The challenges of Porduct Development Managers
In response to the shift in consumer demand, many companies are fast-tracking their production process while simultaneously increasing the volume and variety of products they produce. This added complexity and acceleration is putting greater pressure on Product Development Managers to deliver faster, high-quality products, at lower costs. To achieve these goals and enable their companies to remain competitive, Product Development Managers must know in real-time what is working and how to correct sooner any underperforming activities. This requires breaking workflow and communication silos to gain a unified view—the totality of people, processes, and information—operating across departments and remote locations at each stage of their product’s lifecycle.
Gaining access to the right metrics
In breaking cross-functional silos, Product Development Managers are able to bring clarity to their teams, drive value creation and enable everyone working within the lifecycle of the product to perform better together. The challenge, however, is gaining access to the metrics that enable visibility. The right metrics — originating from a centralized source — provide quantified, exact, and accurate data to identify where improvements are necessary. If organizations are to be successful at planning, testing, tracking, and reporting with greater accuracy, the status of their product as it moves through the various stages of their development process, they must work from authentic data — a single source of truth — that is always updated and easily accessible to all stakeholders. They are unable to track the status of their process and lose valuable time searching or waiting for accurate information required to progress to the next step in their internal workflow.
They are effectively lost in their development process incapable of taking the right actions to optimize their performance. Fashion companies utilizing metrics to break silos, on the other hand, ensure their teams get everything right. With better visibility, these forward-thinking companies are able to execute smarter decisions and achieve fundamental business objectives like increasing development speed, achieving quality standards, and controlling operational costs.
Product Development Managers, without access to metrics, are working blind
A sure-fire way of getting things right as a Product Development Manager is to streamline the way departments share, store and exchange product information. Knowing, in real-time, where exactly they are in the development process enables Product Development Managers to define an ideal course of action to achieve their objectives without compromising on their primary demands. The newest generation of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) software, with its more powerful and accurate reporting dashboards, make it easy to break down information silos, gain visibility into the product workflow and make smarter decisions.
