By Daniel Boey, Chief, Digital Products & Platforms Practice, NUS-ISS
The Value of Digital Products and Services
“Singapore’s digital economy is estimated to add as much as US$10 billion (about S$13.5 billion) to Singapore’s gross domestic product (GDP) by 2021. It can also increase the GDP growth rate by 0.6 per cent annually, according to the 2018 study by Microsoft and market research firm IDC Asia-Pacific.” [1]
The new and emerging digital technology that is driving the digital economy is drastically altering the balance of power between customers and companies. While customers gain the power of information and choice, digital technology dramatically improves the economics of business, creating opportunities for companies to disrupt competition and enter/create new markets globally. These economics are the primary drivers of digital transformation for many businesses. Similarly, governments have found productive new ways to engage and service their citizens digitally. This results in a big push for the development of digital products, platforms, and service offerings for both internal stakeholders and external customers.
These new digital products and services bring value in the following key areas:
- Deliver easier, more effective and positive emotional customer experiences at a fraction of the cost of existing customer service.
- Help organisations focus operations on value delivery to customers instead of only efficiency and cost-effectiveness objectives for the organization.
- Build digital collaboration capabilities to foster partnerships in digital ecosystems that can accelerate and scale the product.
- Exploit design thinking to innovate at the intersection of experiences and operations.
How to Build and Deliver Digital Products
To successfully create and deliver these new digital products and the promised business value, a new breed of professionals is needed. The ISS Digital Products and Platforms team researched into the employment landscape for such professionals. There are many jobs with titles like product directors, product managers, product owners, business owners, partnership managers, marketing managers, sales managers or business analysts, and even service managers. However, their job descriptions now include responsibilities to deliver digital products. For simplicity, we shall call them Digital Product Managers.
Two of our engagements with the industry, a round table discussion organized with business and technical leaders in June 2019 and a focus group with employers in November 2019, indicated a growing demand for such talent across various sectors and organisations types from startup, SMEs, global enterprises and public sector.
So what do digital product managers do and what activities do they spend their time on?
The McKinsey article here gives a concise description of the skills required of product managers and a breakdown of the average percentage of time spent by the product manager on the various job responsibilities.
While the responsibilities seem typical of product managers, those specifically working on digital products, such as a mobile app or an e-commerce platform, require specific skills in agile product management and product development. They are:
- Work with internal IT and Business units to build, evangelize and execute a digital roadmap based on strategic business priorities
- Shape the overall product vision and roadmap for digital products across different markets
- Serve as an Agile product owner
- Providing vision and direction to the agile development teams.
- Conceptualise, define, design, develop and deliver the product backlog.
- Prioritise stories, epics and themes to ensure work focuses on those with the maximum value to align with product strategy.
- Keep abreast of agile best practices and new trends.
- Manage the omnichannel experience.
- Work with UX / UI and development teams.
- Drive usage, engagement and adoption of digital products and website through usage statistics and insights.
- Collect data and customer feedback to measure the performance of product features. Work with the data analyst to validate objective/results and apply the learning from the analysis to shape the product backlog and feature ideation, including adjustment on prioritisation.
While these seem technical and very hands-on, Digital Product Managers need to transverse internal organisational boundaries, from business planning, marketing, engineering, sales to operations and services, to bring teams together to develop strategies and plans, to lobby for resources and support from key functional stakeholders and senior executives, to deliver digital products successfully. They require a certain maturity and organisational savviness. They are experts on the domain, market and the customer; have an eye for design to work with the UX experts; understand technology in enabling business, and is data competent.
While it is unlikely to find a person with such a broad set of skills and competencies, we often see a team coming together to fulfill the leadership role of Digital Product Management. Some hiring gurus have divided the digital product manager role into different archetypes[2],[3]. Know which type you need to hire the right one. For example, if you have an excellent idea to productise, the likely archetype would be a product manager with strong business strategy and marketing background (Business-oriented). The product’s technical architecture would benefit from a Product Manager with a strong technology background (Technologist) and a product in the design phase will benefit from one with strong UI/UX background (User advocate).
How do we even develop Digital Product Managers to fulfill this very diverse role?
Many talent management experts have recommended bringing together a repertoire of intentional, planned support and talent development activities. These include boot camp training, community learning (online and live), shadowing of senior product managers, on the job training. When they are ready, undertake advanced training, supported by coaching and mentoring.
Do you aspire to such a role? Are you looking for such professionals? Let us know your thoughts and comments.
Writer, Daniel Boey is the Chief of Digital Products and Platforms, at the Institute of Systems Science, NUS (NUS-ISS). He runs a practice in consultancy and training in the area for digital product management. For more information on product management training, please click here.
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¹Tang See Kit. "The rise of the digital economy: What is it and why it matters for Singapore" ChannelNewsAsia.com. January. 2020. Web. 18 March 2020.
²Gnanasambandam Chandra, Marin Harrysson, Shivam Srivastava, and Yun Wu: Product Managers for the Digital World" Mckinsey.com. May. 2017. Web. 19 March 2020.
³Cutter Alan: "The growing demand for product management" Aclion.com. January. 2019. Web. 19 March 2020.