Product management

Product management (in English product management, abbreviated PM) is the discipline within a company that deals with planning, forecasting and production, or marketing of a product or products at all stages of the product life cycle.

The role may consist of product development and product marketing, which are different (but complementary) endeavors, with the goal of maximizing sales revenue, market share, and profit margins. Product management also involves disposal decisions. Product removal begins with identification of removal candidates, product with consideration of corrective actions, continues with a projection of the impact on the business as a whole if a candidate product is eventually removed, and concludes with the phase implementation stage, where management determines the phase-out strategy for an item. The product manager is often responsible for analyzing market conditions and defining features or functions of a product and overseeing product production. The role of product management spans many activities from the strategic to the tactical and varies depending on the organizational structure of the company. To maximize the impact and benefits to an organization, product management should be a separate, independent function.

While involved with the entire product life cycle, the main focus of product management is on conducting the development of new products. According to the Association for Product Development and Management (ADGP), superior and differentiated new products, which offer unique benefits and superior customer value, are the primary driver of product success and profitability.

Depending on the company's size and history, product management has a variety of functions and roles. Sometimes there is a Product Manager, and sometimes the Product Manager role is shared by other roles. There is often Profit & Loss (G&P) accountability as a key metric for evaluating product manager performance. In some companies, the product management function is the lynchpin of many other activities around the product. In others, it is one of many things that have to happen to get a product to market and to actively monitor and manage the market. In very large companies, the Product Manager may have effective control over shipping decisions to customers when system specifications are not met.

Product management often fills an interdisciplinary role, bridging the gaps within the company between teams of different expertise, most notably engineering-oriented teams and commercially-oriented teams. For example, product managers often translate established business goals for a product through marketing or sales into engineering requirements (sometimes called Technical Specifications). Rather, they may work to explain the capabilities and limitations of the finished product back to marketing and sales (sometimes called a Commercial Specification). Product managers may also have one or more direct reports that manage operational tasks and/or a change manager that can oversee new initiatives. Manufacturing is separate from the research function, the product manager has the responsibility to bridge the gaps if any exist.

At most tech companies, most product managers have backgrounds in the following areas: IT, business, and user experience.

Product Marketing

• Internal and external analysis of the environment in which
• Considerations of the product life cycle.
• Product differentiation.
• Designation and branding of products.
• Positioning of products and outgoing messaging.
• Physical characteristics and utility
• Promoting the product externally with the press, customers, and partners.
• Feedback and customer empowerment (preproduction, beta software).
• Launch of new products to the market.
• Competition monitoring.

Product development

• Tests.
• Identification of new product candidates.
• Considering new candidates.
• Gather the voice of the customers.
• Definition of product requirements.
• Determine business and feasibility.
• Scope and definition of new products at a high level.
• Evangelizing new products within the company.
• Construction of product plans, in particular technological maps.
• Develop all products as scheduled, working on a critical path.
• Ensure that the products are within optimal price margins and even specifications.
• Ensure that products are manufactured and optimize the cost of components and procedures.

Incoming and outgoing

Many refer to the input (product development) and output (product marketing) functions.

Inbound product management (also known as inbound marketing) is the "radar" organization and involves absorbing information such as customer research, competitive intelligence, industry analysis, trends, economic signals, and competitive activity, as well as documenting requirements and establishing product strategy.

In comparison, outbound activities focus on distributing or pushing messages, training sales, go-to-market strategies, and communicating messages through channels such as advertising, public relations, and events.

In many organizations the inbound and outbound functions are performed by the same person.

As these terms are discussed, another way of looking at these activities is upstream and downstream product management, where 'upstream' refers to any activity that helps define, create, or improve the product, while 'downstream' refers to any activity that promotes the product. This avoids confusion with the term "inbound marketing" which nowadays clearly refers to a way of doing top-down product management, referring to "make the product accessible", i.e., it can be found by suspects and prospects (compared to &#39 'Outbound Marketing', where the product is 'pushed' in front of the suspect or prospect.The confusion arises mainly from the mix between the term 'Marketing' as a discipline, which comprises the product management, MarCom (Marketing Communications), etc. and the use of the same term 'Marketing' as a synonym for 'promotion' or 'advertising', that is, to take a product to market (ie 'downstream').

It is surprising that this confusion and ambiguity is difficult to understand, because if you name the main departments (value creation) in today's organizations, you can clearly assign Sales, R&D, Operations and Marketing to their respective core functions and areas of responsibility. The central function of Marketing, which differentiates it from Sales, Operations and R&D, is the ownership of the marketing mix (= 4 Ps: Product, Place, Price, Promotion). Even so, many organizations put under 'Marketing' just Market Communications (MarCom), which is just the operational end of marketing and only a subset of what 'Promotion' comprises. From a Product Management perspective, MarCom is a support function (like IT, HR, Control, etc.). In organizations, where product management is weak or non-existent, its tasks are taken over by the other departments (i.e., sales define distribution ('Place'), operations define pricing, I +D defines the product, MarCom decides the promotion.