Over the last six months, it has become increasingly clear that pandemic-driven disruption is not a black and white affair. While COVID-19 has brought new challenges, it has also opened new market opportunities. This may have left your company wondering if the time is right to move forward with your project development plans. To determine the answer, explore the questions below with your team.
Have we identified a proven partner with secure supply networks and extensive experience to begin a new product development project?
Even the most strategically conceived products will come to naught without consideration for the bigger picture. To bring a product successfully to market, you’ll need more than a flawless design. You’ll also need secure supply chain solutions, advanced engineering expertise, and agile manufacturing technology.
At Pivot International, we are a proven partner to companies worldwide. For nearly a half-century, we have helped clients bring innovative products to market. We are successfully leading clients across fourteen industries and six markets through pandemic-driven disruption, helping them identify and profitably act on rising demand for telehealth, industrial products, consumer tech, and more. With access to a global sourcing network and 200,000 square feet of manufacturing capability across three continents, we’re delivering solutions for a new growth era.
How prepared are we to guard against knowledge gaps and other forms of risk?
The newer your company is to the product development process, the more dependent you’ll be on your partner for guidance and risk management. For upstarts or young companies, the danger of “not knowing what you don’t know” looms large. And even for companies that have successfully brought multiple products to market, supply chain insecurity, geopolitical volatility, and economic instability can complicate the picture.
Partners with end-to-end solutions and advanced risk management strategies can effectively protect upstarts and enterprise organizations alike from knowledge gaps and other threats. Partners with integrative operations afford far greater insight, oversight, predictability, and control. When product concept, design, prototyping, engineering, manufacturing, distribution, and supply chain management are undertaken under one integrative umbrella, knowledge gaps can be eliminated and risks significantly reduced.
Can we defend against high-resource utilization and scope creep?
Any product development project worth undertaking will require a considerable investment of both financial and managerial resources. For this reason, almost all companies recognize the importance of mapping their investment costs to detailed product development plans. However, this task can be more challenging than it may appear.
For one thing, many companies do not account for the dangers of high-resource utilization. They mistakenly believe that the more resources they utilize, the faster a project will go, and the more cost-effective it will be. The exact opposite is the case, with the result that investment costs significantly exceed project estimations and budget allocations.
In addition to high resource utilization, scope creep presents yet another product development hazard. Though scope creep can occur for multiple reasons, it often stems from a breakdown between the design and manufacturing aspects of product development. Design-for-Manufacture (DFM) offers the surest safeguard against this hazard, as can a partner with formalized processes for preventing high-resource utilization.
Can we rapidly respond to shifting customer needs and fluctuating market demand?
Agile processes, structures, and operations that enable companies to pivot in response to dynamic conditions have long been important for driving ROI. But agility is now more than important; it’s imperative. Agility needs to be assessed from at least two perspectives: customer communication and supply chain.
Companies must adopt synchronous customer communication channels. This gives them a dynamic view of changing customer needs to inform the product development process. A strong social media presence (especially when combined with data analysis) can provide valuable insights into broader consumer-behavior trends for consumer markets.
Supply chain agility depends largely on adopting the latest digital technologies, including digital twinning, AI, VR, blockchain, 3D-printing, and more. These technologies play an essential role in real-time forecasting and give companies the power to rapidly scale, pivot, or even repurpose production in response to it.
Depending on the answers to these questions, now may be the right time to begin (or resume) your product development. If you’d like to learn more about how a partnership with Pivot can support your company’s growth, contact us today for a no-cost consultation. We’ll help you make your vision a reality.
