Product development is an extensive process and often involves
multiple complicated steps. You have to go all the way from coming up with
innovative ideas, market research, and gathering a suitable team to drafting a
prototype, building the product, budgeting, marketing, risk assessment, and
much more.
There is an easy way out. You can bring on the services of a Product Management Consultant on your next
project, and the expert will take care of all the details. By hiring the
services of a consultant, you will be able to get your product to the market
sooner and at a cheaper price.
So, why and how do you go about hiring product management and
development consultancy services? Here is a complete guide for you. Keep
reading.
What Comes under Product Development and Consultancy
Services?
Let’s begin with understanding product development and the services
you can get from hiring a product development consultant on board.
Product Development
Product development is the journey of conceptualizing a product,
building it by the efficient use of resources, and then getting it to the
customers in the market.
The process of product development starts with ideation. You must
have an idea for a product before you even begin to create it. Ideas for the product
can come from anywhere. For a completely new product, you could have grabbed
the idea from a customer review, feedback, or comment. You could have
researched the demand in the market and just created a product to fill it.
Ideas can also come from brainstorming sessions with the employees, or they can
be the birth of the mind of the genius CEO.
The next step is research. This research involves different
sub-categories. You need to research the market and the viability of your
product’s idea in it. The desired functionality and estimated features have to
be decided upon. You may have to research what functions people in the market
are looking for and how you can embed them in your product.
After you come up with a loose structure, you need to build a neat
draft of the product in the form of a prototype - a minimum viable product. Then the prototype
gets refined and detailed designing before it is formed. When some samples of
the product are built, they are launched in the market for testing and
validation. If it performs well, the product is manufactured on a large scale for
commercialization.
The ‘Soft’ Parts of Product
Development
The whole product development process is the hardware of the system.
Many product-adjacent steps like meeting budget goals, risk assessment, meeting
marketing goals, the productivity of the team, finishing on time, hiring the
right people to build the product, making sure no protocols related to the
product’s category are being broken, and more need to be taken care of.
A product development and management consultant will handle all
these mentioned tasks. They can also work on parts of this process according to
your business needs, but their skills encompass managing product development
and related tasks.
Apple and Its Product
Development Team
Take notes from one of the largest companies in the world, Apple,
about why a great product development process is a treasure to protect.
The product design team is kept away from the rest of the business
and the daily politics of the offices. They report directly to an executive and
work without other workplace concerns over developing new products and
improving the process.
This is how important precise product development is for your
company. It is the core and has to be done just right.
Why Do You Need Product Development and Consultancy Services
for Your Firm?
Mostly, when a company begins on a product development journey, they
need people with appropriate skills to manage that project. The team is usually
assembled from within the company. But employees may not have specific skills
to take a product through development stages since most of them may not have
experienced it before.
A product management consultant has an entire career devoted to just
that - bringing a product to life. To become a consultant, they have worked for
decades to gain essential knowledge and expertise. An inexperienced leader or
manager can cost you millions of dollars in inefficient practices and
mismanagement of resources. An expert can save you millions due to a solid
grasp over their field.
Your firm needs a product development and management consultant
because they can do the following for your company:
●
Assess your current product
development system and point out the glitches
●
Develop innovative product
strategies
●
Build a sustainable system for
product development
●
Manage your product development
portfolio
●
Balance the resources
●
Simplify the development
process
●
Gauge and enter new markets
with your products
●
Improve time required to finish
and launch a product into the market
●
Optimize the performance of the
product development team for best results
●
Integrate mergers and
acquisitions
●
Analyze the system for product
development before you make an acquisition
●
Deliver training and seminars
on new product development strategies
●
Reduce financial risks by
completing the project by meeting budget goals
●
Ensure low risk of the product
being recalled from the market
●
Sometimes do grant writing as
well
How Much Will It Cost to Hire a Product Development
Consultant?
The cost of hiring an expert consultant depends on several things. The
more experienced professionals will certainly charge more than the ones with a
few years under their belt. The consultants who work in a specific industry or
niche charge more as they tend to have unmatchable knowledge of working in that
particular area.
What you need to know is that you are hiring an expert and
professional advice doesn’t come cheap. But the benefits your company will gain
from the expert’s hands and the amount of money you would save will far offset
the expenses of a skilled consultant.
Generally, you could expect to pay between $50 to $100 an hour for a
product development consultant. Highly experienced consultants can even charge
more than $100 an hour. A few top industry experts charge at least $300 an
hour.
Conclusion
A product management consultant can accelerate your development
process and lead you to new heights of success. Whether you are a big
corporation, a medium-sized firm, or a small business, your company can always
do with a maestro in their field.
Leave your best tips for hiring a management consultant in the
comments.