time. Nine months to two years is not an unreasonable time for product development. Sometimes market conditions change from the time you start work on your product to the time you finish. It’s important to monitor the market while you’re in the new product development stage so you can adjust your product if necessary. Sometimes your original design specs will need to be adjusted during the product development stage.
You’ll want to keep an eye on what other companies are doing too. Announcements from your competitors may change your plans and cause you to make adjustments to your new product before it’s out of the development stage.
Rushing the Process
Of course you’re eager to get your product out onto the market, but rushing the process isn’t going to help you. When you rush, things get missed and steps get skipped. It’s important that your new product goes through all the proper testing and meets all the required safety standards so it doesn’t fail when it hits the market. Sacrificing testing in order to meet a launch date isn’t worth facing potential safety recalls down the road. A focus on consumer safety can save your product from a disastrous launch.
When it comes to new product development, it doesn’t pay to let costs get out of control, ignore market changes, or rush the process. Pivot International provides various new product development services, including project management, to make sure your product is the best it can be when it hits the market. If you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed by the whole process, contact us today to learn how we can help you avoid mistakes during the new product development process.
How to Assemble the Ideal Product Development Team
Even mid-sized, experienced product development companies can come across difficulties when it comes to putting together effective product development teams.
When you’re expanding into a new market, or trying to redesign a finished product, you may find that you need a team with a new perspective. Here are a few tips for assembling a solid product development team.
What does an ideal product development team do?
The ideal product development team facilitates communication, shares ideas, and identifies constraints early on in the process to ensure the successful development of your product in a timely fashion and at the highest quality possible.
Product development teams should be formed at the very beginning of the product design process, include team members from a variety of backgrounds, keep core members limited, and ensure members have experience working in a team environment.
Tip #1: Involve team members early
To avoid making many changes after a product has been designed, it’s important to assemble a product development team as early in the product development process as possible. Factors such as design cycle time and product development cost should be considered at the very start of product development and incorporated as the product is designed.
Tip #2: Include members from a variety of functions
A cross-functional team includes team members from different specialty areas. Rather than having a team full of design engineers, it’s helpful to also include team members from production and support functions. This will help in designing both the product and the processes required to produce the product. The team as a whole should be able to speak to factors such as marketability, producibility, cost, and testability, so it makes sense to include team members from all of these areas.
Tip #3: Keep core members limited
The larger a team is, the harder it is to coordinate activities and schedule meetings. The ideal team size is generally 8 to 10 core members, but it’s important to balance this with the above objective of ensuring team members are representative of more than one functional area.
Tip #4: Build group problem solving skills
Team members should have experience working in a group environment. People that have never worked together before will go through some adjustments regardless of how much team experience they have.
Educational psychologist, Bruce Tuckman, has noted that all teams go through the same four stages: forming, storming, norming, and performing. No matter how experienced each team member is, or how long they’ve worked at your company, it will take some time for everyone to adjust to working as a team.
Effective teams need to be able to problem solve as a group. It would be advantageous for your product development team to spend some time together through workshops or formal team building training before the product development project gets underway.
If your team is stalled, or if you don’t have the internal resources you need for a particular product, take a look at Pivot’s product development and design services. And for more on this topic, read our post “4 Common Product Development Mistakes.”
How Open Innovation is Speeding Up the Product Development Process
Though it’s still far from a quick process, product development has come a long way over the last two or three decades. What was once an arduous process involving slow-moving manufacturing methods and seemingly endless bureaucratic entanglements has become faster than ever, thanks to a series of technical innovations and a new pro-business stance around the world.
Last year, the Wall Street Journal’sBob Tita wrote an extensive article about the state of product developmentin the modern business world, and his reporting revealed one of the reasons behind this new wave of rapid product development.
Open innovation
One of the new ideas that Tita mentioned when discussing a company called First Build in Louisville, KY (which designs and builds kitchen appliances, selling products all over the world) was the concept of open innovation.
It’s a process in which the company reached out beyond its own Research & Development department and sought out ideas from their other, non-R&D employees, other business partners that they worked with, and even the consumers themselves in an effort to bring new ideas to the table more quickly.
Tita notes that in many cases, this process has shortened the product development process from years to months.
This is far from the only company engaging in open innovation, however. Outdoor outfitter REI is crowdsourcing its product development, and other product development organizations are following suit.
Origins of open innovation
The idea of open innovation stems from, perhaps not surprisingly, Silicon Valley, where many of the world’s greatest new ideas have come from over the last few decades. It emerged in the early 2000s, when many companies realized thatthe race to come up with new ideas and new products was moving so quicklythat they didn’t have time to continue doing so through the normal channels that most businesses had gotten used to over the previous century.
What they needed was as much information and as many ideas as possible, and by expanding their net outside the traditional research and development they were doing, they were able to supercharge the innovation process.
Spreading idea of ideas
Open innovation didn’t take long to catch on at major companies all over the world.
At Airbus,for example, a company that specializes in aerospace manufacturing, 2016 saw the company beginning a new project based on building a cargo-carrying drone. The difference is that the designs for the drone came from over 425 different proposals from people who did not work for the company at all, let alone in their Research & Development department.
And in an open innovation situation, even weeding out design flaws is a shorter process than normal. That’s because a company is more likely to discard or revise an idea presented to them by someone not connected with the company.
The idea of exposing flaws within an in-house design system is harder for a company to do than to simply take an idea that they have little investment or stake in and break down what works or what doesn’t about the idea.
It might sound like a bit of a cruel reality to those who participate in open innovation, but it’s undeniable that a more objective examination of ideas hassignificantly sped up the process of product development.
Working open innovation into existing systems
One of the most interesting wrinkles in the development of open innovation programs is how some corporations have been able to maintain two different approaches to product development.
Siemens, for example, the huge industrial conglomerate, has created two different tracks of development within their company with two different staffs. One is in the traditional research and development model, and the other is anopen innovation approach, proving that there’s no need to abandon one idea in favor of embracing another one.
Want to learn more about how product design is evolving? Read “The Most Influential Product Design Trends on the Horizon.”
Developing a Software Product? Here’s What to Keep in Your Inventor’s Notebook
You finally did it: You’ve brainstormed and researched and worked yourself silly, and you’ve finally come up with that new, unprecedented idea for a software system or electronic product. And you can’t wait to get started making it a reality. The only question now is where to start. Do you investigate the patent process? Seek out investors? Begin assembling your design and engineering teams?
Well, if you want to keep things as efficient as possible, the first thing you probably need to do is begin your inventor’s notebook. This is the organizer and repository for all of the ideas and plans from your new electronic product or software.
An inventor’s notebook really serves two purposes. It puts all your information in one convenient place, but it also can provide crucial legal documentation if someone challenges your patent or copyright further down the line.
Here are some tips on how to best maintain your inventor’s notebook.
Keep it simple
Just because you’ve come up with a great tech idea doesn’t mean your notebook has to be high tech. All you really need is a good notebook and some writing utensils. Just make sure you’re working with a notebook where the pages aren’t loose-leaf, so you can document your process step-by-step and keep things in order.
A dated, well-organized notebook is essential, and it will need to be with you at all times during this process, so the simpler it is, the better.
Be descriptive
It might be tempting to work in a kind of shorthand when it comes to your notes, simply because you’re so familiar with your idea. But remember, this is a complex software program or electronic device you’ve created, and people working on it in the future are going to need as much detail as possible. Even if it seems tedious, it’s important to fully document and describe every aspect of your invention.
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Have you spoken with friends, advisors or investors about your software or electronic product? Have you had any meetings to plan out a design or marketing strategy? If so, make sure a section of your inventor’s notebook is dedicated to recording those conversations and when they occurred.
Remember, this isn’t just about keeping your ideas in one easy-to-access place. An inventor’s notebook is for your protection, as well, and the more you record about who you’ve spoken to and what you spoke to them about, the better. This creates a timeline that could be indispensable if someone challenges the originality of your idea.
Write down marketing ideas
To keep you from getting off track while developing your new tech idea, it might be a good idea to have your target audience written down in your notebook. That way, as you’re refining the idea, you can always go back to that entry and measure the changes you’re making in your product against what the expectations of your audience might be.
It’s always important to keep the market for your product in mind, particularly in the ever-evolving software and electronics fields. The audience is not a target you want your product launch to miss.
Be consistent
Even if your product development is moving along at a good pace and the ideas are still flowing, it’s important to make sure you’re documenting every step of the process in your notebook. Even if it slows down the development of your tech idea, you will need to be able to show each step of the process later on to your engineers and design team.
As the project reaches its end, in a rush of impatience or excitement, it might be tempting to leave the inventor’s notebook behind. This is a mistake that could cost you valuable information (or documentation) later.
Once you’ve finished up that inventor’s notebook and gotten your new electronic product or software design as far as you can on your own, let Pivot International help you take it the rest of the way. Learn about our business development services here.
How to Inspire Your Stalled Product Development Team
There’s so much adrenaline and excitement in the early phases of a product launch that it can be easy to think that things will always be that way throughout the process. A new idea or innovation can be such a thrilling thing, and the idea of taking that idea from the drawing board to the finish line is bound to be a shot of adrenaline for a creative team.
Unfortunately, that initial wave of ideas and excitement can, and sometimes does fade. Then you’re left with a creative team that’s suddenly stalled out and seems to have no new ideas about your product.
Given the amount of work, and probably sleepless nights, that have gone into the development of a new product, fatigue is bound to set in eventually. But the question is, how do you get your development team back up and running?
This is a situation where time is of the essence, so what’s probably best is a quick-fix. After all, the more time you lose getting your product to the marketplace, the easier it might be for the competition to get there first.
Here are a few possible ways to get your developers back on track to creating that product that they were all once so excited about.
Talk to your sales staff
What kind of reactions is your sales staff getting from consumers about your product? Their answers and opinions might be just the thing you need, and here’s why: If your development team is stuck on what direction to move in with your product, hearing what seems to be appealing to consumers, and what isn’t, might be a great way to kickstart their innovation again.
There are bound to be ideas about your product, or tweaks that can be made to it, that the consumers have thought of and the development team hasn’t. Why not take a look at them and see if there’s anything that can cause your team to get that spark back.
After all, these are the people you’re aiming your product towards. Taking your cues from them is probably the best idea anyway, and it may fuel a whole new wave of innovation from your team.
And don’t let that feedback be a one-time-only thing. Going back as your product is developed and getting an idea of what the consumers want from your product is a great idea whether your development team is struggling or not.
Talk about what’s going to be different about your product (and your company)
It goes without saying that this team of developers has been doing a lot of hard work, and without a lot of immediate results, maybe that’s causing some frustration among them. After all, product development doesn’t necessarily show a lot of action right away.
So it might be a good idea to remind them what’s great, and what’s exciting, about this product that they’re working on. How people’s lives are going to be better or easier once it comes out, or how it’s going to affect THEIR lives if the product is a success.
Let them know how their vision will affect the product (and your company)
It might seem for a developer sometimes that they are trapped in a theoretical bubble with little physical effect on your company. That’s the worst thing for them to think, because as you know, they’re one of the most vital parts of your business.
Talk to these developers about what your employees are doing with their suggestions, or depending on where they are related to your manufacturing center, why not take them and show them what their ideas have created? That’s bound to refresh their creative energies.
Remember, Pivot International can help you with your product development issues and a whole host of your other manufacturing needs, from engineering to regulation compliance and beyond. Click here to find out more information about what we can do for your business.
How to Conduct Solid Market Research for Your Product on a Shoestring Budget
It’s probably one of the cruelest ironies of creating and marketing a product: the time period between the development and sales of your product, when you’ll likely have the least amount of money to spend on anything but the most essential aspects of manufacturing your product.
But you’ll need todo some market research to figure out how to sell what you’re making. That’s going to cost money, and you may not have much to spare depending on how deep your investors’ (and your own) pockets are.
Good market research can be done without breaking the bank, though, and we’ve listed some ways to do it below.
Interviews
You can use your existing staff and some savvy social media to do some informal market research by just talking to people.
Through Facebook or Twitter or whichever platform you prefer, ask for volunteers to have a conversation about your new product. Give them details about what you’ll be talking about, how long it will take, what possible incentives you’ll be offering, and make sure to include a link where they can get more information or contact you if need be.
Surveys
There are several great options out there for creating an online survey (SurveyMonkey, for example) that can help you hone your marketing strategy and see what might work and what might not. Online surveys are a much more convenient and less expensive way to ask consumers about their preferences.
Use your own website
Why not invite people to visit your product’s website, if you’ve created one already, and answer a few questions about what appeals to them? You’ll be in a position to give more details about your product and its launch than you typically would on social media, and nothing’s wrong with increasing traffic to your website.
It’s really a win-win to give people a better look at both your product and your online platform for selling and promoting it, and you’ll have some handy information from the consumers on how to proceed with getting their attention and selling to the right people.
Hone your questions
What do you really need to know right now about how to market your product, and what can wait? If you are investing in market research on a tight budget, keep in mind that quality and quantity are not always the same thing.
What questions can be eliminated from your marketing process? What can wait until further down the road? How can you make your goals more specific to weed out unnecessary (and more expensive) information that might not be of use to you?
Those are the questions to consider. Less can often be more.
Trust your instincts
What need were you thinking of when you created your product? What role did you see your product filling in the marketplace? Why did you make what you’ve made?
You’ve done this for a reason. You’ve taken on a big risk and a difficult task because you believe in what you’ve created and what you can do with it. Doesn’t it stand to reason that someone else feels that way, too?
This product is something you’re excited about, right? There are reasons why, and that could apply to others out in the world, as well.
Don’t stop once you’ve launched
Feedback might be the most important thing to consider when it comes the health of your business. There’s no reason to stop seeking it once your product has been launched. In fact, the early responses you get are extremely important because they can guide how you proceed.
Listening to what your customers want becomes even more vital once the product is out there. There’s nothing more valuable than hands-on experience, and the consumers will be all too happy to let you know how they feel once they’ve used your product.
Read more about getting feedback on your new product in our blog post “How to Tell if Your New Product is Good Enough to Make It.”
Make a New Year’s Resolution to Develop That Product You’ve Been Thinking About
If you’re one of the many people who have a great idea for a product, but haven’t figured out how to make it a reality, then 2017 could be your year. Why not make developing that product your New Year’s resolution?
One reason many people don’t finish – or even start! – developing a product they’ve been thinking about for years is that they don’t know exactly how the process works. How do you get a prototype? How do you find a manufacturer? How do you pitch your product to stores?
At Pivot, we deal with the entire product lifecycle from start to finish, which means we can help you no matter where in the process you are.
So if you’re an inventor or product developer, take a look below for some ideas of how Pivot can serve you, depending on where you are in the product development process.
You have a developed idea for a product, but not much more.
Let’s say you’ve been thinking for years about a product you want to create, but you haven’t taken any concrete steps toward developing it.
Pivot’s engineers and designers can help you bring that idea to life. We’ve got a team of industrial designers, mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, and software developers who are able to take your idea and fashion it into a working, functional design.
We’ve worked with people who want lots of input into the development process, and others who want to do little more than sign off on the finished design. Whatever your preference, our design team and project consultants can work with you to take your product through the design phase and on toward becoming a tangible, finished product.
You have a working design, but don’t know how to proceed.
Maybe you’ve got a workable design that you want to take further, but you’re stuck at the prototyping stage.
Nowadays, prototyping doesn’t have to be a long and involved process. Thanks to technology like computer aided design (CAD) and 3D printing, rapid prototyping is widely available. This allows you to go from a computer design to a full, three-dimensional scale prototype much more quickly than in the past.
Of course, if you need a prototype that can’t be created on a 3D printer, that’s possible too. Pivot can ensure that you get whatever prototype you need to move forward in your project.
You have a product that you need to rework, redesign, or cut costs for.
Maybe you’ve already gone through the entire product development and manufacturing process – maybe you’re even a pro at it.
But even the best of us need help now and then when we’re trying to redesign an existing product. It can be hard to step out of our own perspective and look at a product objectively, with an eye to making improvements or using new materials.
Pivot is experienced in helping product developers update legacy products, identify and implement cost-cutting measures, and even rescue struggling products.
You need help setting up a company to sell your product.
Developing a product is one thing – setting up a company is another thing entirely. Each action requires a different set of skills, so it’s no wonder that often, people who may be product development wizards need some help when it comes to putting together a business.
We’ve got consultants and business experts who can help with everything from your website to strategic planning and market research. We even wrote an ebook about creating a thriving product-based business that you can download for free.
Taking a product from idea to reality is a challenge, but having the right partner can make it all much easier. If you’ve got a product you’re waiting to develop, stop waiting – make this year the one when you make it happen.
The Advantages of Choosing a Single-Source Product Development Firm
So you’ve made the decision to outsource your product development. Congratulations! You’re increasing your chances of product success by bringing experienced professionals into the process.
But now, you’ve got another decision to make, and it will determine which of two paths you continue down. One path leads to multiple different companies, each of which handles one aspect of your product development process. If we were to visualize this path, you could look down it and see lots of little branches coming off of it – one goes to an engineering firm, another to a manufacturer, another to a market research company, and on and on.
The second path leads to a single-source product development firm. This one looks a bit different: instead of multiple branching pathways, this one is straight and easy to follow, and leads directly to one single company.
If you were to guess which path would give you the smoothest path toward getting your product to market, which would you choose? We’re guessing you’d say the single-source path – it’s certainly the most direct. But that’s not the only reason so many product developers choose single-source development companies when they’re outsourcing their product development.
Increased efficiency
Using multiple companies on a single project involves a great deal of back-and-forth – and if you don’t have a separate project manager, that back-and-forth all has to go through you.
Instead of explaining your product idea once, you have to explain it multiple times, ensuring that each vendor you’re using understands the complexities of your project. If questions arise while one of your vendors is working on the project, you’ll either have to answer them yourself, or get the answers from another vendor. This can pretty quickly become exhausting and time-consuming.
A single-source firm, however, will usually assign a project manager to your project, and it’s that person who will serve as the point of contact throughout the process. Since this person will become intimately familiar with the details of your project, he or she will be able to answer many questions about the project on his or her own. That means you spend a lot less time answering questions about specs, materials, and other basic information about your product.
In addition, a single-source firm already has established contacts and partners, and they’ll be ready to work on your project as soon as the product is ready.
This can take a huge amount of pressure off of you, as you won’t be searching for vendors for weeks or even months while your product sits and waits to enter the next stage of development.
Lower costs
Because of its streamlined approach, a single-source product development firm will generally result in significantly lower costs than using many different companies.
One reason for this is that part of what you’re paying when you pay outside firms is the project’s start-up and administrative costs: getting your project’s files into the company’s system, onboarding any staff who will be working on the project, etc.
You pay these costs with a single-source firm too, of course, but you only have to pay them once. That means the rest of your money is going toward actual product development.
And money isn’t the only resource you save with a single-source partner. You’ll also save a lot of time getting your product to market, which is vital when you’re trying to out-compete your competitors.
Increased accountability
Single-source firms know that if your project goes off-schedule, there are only two possible players to blame: the client or the firm. Single-source product developers are therefore ready to take accountability if mistakes are made, deadlines are missed, or communication loses focus. Unless the client made a major change or didn’t provide information, there’s really no one else who bears responsibility.
Because of that, single-source firms maintain strict accountability among their employees and departments. This is especially important when you’re dealing with changes to a design, or a second round of prototypes.
That’s not to say that other companies won’t be accountable for what they do, but it’s can be more difficult to pinpoint where things got off track when five or six or more companies are involved in the process.
If you’re thinking of outsourcing your product development, schedule a free consultation with Pivot to learn more about how single-sourcing your process can increase your chances of success.
