Products, Architecture & Value

Driven by innovation, competition and/or acquisition, the design of products has become more complicated and they are introduced to the market at a quicker pace. We need to ensure that our products are properly architected and we need to stay focused on the value that they deliver to our customers.

Products must be designed to meet your organisation’s Enterprise Architecture principles. Otherwise well-meant activities will result in products that cause a drag on the corporate ability to support them, and the wins from delivering value to your customers will be diluted.

Enterprise Architecture Principles

For greatest impact, and to best support digital transformation, the following principles should be adhered to:

Business Operation – corporate Products and Services are developed in alignment with Enterprise Architecture and the company’s investment strategy must support Opex funding for the development and ongoing enhancement and support of any new capability. All externally provided services must align with company architecture.

Application Design – there must be technological independence to minimise the impact of technology change on business operations – products must be built from services that are loosely coupled, modular and reusable.

Data – must be treated as an asset, and therefore owned and managed; be held once in a master file; use a vocabulary so that definitions are comprehensible and accessible by all users; be secure in transit and at-rest, and be protected from unauthorised use and disclosure.

Infrastructure – Aim for serverless computing - a cloud-computing execution model in which the cloud provider runs the server and corporate networks, and dynamically manages machine resources. Aim to remove technical debt.

Security – Data and systems are protected based on the CIA triad - Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability. Plus, zero trust security which requires strict identity verification for every person and device trying to access resources on a private network, regardless of whether they are sitting within or outside of the network perimeter. Implement, full - and tested - business continuity.

Compliance – comply with all internal and external regulatory and legal requirements.

Your Products and their Value

Assuming that your products (and services) are architected, then in order to build products which are particularly relevant to your target customers, it may be helpful to consider the following 3-step value flow ….

We’ll discuss each further...

Understand your Value

Many technology companies get caught up in the features and don’t really know why people buy their product.

To build a successful product-led business, you'll need to understand the three main outcomes that motivate the customer's purchase of your product.

1. Functional Outcome: the core tasks that customers want to get done.
2. Emotional Outcome: how customers want to feel, or avoid feeling, as a result of the core functional outcome.
3. Social Outcome: how customers want to be perceived by others by using your product.

The more in tune you are with what your customer wants, the easier it is going to be for you to communicate the value to your buyer and eventually deliver on your promise.

Communicate the perceived value of your product

Communicating your value is at the crux of a product-led growth strategy. Sales-led companies love to hide their pricing behind closed doors, asking potential buyers to request the price.

Product-led companies eliminate this unnecessary friction with up-front pricing.

In a product-led business, your revenue and customer acquisition model are married together. In a sales-led business, the revenue and customer acquisition models are separated.

A sales-led business can bank on relationships to sell large contracts.

In a product-led company, your customer acquisition model is built around your product. Clarity of purpose, value and Why is essential to revenue generation.

The more in tune you are with what your customer wants, the easier it is going to be for you to communicate the value to your buyer and eventually deliver on your promise.

Deliver on what you promise

What we promise in our marketing and sales is the perceived value. What we deliver in our product is the experienced value. Ideally, the perceived value aligns with the experienced value.

Driven by innovation, competition and/or acquisition, the design of products (and services) becomes more complicated and they are introduced to the market at a quicker pace, each needing to accommodate the subtly different needs of adjacent market sectors. 

We need to be careful to ensure that our products and services are properly architected so that we avoid a high corporate maintenance or increased risk of regulatory non-compliance; and we need to stay focused on the value that we are delivering to our customers. 

Otherwise drag will overcome thrust.