The modern-day product organization faces a multitude of challenges. Product management continues to evolve at break-neck speed, and each new tool promises to improve the process in some way.
Navigating the labyrinth of 21st-century commerce is no mean feat.
Managers drive themselves into a frenzy over the right way to run a product organization that:
- Maximizes profit
- Cares for the environment
- Positively impacts society at large
- Delivers excellence, consistently
All of this can seem a tall order if you want to become a product manager.
Enter Product Ops.
It is a fresh, new concept which has been defined as-
“Product ops builds a foundation for excellence by reinforcing product strategy with metrics, infrastructure, business processes, best practices, budgeting, and reporting.”
Product ops can be thought of both as role as well as a skill.
To sum it up, Product ops supports the product team and helps in building better products.
But how exactly does it do that?
Let us have a look.
1. The deluge of data
This century can perhaps be called the century of data. The scarcity of data is not a thing anymore. Every organization finds itself piling on data thanks to the internet.
We have both kinds of it – qualitative and quantitative at the tip of our fingers today. But that gives rise to challenges of its own.
The question is how do we –
Analyze data for optimal decision making
Manage data in the best possible manner
Store data for easy and quick access
Organize data in a neat manner
How product ops can help:
- Product ops helps you synthesize available data
- It reveals anomalies that can skew your data analysis in the wrong direction
- It helps you gather the right insight from your data
- You can understand better what you truly want to measure
- It lays the foundation for data-driven decision making
2. Expectations of the best experience
As a product-led organization, you should know that the product experience is in itself, the customer experience.
The entire journey your customer takes, right from onboarding to expansion needs to be as smooth as possible. This is what ensures that your customers stick and keep coming back for more.
Now even if you are a certified product manager, you know how difficult a task that is. So many variables to take care of, all so that the customer is fully satisfied each time.
How product ops can help:
- Using data analysis, product ops helps you adapt and improvise to the best of your abilities
- Via experimentation, it paves the path for iteration and helps optimize every aspect of the product
- It helps identify bottlenecks in your business to help you perform better
- It ensures that a single individual or team is the source of information, thus eliminating friction
- Overall, it makes the experience for your customer memorable and delightful
3. A plethora of tools
Product managers today have umpteen tools at their disposal to accomplish a variety of tasks.
Unfortunately, this is not always a good thing and can have disastrous consequences.
Not all product managers can effectively manage, such as a vast array of tools, and this can result in a chaotic work experience for all.
Not so pleasing, isn’t it?
How product ops can help:
- The product ops team can manage the many vendors used by the product team
- It assists immensely in the administration aspect of the business
- Product ops helps establish best practices, on par and even better than the industry
- It helps to make full use of existing tools at the company’s disposal
- Product ops ensures that the team uses the latest tools that are the best in class
4. The communication gap
As a business expands further and further, inter-departmental communication becomes all the more difficult. This can result in communication gaps that will seriously dent your business.
Precise and timely communication is an often overlooked factor when it comes to business success.
Cross-communication is of utmost importance if you want to see your organization scale to new heights.
How product ops can help:
- Helps to streamline communication between departments
- The value of the product is made known to all stakeholders involved
- Product ops jump right in when there is even a hint of miscommunication and saves the day
- It helps convey the right message to the customers
- You save time by communicating your ideas faster
5. Tech troubles
Any organization that is not tech savvy is going to have a hard time surviving in the industry.
One has to move hand-in-hand with the latest technological developments in the industry and embrace them wholeheartedly. This is not easy to do as there is always a tendency to stick with the tried and tested.
How product ops can help:
- Product ops can study the organization better than anyone else and help in picking the right kind of technology for your business
- As product ops scour the market for the best technological tools, you end up saving cost by investing in the most cost-effective solution for your company
- It can help you choose the right tech strategy given their holistic view of the way things work
- Product ops helps put your requirement forward in the best manner possible if you opt for the services of a tech consultant
- It assists you in making the best use of existing technology
In conclusion
The usefulness of product ops can seem questionable at first. Is it really a requirement or another industry fad? This is something all product managers grapple with.
However, the points stated above make it clear that product ops are more than just another fad. They help your business in innumerable ways and a lot more than you would have imagined.
A case in point would be Uber, the American multinational ride-hailing company which has a fleet of product ops managers who are tasked with speaking to as many customers as possible.
Similarly, many other MNCs have opted for product ops to help scale their business, often resulting in an unexpectedly great impact.
No change comes easily. Certainly not a big change like this one.
But as it is said,
“All things are difficult before they are easy.”
Go forth, and may success be yours!
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