Part 3: Understand Your Customer

In my previous blog I have talked about how the organisation layout is followed in most Product Startups. Often a lot of Product Startups dive into product making and forget the essence of market knowledge. This doesn't mean that the company should focus only on those requirements that are coming from the market. Sometimes there are some unexplored areas.

Lets closely look at the Product itself. It is basically a combination of Software and Hardware if we consider Information Technology based Business. During initial days companies generally focus on product making only. This involves designing the software and hardware and manufacturing it. Initially the requirements on which the Product is made is derived from the potential customers or market opportunity as seen by the founders. Once the product is made with the limited set of requirements it is marketed to potential customers. This is the time when ground realities hit.

I wanted chocolate in a Nice Box but you are selling it in a polythene

Often the engineering team focuses on making the software and hardware the most reliable. However is it desired. If one closely look at any software product, there are certain parameters that define quality. They are,

- Reliability (No issue on long run)

- Robustness  (No issue on bad input)

- Efficiency   (Fast and optimized)

- Maintainable

It is often very hard to follow all the parameters. Often engineering teams use all there energy to focus on increasing quality of the Product. But is it necessary at all ?

Here is the real case study of a Consumer Product Company X. When the marketing team comes up with the proposal to make a product, the Engineering team decides that it must make the software so secure that no one can crack it. However that makes it a tight product and enforces the Customer to use it in a special way. On the other hand market research reveals that similar product is already available in the open market and that has no protection. The company X marketing wants to simply sell the Product to promote it across variety of Customer spread across different regions.

There is a gap here between Engineering and Marketing teams of Company X.

The Company X must understand what is the purpose and what must be offered. In this case the marketing simply wants to promote and hence the focus should be on Branding and Communicating with the Customers. Investing on secure software offers no advantage over the competitor's product since the customers of Company X can get the unsecured Products in open market anyways and with simpler usability. Customers want this Product because they want to start a healthy Business relationship with the Company X not to buy a secure product with tighter control on usability. Basically they don't want security. They simply want the product to work. That's all. Sometimes it is not very intuitive but true.

The message is plain and simple, make the one that sells.