Product development, at its most basic level, is the process of creating a new product that consumers will want to buy from you. This involves a team of people from multiple different departments coming together to create this product. This means that the Finance department needs to get involved in order to figure out how much it will cost to produce your new products, and Marketing needs to get involved so they can figure out what type of advertising they should do for this product in order for it to be successful.
The stages of product development are:
Research. Research of product development helps organizations in its final stages by providing crucial information about customer needs and their hopes for new products. This information helps the business to develop new products that address these needs and will be successful in the market.
The Testing Stage. Testing stage involves testing of produced prototype/model on physical basis like structural strength, aesthetics, performance etc. Before reaching mass production stage.
The Development Stage. Development stage involves production of different items like sketches, drawings, prototypes and models for testing before reaching the final product which will be released in market.
The Marketing stage. Marketing stage of product development is mainly targeted towards selling of products through out the marketplace.
Different types of products
Just to clarify, product development can be done for anything. It does not have to be just for physical goods. This term could also include the creation of a new software program or even a website. However, in most instances, people use this term for creating physical goods that they will later sell to consumers.
When it comes to product development, you will usually have 2 different types of products: physical and digital. Physical products include things like cars and computers and digital means products that you can download onto your computer like an e-book or information about a new technology.
Different types of product development efforts
As mentioned before, no two product development efforts are the same. There are different strategies that you can take to improve your company’s bottom line and one of the most common ones is:
The idea generation process: this process is used when you want to create a new product and figure out what type of thing it should be. This directly involves the Marketing department. They sit down and think of ways to market this new product so they can figure out if there is a demand for it or not.
The Discovery process: this process happens when you have a concept for a new product but you don’t want to invest any money into creating it yet. This is also done by the Marketing department and the Finance department. They need to figure out how much it will cost you to create this new product and what type of advertising you should do for it if you create it.
The Development process: this is where money is invested in creating your new products. This department involves many different departments like Engineering, Operations, and Legal, as well as Marketing and Finance again. This process involves figuring out how to make your products for the best price possible and how much they should cost.
The Introduction process: this happens when your new product has been successfully created and now it’s time to sell them to consumers! Marketing needs to come back into play here because they need to figure out what advertising methods they will use. They are the ones to decide if they will do online or TV ads, or if they will do both.
This is just one of many different ways to approach product development. Your company may have its own unique strategy for approaching this topic so it’s important that you research your specific industry in order to figure out how you should best go about creating your new products. Better still, you can hire Product Development Consultants from Fintalent, the hiring and collaboration platform for tier-1 Strategy and M&A professionals. Fintalent has an array of consultants available to help develop and market your product with experts in Product management and Sales Strategy all available for hire.
