Product Roadmaps

Client Goal

After two years of poor performance in what they suspected was a large and healthy market, our client wanted to identify if there was a misalignment between their product offering and approach to the market. Specifically, they wanted to know if the market was indeed as big as they thought, if its growth potential was consistent with their own forecasts, and why customers were not adopting their product as quickly as they had anticipated. Additionally, if VDC determined that they didn’t have the right offering, they needed a plan to evolve their product roadmap in a way that was both feasible and responsive to the market requirements.

VDC Approach

VDC developed a customized market estimate and forecast model, polled a subset of the largest potential clients and developed a set of proprietary tools to:

• Map their products’ strengths and weaknesses in specific market segments.

• Define the key technical features of the current product.

• Identify product enhancements and new product attributes.

Results

The client was not only able to identify a number of weaknesses in its current offerings, but was also able to define a collection of related target applications that were in sync with their capabilities to develop new offerings that the markets were prepared to pay for. The client revised their R&D roadmap and undertook an initiative to develop and launch these new products.