Challenge How to enter a crowded financial services market with new, differentiated offerings. Landscape A large provider of financial services and software products was struggling to fill its new product pipeline and harvest existing product success. Product development projects were consistently behind schedule and not meeting market expectations. The company’s executives were concerned about future financial performance due to inadequate returns on existing products and the lack of a robust new product development pipeline. At the same time, many of the key team members and stakeholders had lost their passion or had become disengaged. As a result, the company’s innovation track record and market leadership position were also at risk. Process To help the company get back on track, MIDIOR conducted a capabilities review and assessed the firm’s product development and management organization model. The project included:
MIDIOR developed a “retuned” organization model, adjusted job functions and roles and recalibrated resources against the existing product development process. MIDIOR’s use of discussion-based research during the capabilities review was a key factor in ensuring that subtleties were exposed and that the culture was considered. This approach had the side benefit of vesting employees and outside resources in the process and ultimately in the success of the recommended changes. Results With MIDIOR’s help, the company was able to realign existing skills with the company’s needs, flatten the organization and improve productivity of the product team. As a result, resources were released to be redeployed against other key initiatives, the number of new products in the pipeline was increased, and there was an 80% improvement in product development cycle time (as measured by the number of product releases that were on time and within budget). |
