Positioning of the product portfolio necessary? Do you need an expert at short notice to analyze, streamline and further develop your product portfolio and sharpen the customer value proposition?
Problem description:
You have a redundant, incomplete or no longer competitive product portfolio due to:
- changed market and customer requirements
- a merger with other companies that are active in the same market segment, manufacture similar products and thus there is a high level of redundancy
- lack of innovations
- parallel existence and competition of old and new product generations
- increasing competition with simultaneously decreasing technical and cost advantages of your products as well as blurring of your own customer value proposition
Analysis:
This problem also requires an intensive analysis of the status quo and the recording of all relevant external and internal influencing factors:
- Customer and market requirements
- Legal requirements & regulations
- Own strategies: company, customer, market, development & production strategy
- Technical performance, degree of maturity, quality level and market acceptance of the products
- Cost & price level and profitability of the respective products
- technical & price benchmarking
Solution:
The products in the portfolio are going to be compared with one another on the basis of the above factors. The results are going to be discussed with the internally involved departments and decision-makers. Through this the future “winning products” as well as the obsolete products are going to be defined and potential gaps in the portfolio are identified. If necessary, the Product Road Map must be expanded by further developments, additions or innovations.
An intensive, internal alignment is therefore particularly necessary in order to avoid a later, covert opposition to majority decisions. This is particularly important after an M&A so that the impression does not arise that the products of the larger partner are preferred. An objective and purely data-based analysis, argumentation and decision process reduce such resistance.
In addition, the customer value proposition of the strategic products should be checked and sharpened, because it is the key to differentiation from the competition. Especially in highly competitive industries such as automotive, it is important to position yourself as a solution provider in order to differentiate yourself from the me-too products in the global market. And this shows the great importance of technical sales in the original sense, which can argue in depth beyond pure price-cost discussions.
Thanks to my experience and expertise in product management and sales, I can also provide you with competent support in such tasks, which I have demonstrated very successfully, for example, in my previous work at ADIENT.