In our increasingly regulated world, we need enterprise solutions to manage risk. But while the governance of financial regulation is taking up more and more senior management time it is still common to product teams embracing ‘citizen’ solutions – and all the risks that go with them.

Given today’s very serious consequences of failure, I am always surprised to find basic weaknesses in firms’ identification of target markets for their products. Instead of asking: what do consumers need and want? How can we make it?’ They seem to be asking: ’What have we got? How can we persuade consumers to buy it?’

When firms lack a clear, strategic purpose in product development, or they demonstrate an inability to articulate a coherent strategy, this vacuum is reflected in their product ranges, which become disproportionately influenced by pricing and marketing pressures. For product success, identification of market or audience is absolutely crucial. Firms that don’t do this well are setting themselves up for failure later in the value chain.

Solutions such as Excel may help individuals capture information and manage processes but these are simply one tool on one desk, used almost entirely at the discretion of the individual sitting at that desk. And so on, with the next one at the next desk. Such citizen solutions can easily allow commercial pressure to challenge adherence to approval processes, just as they can allow approval processes to vary across organisations, particularly global organisations. In place of citizen solutions, these organisations need actually an enterprise-wide solution incorporating a robust process to govern.

One such organisation-wide solution is Prodigy , which effectively systematises all product management processes, across teams, across geographies and across jurisdictions – for a product’s entire lifecycle. It enables post-launch reviews to ensure the identified markets are actually being served by new products and it makes every department – sales, marketing, compliance, planning, IT, engineering – all part of the same product management universe.

This is a cross-functional, 'light touch' tool that covers every task in every workflow in every team - right across an organisation - establishing processes and deadlines and allowing people to just see the information they need. By harmonising processes and workflows, Prodigy becomes a valuable tool to implement your business strategy.

Find out more about Prodigy here: https://www.prodigyproduct.com/