An iconic consumer brand needed more discipline around the developement of new products and services.

Product failures, a slow pace of innovation and weak prioritization of resources were impairing this iconic consumer brand from achieving its potential. The root cause was a lack of structure around how products were developed, launched and optimized.

Lack of clarity around how products were brought
to market created siloed decision-making resulting
in tension and conflict amongst senior members of the management team.

The organization now has a clear process for ensuring that ideas are fully developed before resources are allocated to building and launching products. Each milestone in the process of bringing a product to market is clearly defined and the requirements for gaining organizational support are clear. The transparency that accompanies this allows each member of the executive team to have clear visibility into all projects in the pipeline and ensures that resources are consistently applied to developing the best ideas.

We worked with a cross-functional group to analyze and understand how products had been taken to market in the past. This insight into the organization’s capabilities and how it makes decisions informed the design of a product development process that fit with the organization’s needs and culture. The deliverables included a series of guidelines and templates to define the process and a change management plan to embed a new level of collaboration, organizational memory and analytical rigour in how products are brought to market.