AKAI INDIA’s Post

**Category Management and Product Management: A Dynamic Duo** 🛒🛍️ In the world of retail, category management and product management play key roles in driving success and ensuring a great customer experience. Both disciplines are essential for maintaining a well-organized and profitable business, yet they focus on different aspects of managing a product's journey from supplier to customer. Let's dive into what these roles entail and how they work together. ### Category Management Category management involves the strategic organization of products into groups (categories) that align with customers' needs and preferences. A category manager takes a holistic approach to understand how various products within a category work together to maximize sales and enhance customer satisfaction. Here's what category management entails: - **Category Strategy**: Developing a strategy that aligns with the overall business goals and customer demand. This includes determining which products to include in the category, their pricing, placement, and promotion strategies. - **Assortment Planning**: Choosing the right mix of products within a category to cater to various customer tastes and preferences. This may include offering different price points, sizes, and styles. - **Shelf Space Optimization**: Maximizing the use of shelf space by placing products in strategic locations to boost visibility and sales. - **Supplier Relationships**: Building and maintaining strong relationships with suppliers to negotiate better deals, promotions, and delivery schedules. ### Product Management Product management, on the other hand, focuses on a specific product or product line throughout its lifecycle. Product managers are responsible for guiding a product from its conception to its retirement, ensuring it meets market demand and customer needs. Here's what product management entails: - **Product Development**: Collaborating with cross-functional teams (e.g., engineering, design, and marketing) to bring new products to life or improve existing ones. - **Market Research**: Conducting research to understand market trends, customer preferences, and competitors' offerings to make informed decisions. - **Pricing Strategy**: Setting the right price point for a product to remain competitive and profitable. - **Product Launch**: Coordinating product launches, including marketing, advertising, and sales efforts to ensure a successful introduction to the market. - **Performance Analysis**: Monitoring a product's performance, gathering customer feedback, and making adjustments as needed to improve the product. #CategoryManagement#Product#ProductManangement

Product managers stay on top of business and consumer trends and behaviours that directly or indirectly affect the product or company. In this role, your tasks and responsibilities focus on the success of a product, service, or product line, which contributes to a company or brand's overall success. Your day to day may include the following responsibilities and tasks: Analysing customer requirements Conducting research on a product, service, competitor, or market Strategising a plan for a product or service (development, packaging, launching, expanding) Coordinating and communicating about a product or service with management, teams, and stakeholders Gathering and analysing feedback about a product or service Developing multi-year roadmaps for products and services

Once while having morning coffee with my dad, I once asked him that what do you think product management really is?, And he replied in the typical corporate fashion he replied that, 'marketing is an engineering function', and that product management is something which enables the marketing to act as function. He told me that basically it's a very dynamic job where generalization will have a greater impact than specialization. I asked him that about the Industry trends and market trends, and he replied , that in order to be a good product manager , one has to know the industry they are working in quite well. He said that it is the responsibility of the product manager to carry out industry analysis, competitive analysis, and market trends analysis. After this conversation when he went to office, I kind off pondered on what all he was trying to tell me, and then it clicked that it's product managers who actually connect the 'product' to the customers, they are like the owners of the product, who are responsible for it's creation, ideation , growth and stability of the product in the market. They are actually like the functional intermediaries (like y=f(x) ) between the customers and the product. #ProductManagement #ProductConsulting

Key Skills Every B2B Product Executive Needs Being a B2B product executive goes beyond just managing features or timelines. It’s about wearing multiple hats and mastering a few key skills that can truly make an impact. Here are some of the most important ones: Customer Empathy: You need to understand your clients’ pain points deeply. It’s not just about what they say they want, but why they want it and how it fits into their broader business strategy. Strategic Thinking: A good B2B product manager looks at the big picture. It’s not about solving today’s problems only; it’s about crafting solutions that will move your client’s business forward for the long term. Stakeholder Management: You’re constantly juggling input from sales, marketing, development, and clients. Keeping everyone aligned is critical to driving a successful product. Analytical Skills: You have to make data-driven decisions. Whether it's market research or analyzing user behavior, being able to sift through data and make sense of it is crucial. I believe these skills work together to ensure that you not only deliver products but drive value for your clients and help their business grow. If you’re in B2B product management, which of these do you think is most important? #b2b #productmanagement #pharma #healthcare #product

Day 9 of talking about product management 🔖 💡Today I learned about the Maturity stage in the product lifecycle This stage is where: • There is stable sales growth • There is intensified competition • Market saturation is intense 💡The main goals of this stage would be to; • Monitor competitor's activities closely such as new product launches, pricing strategies,and market campaigns. • Offer superior customer service to increase brand loyalty • Streamline operations and expenses to reduce cost • Offer product updates,and enhancements to maintain customer interest. 📉 Challenges in this stage include • Market saturation and competition leading to declining profits • Aggressive Price wars in form of price cuts and discounts • Companies risk losing market relevance,if they fail to adapt to new technologies. 💡Here are some strategies I learned a product manager can adopt in this stage • Cost reduction; minimizing expenses associated with producing and distributing the product •Introducing new variations or features of the product • Customize new product features to align with the interest of your customers. 🔖I'll stick to my previous example,using favor soaps(even though I've overused her brand) 💡So at this point, • With every customer now using or owning her soap, there is stable sales growth, • Market saturation as different brands come up with alternative soaps and • Intense competition leading to price wars 💡Her goals for this stage should be • Reducing overhead costs and expenses especially in production and distribution • Studying her market carefully to introduce new products they will like • Delivering exceptional customer service 📉 Some challenges she is currently facing • Other brands selling same products at a lower price • Decline in her profits as a result of competition • If she fails to adapt to new technologies and introduce new variations of her products,she risks the chance of becoming obsolete. 💡What can be done? •She can decide to introduce new soaps in new sizes, colors and scents •Implementing good pricing strategies to maximize her profits and •Strengthen her customer loyalty I can't wait for the final stage The decline stage Day 10 then!!!👏

A product manager is a professional responsible for overseeing the development and lifecycle of a product. They work at the intersection of business, technology, and user experience, ensuring that a product meets customer needs and business goals. Key responsibilities of a product manager include: 1. Defining Product Vision and Strategy: Developing a clear vision and strategy for the product, aligning it with company goals and market needs. 2. Gathering and Prioritizing Requirements: Conducting market research, customer interviews, and competitive analysis to identify and prioritize product features and requirements. 3. Roadmap Planning: Creating and maintaining a product roadmap that outlines the timeline and key milestones for product development. 4. Collaborating with Cross-functional Teams: Working closely with engineering, design, marketing, sales, and support teams to ensure successful product development and launch. 5. Managing Product Lifecycle: Overseeing the product from conception through launch and beyond, continuously collecting feedback and making improvements. 6. Measuring Success: Defining key performance indicators (KPIs) and using data to measure the product's success and inform future decisions. In summary, a product manager acts as the glue that holds various aspects of product development together, ensuring that the final product delivers value to both the customers and the business.

Product Management deals with all the challenges over each stages of the Product Life Cycle starting from product planning and forecasting to production and marketing. It is important for any organization to integrate its people, data, processes, business units and their extended supply chain entities to manage the product throughout the Product Life Cycle. The Product Management consists of product development and product marketing, which are different but complementary functions, with the objective of maximizing sales revenue, market share, and profit margin of the product. The product manager is often responsible for analyzing market conditions and defining features or functions of a product. The role of the Product Manager spans over many activities from strategic to tactical tasks which varies based on the organizational structure. Product management must be an independent function to maximize the impact and benefits of the organization.

Market research in product management How does market research help a product manager? As a product manager, market research helps to answer questions about our products and the users the products are being built for. It also helps to identify our target users and determines if our product idea is suitable or not. The phases of market research include: 1) Market Dynamics and this speaks to understanding how the market for our product operates. It borders on elements like: a) customer behaviour (their purchasing power, loyalty, needs, preferences etc), b) supplier behaviour (how suppliers operate, pricing strategies and ability to meet demands) c) Market trends (Innovations and changes in the market operations) d) Competitive landscape (understanding how large competitors are and identifying gaps to be filled) e) Regulatory environment: this speaks to government policies, regulations and legal issues that impact market operations. .....to be continued #productmanagement #productmanager my #productmanagementjourney

Over the years our roles evolve, but one question I continue to get asked what's better - Product lifecycle management or go-to-market (GTM) strategy? I choose both. Good companies see the value in both roles they work in parallel to manage the product develop and lifecycle needs vs. GTMs ability bring the product to the right market with a sales strategy that meets commercial revenue needs.

Product Managers in market leading companies can often feel daunted at the task of trying to improve a product or service that seems pretty well refined, optimised and successful already. Added to this, there are likely a number of interested internal stakeholders who inadvertently slow down change due to the varying interests they hold in the status quo. There are however a number of things you can do to further optimise your product(s) for success. Here are some things you could do: - Get closer to Sales and Marketing. By partnering closely with these colleagues you can work together on refining the messaging to enhance acquisition, utilisation and retention. The more Sales and Marketing understand the product and its unique benefits, the better they will be at talking to consumers to highlight the problems your solution can solve. - Sit with Customer Service. I would expect all Product people to be regularly talking and listening to customers, but it's also really important to listen to the people who talk to your customers every day. They understand their pains and delights, all of which can be used to enahance your product and communications. - Use a competitor. In most cases, your competitors aren't standing still. To keep abreast of their advancements you need to actually use their products fully as it often opens your eyes to solutions to problems you didn't know consumers were having. You can then capitalise on these and use it to stand out. It's important not to be seen as a copycat so ensure you can further add to those solutions so that you remain unique (perhaps research the problem with customers and get to the root of the need and testing new possible solutions). - Explore new markets or market segments. You may think this is outside your wheelhouse as a product manager, but really, ideas for product success can come from anywhere. By looking at different markets, as the expert in your product's field, you can often see market opportunities that others might miss. What else could you do to find ideas for improvement? #product #productmanagement #marketing #research #optimisation #innovation