Examples of iconic brands from the past losing dominant market share positions as a result of failure to remain current with consumer preferences are countless. For example, the onslaught of smartphones and the rise of an app economy that was software-centric resulted in many mobile phone companies going out of business. Most of the lost battles had inadequate planning, lack of a clear roadmap and strategy as the prime driver behind organizations failing to act in time to re-invigorate its mature market products or to jump on the next market opportunity.
Thus, it is imperative to understand the thin line between product maturity and product decline by tapping into deep insights from consumer behavior at the right time. Let's examine a few important factors that could help in product sustenance and re-invigoration allowing for more sustained revenue streams for an organization.
MAINTAIN
-
Product maintenance and ownership: To ensure that the buyer remorse is minimal for a brand while keeping up with the technology trends, it is essential to pay attention to various stages of the product offering. It's vital that the product is up to date and competitive. Factors like release management, new feature releases or upgraded product support needs should be continuously monitored and maintained while ensuring the security. Understanding when to move a product into a stable release cycle will in-turn aid in identifying when high-value resources can be redeployed to new products that need their innovation focus versus the needs core products that have been in the market for some time.
-
Migrating from legacy infrastructures: Cutting edge technology coupled with diverse technology experience of skilled professionals allows for easier migration of complex platforms to new-age infrastructure. It allows for predictive maintenance instead of preventive maintenance thereby reducing the total cost of ownership and eventually increasing profitability as well as helping to improve customer satisfaction. Remote maintenance with the help of technologies like AI, AR and VR that allows for easy simulations of real-life scenarios can go a long way in enhancing the lifespan and relevance of product in the market.
UPDATE
-
Product and technology upgrade: When customer outcomes are at the core of product sustenance, product re-engineering helps align people and process by integrating customer insights to improve product performance and address pain-points. Integrating digital enablers like social and analytics in the product lifecycle management process and technology refresh helps provide better scalability, faster releases and other customizations. Services like app enhancements and over the air updates with changing technology can drive customer trust and delight.
-
Process re-engineering: Responding to changing consumer demand in this era of digitalization needs speed. Agility can bridge the lag in demand and supply while also helping improve product evolutions with constant feedback from the user. Companies adopting the agile and DevOps model can shorten their turn-around times for an evolving product or features while also ensuring a better user experience. Replacing traditional approaches with Agile also provides quicker defect resolution, by relying on the accelerated and better-automated environment.
INNOVATE
-
Customer retention: With customer retention becoming the core for all businesses, continuously innovating around customer service and increased personalization can ensure a steady customer base that readily samples the new introductions in the market based on its previous experience. This paves way for further innovation giving organizations an enthusiastic bunch of early adopters for its trials that are well researched and based on detailed customer journeys. For example, customers will prefer to download a new app from a known organization that values customer trust and security rather than experimenting with new partners.
- Market share: An increase in the customer base of an organization can extend the lifecycle of a product. When a product has reached the maturity stage, finding new use cases or a new unchartered market often helps to extend product revenue while maximizing margins.
It is essential for any organization to continuously explore avenues to deliver the best experience to its' customer based on their stage in the customer journey. Organizations, therefore, need to choose the right approach backed by data analysis on whether to replace, repurpose or rebuild. HARMAN's experience in transforming, modernizing, and integrating existing solutions while building new capabilities faster and cheaper to help sustain in the market for longer is unparalleled.
You can reach out to us for tailor-made solutions to suit your business needs and customer expectations that are insight driven. In case you would like more information, feel free to drop us a line here or on LinkedIn/Twitter.
