Product development is a risky process, especially in today’s rapidly changing marketplace. Collaborative management is an integral component of successful product development and helps to reduce the risks of unnecessary product iterations, speed-up the time-to-market and ultimately create innovative, customer-centric products that create customer loyalty.
According to a recent post by Kasia Mikoluk, teams who can succesfully work productively with one another help to not only promote creativity in the workplace, but also contribute to a “improving the quality of work, and also fostering healthy and productive employee relationships.”
Mikoluk brings up anothe great point about collaboration: “Teams can accomplish work more quickly and effectively than people taking on projects on their own and collaborative work also keeps employees accountable to each other, which increases motivation.”
The benefits of business collaboration: Customer involvement
A disconnect exists between customers and product development activities. Critical product information from customers is not shared between departments and valuable opportunities to create market driven products are missed.
A recent Gartner research report revealed that:
- 80% of businesses feel they provide superior customer service; only 8% of their customers think they do.
- 95% of companies collected customer feedback
- Less than 50% of those alerted staff and informed their customers as to how their feedback was used
- Only 5% closed the loop by providing feedback on the customer feedback
Want to achieve success in a business setting? Collaborate.
Related blog posts:
Collaboration and Communication: Different
Track communication and know what’s going on
4 Tips for Using Enterprise Collaboration Tools Effectively
How Social Media Integration Elevates Project and Product Management
Why Web 2.0 and Business Tools Are Better Than Email
No clients – no business. This simple truth is clear to any company, but not everyone is familiar with the methods of effectively engaging customers in interaction with a brand. Thank you for sharing useful material. I also recommend reading about how to prove the value of your products.