Sales & Marketing Case Study

The Development & Execution of a Comprehensive New Products & Services Launch Methodology Yields Immediate Results & Revenue

By Don, Mulhern, Sales & Marketing

Situation – The North American subsidiary of a $400M publically held IT services company had not successfully launched a new service in over three years. Stagnant revenues triggered a need to develop strategic initiatives to grow the business and leadership identified launching new products and services as a key opportunity. However, the new service development and launch process lacked structure. Additionally, it was plagued by continual minor service line extension requests, leaving actual new service requests to languish on the back burner.

Solution – PVG re-engineered and enhanced the new service development process into a stage-gate, multi-disciplined, structured methodology. This comprehensive approach included clearly defined tasks, tools, inputs, outputs, and metrics for each stage of development. Beginning with conceptualization, the documented development process included not only launch activities, but lifecycle management and retirement activities as well. Key to a successful new product launch, management approvals at all critical milestones were incorporated into the process. This ensured adherence to key business case and development criteria, continued alignment with market needs, and facilitated development adjustments as necessary. PVG also developed a front-end voice of the customer (VOC) process to gather and prioritize market inputs and ideas from employees, customers and industry influencers. The entire methodology was delivered with comprehensive documentation, including tools and templates for consistent adherence during each stage.

Result – the client now has a replicable and robust process which ensures that new services not only launch successfully and efficiently, but also meet market needs upon their release into the marketplace. Just as critically, it also facilitates the development of new services that align with corporate strategy and core competencies. With the ability to capture and evaluate market input, the prioritization scheme provides a means to ensure the most critical projects rise to the top. Most importantly, the client has successfully launched its first new service during the first quarter of 2011 and the second is on target for launch during Q2 – well on their way toward meeting their goal of one new service per quarter for the year.

See More About Penn Valley Group's Sales and Marketing Solutions.\

<< Back to Case Studies