Is Product Management Still in the Driver’s Seat for Services?

By Al Brisard

It used to be that product management at a communications service provider (CSP) owned the P&L and the lifecycle management for service offerings. They led the core team that worked with operations, IT, finance, sales, product marketing and others to effectively and efficiently deploy and maintain a service. Product management was responsible for setting sales commissions and negotiating objectives with sales to drive desired revenue results and service mix. They would work with engineering, network planning and operations to secure capital and deploy the required network elements. Product management would work with finance and IT to adjust back-office systems to account for new offerings and to track and measure how a service was performing from a financial perspective. They would work with product marketing and advertising to line up key promotional activities. And they regularly worked with customer support to see if there were customer issues that needed to be addressed. Product management was where it all came together; for better or worse.

Now, it seems as if product management in many CSPs has become a follower, not a leader. Its role has been minimized to that of service definition and pricing. Other departments such as operations and finance end up wielding more power and affecting the outcome of a service offering with little consideration for the market or the customers of the CSP. Product management has become just another participant in the fight vying for the dollars and other resources required to lifecycle-manage and promote their services as best they can. All too often product management priorities get lumped together and are left up to engineering or operations to decide what is most important to the network or to day to day operations.

Who is the best customer advocate AND business advocate? Who decides which products are strategic? Should that come from product management, operations, IT, finance, or by edict from on high? Regardless of where it comes from for the moment, this kind of strategic decision needs to be understood and managed from a product-mix perspective. The impact of this strategic directive may actually cannibalize some services while driving demand for others. In each case, the company needs to be able to tactically address these situations; this used to originate from product management. It’s not that clear where this originates from today.

In the end it should be all about customers and which department in the company is really the best to balance customer needs, the P&L, the competitive landscape, service performance, and the business needs of the company. The overarching goal of the CSP is to maximize revenue from their customers while at the same time maximizing the customer experience and consumed value.

It seems to me that given the proper authority and accountability, product management is best positioned to do this. The blending of business, technology and operations experience makes it uniquely positioned to address the breadth of issues and imperatives associated with service management and market demands. Getting back to the fundamentals and empowerment of product management to once again bridge what is best for the customer and the company is something worth considering. And having a qualified driver back in the driver’s seat will make for a smoother, safer, and more enjoyable journey.

Any additional viewpoints answering the question of this blog are welcome and appreciated.

Al Brisard is vice president of marketing and business development at Vertek Corp., a leading provider of end-to-end business process outsourcing, business consulting and managed business assurance offerings that allow communication providers to reduce costs, improve customer experiences, grow revenue and ultimately improve profitability. Contact him at: abrisard@vertek.com.