In my last post, I stated that the most important factor in being a customer intimate company is defining the right set of target customers. So, what else is important in making the transition to implementing a customer intimacy strategy? The next step is the reengineering of three key customer related processes: product management, results management and customer relationship management.

I believe product management is a key process for all B2B companies and is the most important business process for a technology company. None of the ten companies that Consona has acquired were executing product management the way that it should be at a technology company. The problem in every case was that customer involvement in the product management process was very minimal. Sure, customers input their product change requests, but their involvement in the process to determine how CRs were incorporated into future product releases was little to none. During due diligence, one of the companies we acquired told me that their approach to including customers in the product management process was to meet for half an hour with customers that visited their headquarters. It turned out that only a handful of customer visited each year, which meant they were obtaining minimal input from 2-3% of their entire customer base.

Unfortunately, a fairly common attitude in the software industry is that customers should not be involved in product management because they will drive the process toward minimal functionality improvements versus significant innovation. My comment regarding this attitude is, “Please. That is just an excuse.” Involving customers in every phase of product management and development can make the process longer and is hard work, but the resulting solution is definitely a better fit for customers and provides them with more value. Product companies can definitely involve customers in both product development and innovation. Customers should be involved from the product vision phase all the way through to product release. Documents can be provided and online meeting technology can be used to obtain concurrent input from a significant number of customers. Customers should be providing input on the features to be included in a new product or release, reviewing process flows and feature designs, as well as testing initial product versions.

The best resources that I have found for product management are the Pragmatic Marketing Framework from a company called Pragmatic Marketing (http://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/pragmatic-marketing-framework) as well as a book called “Crossing the Chasm” by Geoffrey Moore. Moore’s Whole Product concept is an excellent concept to apply in delivering the entire solution that customers need to be successful.