Businesses that can sail in rough weather reach unknown shorelines. Leaders have always built formidable brands by assessing consumer insights and giving them what they want.
However, assessing the evolving and ever-changing consumer preferences, making a product they like, and watching it turn obsolete before even a proper launch because the consumer has upgraded their preference can be a huge block in terms of product innovation and the resource efforts behind the product.
Even the best marketing teams cannot combat the rapid speed at which consumers are changing their preferences at the drop of a hat.
The Internet and the availability of easy access to information about a competitor’s product design that threatens to turn your product into the second lead can be a disruptive force that you can do without.
Only consistent efforts to innovate after proper assessment via product intelligence can help a company stay in lead and grow business from the forefront.
What is product intelligence?
Businesses have access to data but without sufficient steps to mine it for insightful and purposeful tasks that aid in overall improvement, it is a futile asset. Tools that aid businesses in developing sustainable products that help the consumers, the planet, and economic growth in a positive manner are imperative.
A product intelligence tool or platform achieves converting consumer insights into logical and actionable decisions that lead to functional innovations. If all the efforts of a business in developing a product fail to garner the interest of consumers after using it once, then it is necessary to work on the feedback to analyze what went wrong.
A product intelligence tool collects the data from the consumers who have used the product and transfers these details with related analytics to the concerned teams and stakeholders who can take the appropriate actions.
Need for product intelligence
The scope for improvement does not diminish in a competitive world where one day out of sight can create the impact of being out of mind for several days. Scores of small players with better products and lesser visibility can come to the furor if an established business winks for a few days.
For instance, if Kodak had foreseen the consumer insights and innovated to be digitally dextrous, then Sony would not have been the preferred brand for cameras. Likewise, if Sony could understand the importance of future smartphones with Cameras that can match their product line, then Apple would not have come up with a series of phones that people line up for.
Without the tenets of effective product intelligence, self-examination of the prevalent problems is difficult as businesses often commit the mistake of living in denial till it is too late. A product intelligence tool that is created with the ability to read into the preferences and fine lines through semantics, will help in understanding the problem and dealing with it without letting biases and heuristics affect the decisions.
Understanding and accepting the problem is part of the solution to the denials that are encountered every day by businesses. Taking the right decision needs information in the form of insights and analytics that are processed through product intelligence tools.
Role of product intelligence in business decision making
Data is an asset that loses its relevance by the minute if not processed and used for business advantage. The purpose of data is lost unless a business can analyze the data to determine meaningful insights that answer:
- Factors influencing consumer preferences
- What consumers want to buy now
- How the consumers want to buy a product
Product intelligence is a tool that helps in understanding the data and using it for taking crucial decisions based on statistical results and customer feedback. It is a platform that measures not just the economic drivers but even the experience that the product generates for consumers.
Businesses are willing to mold their decisions as per the preferences of the consumers. Some brands have taken the lead in understanding the psychological perceptions that drive customer preferences. They have been pioneers in influencing consumers to buy a product simply for the experience without bothering much about the factors like cost and affordability.
People are buying luxury cars and expensive phones beyond their means and the sales of popular brands are not going down because of the measures taken to keep the supply quotient intact and let the novelty of the improved product remain in the sensory receptors of consumers. This kind of product reach is possible only through product intelligence measures that emulate meeting its performance goals.
Product intelligence methods for effective decisions
Product intelligence is a powerful tool that focuses on product specifics. Unlike business intelligence, product intelligence is a concentrated effort in developing and improving the product line to match the expectations of consumers and improve their experience.
Being an analytical tool that measures experiences and psychological factors like perceptions, product intelligence is a compendium of methods, platforms, and processes that help in the extraction, cleansing, and processing of data for insights that are meaningful for better outcomes.
Lack of innovation will make business outdated even before reality strikes and the damage cannot be outdone. Reversing adverse results from complacent or bad decisions is more painful than creating a greenfield project. This is the reason why product intelligence should be used to not just innovate but stay relevant as well.
Conclusion
Often companies that have achieved high growth and start hitting a plateau in terms of innovation, or reimagining ability, make some silly mistakes with profound and negative impacts. They end up innovating stuff that is not relevant or useful but futuristic in design.
These decisions cost money that eventually creates a business loss. Avoiding such mistakes is possible through a process-driven approach instead of focusing on outcomes. When the process is taken care of, and the best actions are taken in time, the results are bound to be fruitful with enriched experiences.
Innovation is necessary, but relevance is important to stay ahead in a competitive world where striking a balance is paramount.
Really Thank You for this beautiful article about a need of product intelligence. With the use of product intelligence, we can take better decisions for business. It usually is used in a very competitive market, where the number of competitor is quite large.
Thank you for sharing this informative article on product intelligence. you provides very useful information for retailers and other online sellers. They have been provided knowledge about how it will be help them in business decision making. you also provided methods of product intelligence very beautifully in blog.