Ideas|Products|Startups|VCs

Are you one of the entrepreneur who has developed or in the process of developing product without assessing market needs. Recently i came across an entrepreneur who is developed a product targeted at children aged between 5-12years and without doing any marketing study and customer analysis. This kind of entrepreneur can be classified as gutsy or fool

Customer Analysis is one of the critical component of an MRD (Market Requirement document), it assesses the customer segments that the company plans to serve

Things to do by company before working on the product -

1) identifying the  target customers,

2) List  the needs of these customers, and

3) highlight how this product can satisfy the needs of target customers.

First and foremost step in Customer Analysis is precise definition of customers the company plans to serve,  Its not enough to say the company is targeting small businesses, for example, because there are several million of these types of customers.

The next step after identifying target customers is to explain the demographics of these customers. Bring forth questions and search for answers and Questions are – 1) how many potential customers fit the given definition? is this customer base growing or decreasing? 2) what is the average revenues/income of these customers? and 3) where are these customers geographically based?

The next step in the business plan is to detail out the drivers of customer decision making.  Sample Questions are: 1) Do customers find price to be more important than the quality of the product or service? and 2) are customers looking for the highest level of reliability?

It is essential to truly understand customers to develop a successful business and marketing strategy. By spending the time to research and analyze your target customers, you will develop both enhance your business strategy and funding success.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

To come out with a solution one has to be equipped with a crystal clear problem statement document . My experience in QA/Testing role taught me how to describe a bug clearly in other words how to reproduce the bug. QA person use the product as a end user and can clearly point out the problem in the product. This experience really helped in product management work while defining the problem statement, gaps, pain points in the market.

Well written problem statements help product managers communicate both the difficulty faced in the market and the potential reward for solving the problems. If you stop and think about it you’ll see that problems are actually opportunities. New features, new products and even new industries spring up from people who see problems and find ways to solve them.

The key to successfully solving problems is understanding them. The following steps will help you express problems clearly and help you identify solutions:

1. Define the problem: Understand the nature of the problem and articulate it clearly so you understand its effects on the people you are trying to help.
2. Produce ideas: Make a list of things you can do right away to solve the problem. Be aggressive in finding the right solution.
3. Test the ideas: Discuss the best ideas with your team and test them with customers. Find out which ones resonate.
4. Choose among ideas: Choose the idea that will best solve the problem.
5. Plan for action: Write a plan to solve the problem. This plan will most often come in the form of clear product requirements that will guide the development, QA, marketing and other teams to successfully implement a product (or new product features) that solves the problem.

Well-written problem statements are an important communication tool for product managers.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com