Achieving the balance of engaging the consumer and building a relationship through the product lifecycle could be groundbreaking for businesses and individuals but many companies are still scared of giving the consumer a voice without control and so levels of adoption are limited.

Is it as simple as they would have to consider how they collate ideas from the public? How they screen these ideas and how they can keep the consumer involved through development & launch without their competitors taking their ideas and bringing them to market faster & cheaper?

There are toes in the water…

Unilever are giving people the opportunity to create adverts for their biggest Brands

Ford have set up a dedicated website to gather ideas from the general public and allow other people to rate the ideas – the most popular will be elevated to a “most-popular” list and reviewed by Ford’s advanced product planning and marketing teams

You can join the family at Innocent Drinks and they will ask you what you think they should do from time to time.

To name but a few.

Isn’t the beauty of engagement is that it is a two way street?

Is the real two way conversation too much to expect? At the end of the day these people have to run a business. This would mean the jury is still out on if social media interaction has a tangible benefit.

Unilever are running their new campaign as a competition with a monetary prize for the winner. Is this the way engagement should be tackled? Contribution that makes a difference gets a financial reward? Would this make the consumer see this avenue as an opportunity to earn additional income or should the idea of having your idea potentially on the screen be enough?

Does this type of engagement threaten the professional services that would traditionally be involved?

In the case of Unilever the advertising campaigns have been the domain of creative agencies with in- house marketing teams but with a more demanding consumer and access to a whole new world of social media is there a more effective way to bring the consumer what THEY want?

Is there a difference between the effectiveness of professional services and a consumer community when it comes to understanding what the consumer wants?

Companies have relied on professional creatives to gain a competitive advantage and paid the price. With today’s new age social media we the consumers are at the click of a button and we’re cheap!

Are we cheap and good?

How great would it be if you thought of something you really want…

A shower gel with a different smell or an ice cream with a new flavour and you could tweet your favourite manufacturer…

They then engaged with you the loyal customer and put the idea to the vote…

It doesn’t have to end there…

They could keep you up date through the development process, let you see packaging designs, colours, launch dates and you can tell them what you like, don’t like…

Would this involvement bring a more transparent market place and stronger brand loyalty or would the consumers ‘voice without control’ prove too much?

The conference will focus on the strategic role of innovations for a more effective NPD process in the consumer goods industry.

Nina will take the stage on Monday the 7th to present her case study ‘How to win in the market with Product Lifecycle Management in 100 days’ as part of the launch of our new product ‘PLM Made Simple’.

Delegate places are still available and we would love you to join us in Vienna, for details of the conference or to follow our progress catch up with us on Twitter or contact us.

WHY? When they know it will make a difference?

As I read the Times, one after the other these stories added to the argument well underway in my head.

First the crimes of neglect. The parents of two brothers whose toxic upbringing, led to them torturing two innocent children. “31 missed opportunities to take action that would have prevented the crime”.

We live in an imperfect society where we know that people can ignore their responsibility and are not always accountable for their actions. To protect the innocent people who get caught in that imperfection there is a process and rules, a safety net.

How could this safety net have missed so many opportunities to make a difference?

Part of the training we deliver is “don’t be sheep”. If after following the process and rules you can see that something is wrong take accountability for ensuring that the right decision is made, don’t just tick boxes and then sit back and ignore responsibility by thinking your job is done.

Courageous Frances Inglis, jailed for 9 years for the mercy killing of her son. The process and rules allow for the starvation of her son, “If a vet let a dog die like this, he would be reported to the RSPCA”, but not by lethal injection which is of course what we do to put an animal out of its misery.

The process and rules followed but to what end? I have no doubt the Frances was willing to end her own life to stop the suffering of her son, being imprisoned does nothing to protect anyone, not her or society. So by following the rules and process here what difference have we made?

The mother of “Britain’s sickest child” jailed for 3 years after faking his illness. This boy had been seen by doctors more than 325 times and had undergone 9 operations. She managed to do this by bullying hospital staff and playing them off against each other.

The story focuses on the cruelty of the mother and I am not for one minute disputing that but come on, 325 times in front of a doctor and 9 actual operations, she is not the only person under the microscope here surely?

Don’t be sheep

My final story “courage and comradeship keys to survival in an inhospitable land” working in Sangin, Helmand. The armed forces the pinnacle of a world that relies on people following process and rules, taking responsibility and being accountable. People who understand the value of these things and the difference they make but who have the intelligence and courage to do what is necessary when it is necessary.

These are people who make a difference everyday

So as I close the paper and look at my parachute I thank my luck stars that a life will not depend on me finding out why this team are not following the PLM process and rules and are shirking both responsibility and accountability, but I will act like it does because I know it will make a difference.

Cheeky Monkey and the super users are the real stars though. It takes guts, determination and staying power to help people see a better way and to make it stick. They have taken the water to the horse and drank the damn stuff if needs be. Thanks guys.”

David Jones – Group IT Director, PZ Cussons

A few facts…

• Products are the lifeblood of all companies
• We now operate in a global market
• Our desires as consumers are remarkably similar, despite geographic location and culture
• You do not buy things in the same way your parents did
• Your children are not going to buy things in the same way you are
• Today’s consumer demands innovation and continual product progression

Execution

As a company you will have already decided your strategy. Innovator, recognised brand leader, happy to reap the rewards of copying with pride, whatever the strategy clean execution makes the difference.

There is a need to link processes and tools creatively around innovation, brand development and product delivery to achieve that clean execution. This can be defined as; generating the required speed, flexibility and cost of getting the right product, in the right market at the right time consistently. Of course companies that do this survive all market conditions.

We see more examples now of products that generate such desire they transcend all normal classifications (social class, age, sex, geographic location, etc) e.g. mobile phones, flat screen TV’s, laptops, MP3 players. These products can be applied globally with alarming speed.

Those who find ways to combine entrepreneurial intelligence with the obvious benefits of standardisation will be the winners. Creating a dynamic chain reaction which balances creativity with the structure and discipline required for clean and cost effective execution within a network that can operate globally, is the new utopia.

Weak Points

PLM software tools focus on making product delivery efficient. They are a mirror of your process that cries out loud when something is not happening correctly! Doing this makes it very visible where the weak points are in the chain:

• Product portfolio planning?
• Strategic business planning process?
• Communication of direction?
• Innovation process?
• Brand development?
• Project management?
• R&D?
• Marketing?
• Supply chain?
• Sales?
• In market execution?

Practically it is usually a combination of several of the above coupled with business legacy issues such as data integrity, roles & responsibilities, skills and capabilities and organisational reporting lines.

Building Blocks

The building blocks of implementing a PLM software tool are specific:

• Capture best practice
• Provide a knowledge backbone
• Enable global collaboration
• Improve project visibility

Benefits

The benefits are an enabler to the delivery of hard financials that come from:

• Sales through faster and right first time NPD
• Margin through standardisation, quality, control and global sourcing
• Strategy through supporting a networked organisation that allows rapid roll out of best practice and product knowledge
• Risk management through improved legal and customer compliance

If you treat PLM implementation as an IT project, you will go through the upheaval of a software implementation to give people a fantastic tool, that after launch becomes a frustration because it serves to highlight many of the things people already know are wrong.

Surely, a better way is to focus on what PLM is to your business first?

Examine PLM in the context of what the business is trying to deliver and why?

3 keys stages

The diagram below shows PLM within the 3 keys stages of product planning.

Our Approach

Our approach integrates business planning and strategic direction with innovation as the essential feeds into the PLM software which becomes the efficient delivery mechanism. Without doing this you will create a very fast and transparent way of delivering garbage.

Partnering the stage and gate process with key project management tools bridges a gap that so often exists in NPD project delivery where the temptation to “JFDI” pushes people away from process and usually ends up taking longer!

This process is flexible enough to cover pure NPD, margin improvement projects, extensions, brand re-energising or a simple label change. Of course to complete the cycle you have to know what you are going to do with it next and moving back to the product portfolio plan and business plan provides that direction.

This is underpinned with a behavioural change programme focusing on key roles and responsibilities that are required to drive this model:

• New Activities Filter
• Project Board
• Project Leaders / Managers
• Functional Heads
• Project Team Members (cross functional)

Engaging people in behavioural change early has had a dramatic effect on adoption of the new process, model and software. In fact at the point of software go live we have experienced 100% adoption rates because the IT becomes the last piece in the puzzle.

Is PLM an IT project? Not in our experience.

For more information and or to discuss your PLM implementation call Nina on 07837 536979