embedded

FOR PRODUCT MANAGERS

Explain it to Me like I’m a Product Manager: How to Successfully Launch an Embedded Analytics Product

Flash in the Pan, or Rolling Thunder? You Decide.Failure. Flop. Fizzle. In a world where only 40% of developed products make it to market and, of those, only 60% generate ANY revenue at all—these are the product manager’s new “F” words. Do a little research on the criteria for a product launch to be deemed successful, and the F words are enough to strike terror into the heart of even the most fearless product guru.

Add in the unique risks associated with being in a startup, and if you’re like many SaaS PMs—the pressure to perform at launch is astronomical, and yet…the reward can be just as great. Forty-seven percent of North American and European enterprise software decision makers are expecting to increase their investment in SaaS products this year, according to Forrester.1

HOW TO SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCH AN EMBEDDED ANALYTICS PRODUCT 2

A full 64% cite increasing the use of analytics within business applications as a high (38%) or critical (26%) priority. Interest in SaaS products with analytics capabilities is at an all-time high. In fact, Forrester identifies the cloud/SaaS and embedded analytics as two of the five technology pillars that will shape the future of business applications innovation.2

That means, as a product manager in the software space, the time is now for you to start planning your next launch, capitalizing on customer demand for embedded analytics to catapult your product—and company—into new realms. In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to successfully add analytic capabilities to your core product. We’ll highlight a few of the main reasons product launches fail and steps you can take to counteract them. And finally, we’ll illustrate the importance of taking a rolling thunder approach to launching your analytic features, preventing your important launch from being a flash in the pan.

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Electricity Gathers :: Leveraging Customer Relationships for Product PlanningWhen it comes to product planning, the customer is definitely always right. One of the most critical break points in most new product and/or feature launches is neglecting to tap into real customers to inform your roadmap; confirm (or correct) assumptions; and ultimately, to define, test, and validate your product—turning short-term “Eureka moments” into long-term shared value and success.

With an established core product, there’s a strong likelihood that you already have working personas that perhaps have been developed by your product marketing team. It’s important to remember, however, that the addition of analytics requires new considerations. For example, are the problems your core product solves the same issues you’ll be addressing with your analytics capabilities?

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How does the addition of analytics impact your user workflows? How do their needs translate into product requirements?

One of the best avenues you can take in adjusting your product strategy for an embedded

analytics launch is to reach out to your existing customers. Doing so offers you the opportunity to gather qualified input from users already familiar with the strengths and the limitations of your existing product. At GoodData, we’ve established a Customer Advisory Board (CAB) to assist us with developing our long-term strategy and our product roadmap.

Customer Advisory Boards can be an excellent resource for gathering the insights you need to successfully define, and launch, an analytics feature within your product. As a SaaS company ourselves, we recognize that product innovation simply can’t happen in a vacuum—especially when profitability is linked intrinsically to customer satisfaction.

In fact, neglecting to establish customer value is one of the key reasons that 72% of all new products fail to meet revenue targets, according to a recent global study conducted by Simon-Kutcher & Partners and the Independent Professional Pricing Society.

If your organization already has a CAB in place, you’re already one step ahead of the game. If you don’t, and you have the runway necessary to establish one in advance of your launch, consider treating this exercise as the inaugural activity that will lay the foundation for a long-term, mutually-beneficial relationship. In the event you cannot tap into a CAB, customer focus groups can also be of help.

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Pragmatic Marketing recommends selecting participants based on their ability to represent specific market segments, avoiding placing competitors in the same room. Look for those that can serve as bellwethers for their industries, instead of focusing purely on the “loud-but-big” customers usually suggested by sales.

Try to get a spread of business sizes, including customers on both ends that are sure to test the edges of your solution post-launch. This approach will help you form a more comprehensive view of your landscape of potential users, rather than just a picture of the “average” user.

When working with your customers to define your offering—remember to give them something to respond to, instead of a blank canvas. Their experience with analytics is likely to be limited. Start with initial KPIs and functionality to inform your MVP. This will be an ongoing conversation, so don’t feel compelled to do it all at once, give yourself some room to iterate as you, and your customers, educate one another. Read on for some of the ways investing in customer input in the early stages of your planning process can make your launch a success.

LEARN HOW TO DIFFERENTIATE WITH ANALYTICS

DEFINE YOUR PRODUCT REQUIREMENTS

REDUCE RESEARCH TIME

& COSTS

INCREASE SATISFACTION

& LIFETIME VALUE

FIGURE OUT YOUR STARTING

POINT

CREATE ELECTRICITY FOR YOUR UPCOMING LAUNCH, TAPPING INTO THE POWER OF YOUR CUSTOMER BASE

Get feedback on what’s

working and what’s not with

the core product, and how analytics

can address customer

challenges.

Confirm or correct existing assumptions within user personas to ensure delivery of

customer value.

Develop a deeper understanding of unique requirements

by industry, market, geo, or company size.

Let your customers teach you how to

pull away from the competition with early input on features and

capabilities.

Map requirements to real user needs

and researched workflows to improve

usability and adoption.

Get targeted data at a fraction of the cost of traditional

market research and persona development.

Increase customer revenues by

upwards of 9%, while building goodwill and

driving retention.

UNDERSTAND CUSTOMER

WANTS & NEEDS

GAIN INSIGHT ON KEY

INDUSTRIES & MARKETS

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Momentum Swells :: Setting the Stage for Rolling Launch SuccessNothing kills a new product’s momentum like the “lightning bolt” approach to launches that many companies fall victim to. It’s the big ramp of inflated expectations to the “Ta-Da” moment where the big reveal is made, followed by a freefall into the trough of disillusionment and the eventual resumption of business as usual. Successful product launches happen in stages, building momentum with a series of market wins that validate your product’s value.

We’re all familiar with the “lightning bolt.” Everyone working around the clock towards the deadline—when the press announcements go out, the analysts are briefed, the webinars take place, and the sales force starts aggressive outreach. Troops are are rallied. Chests are thumped. Expectations blown to gigantic proportions. And then what? Reality, not lightning, strikes. The market is not as excited as you. The coverage, not what you had planned. Sales...below expectations. And everyone is left wondering “What went wrong?”

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What are a few of the differences between the lightning bolt and rolling thunder approach to launch?

ROLLING THUNDER :: Take Advantage of Beta Testing with Trusted

Customers & Prospects to Announce V1

LIGHTNING BOLT :: Announce Your Upgraded Capabilities As

If They Are Fully Defined & Baked

LIGHTING BOLT :: Market, Before Proving the Value of Your

Enhanced Solution

Setting the stage as if your new analytics capabilities are fully developed and ready to rule the market is a critical misstep of most lightning bolt launches. The reality is, you’re going to need time to test and adjust. Setting expectations too high will lead to conflated results and market feedback, stalling your momentum before it even gets started. Take a lesson from Sir James Dyson, who tested 5,126 prototypes of his vacuum cleaner before introducing it to the world...practice makes perfect.

Your first launch should be before your big launch. Take advantage of your CAB, or another select pool of customers to beta test your solution’s new capabilities, building in time to adjust before the big reveal. Dial in packaging and pricing; ensure an excellent customer experience with the product; and optimize onboarding and training procedures. Finally, gather and incorporate critical feedback—before you expend calories on marketing and PR.

Lightning bolt launches often rely on firm deadlines. Deadlines that don’t allow much time for real market validation to occur, lest the magnitude of the “Ta-Da” moment be diminished. The challenge is that consumers are more educated than ever before in the information economy. 75% of customers do research online before making a purchase. Launching a product without real proof points or success stories to illustrate the value of your offering will not only diminish your ability to cut through the clutter, it can permanently damage your credibility with prospects.

ROLLING THUNDER :: Gather Real Validation from Real

Customers to Establish Credibility

Choose the right customers for your beta launch—looking not just at a spread across markets, industries, geos and business sizes, but also a willingness to co-market—ensuring you’ll have the right proof points to establish early credibility when you go public with your new capabilities. Address feedback quickly, and allow enough time to gather preliminary results and testimonials, all of which can be incorporated into launch messaging, collateral, press and analyst materials. Collaborating with customers early on will give you the opportunity to fine-tune messaging, while feeding off and augmenting one another’s efforts.

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Standard

Advanced

Premium

Elite

Interactive reporting

across products

Advanced reporting,

dashboards and ad-hoc

analysis

Benchmarking across industries,

geographies and more

Additional data sources,

including ERP and

third-party

LIGHTING BOLT :: Steal Your Own Thunder by Announcing All

Your Product Tiers at Once

ROLLING THUNDER :: Work Your Product and Your Customers

Up the Analytics Maturity Curve

One thing you don’t want to do is back yourself into a packaging or pricing corner that you can’t get out of. Again, this is your MVP. It’s OK to announce just your standard capabilities at this time. Steal your own thunder by prematurely rolling out advanced capabilities before you’ve had a chance to learn from your more basic tiers and you could get it all wrong—functionality, features, messaging, value propositions, pricing and more—turning the market against yourself.

As valuable as early feedback is—the reality is that most customers aren’t 100% sure what they like, until they actually try it on for size. Start customers at your basic tier, then walk them up the analytics maturity model, using measurement tools like GoodData’s GoodSuccess to keep track of usage trends, identifying areas of opportunity for future releases. Some things you might consider are creating tiers for ad hoc reporting; monetizing benchmark data gleaned across customer instances; and integrating third-party data— all of which are enabled by GoodData’s multi-tenant cloud architecture. Here are a few sample tiers to guide your planning process. For a deeper dive on packaging strategies, check out our guide: Explain it to Me like I’m a VP of Product: How to GTM with Embedded Analytics.

NEW REVENUE STREAMS BY TIERING AND MONETIZING ANALYTICS

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Thunder Rolls :: Delivering Ongoing Value with Embedded Analytics

Rolling thunder is not just about executing on a series of planned launched phases. It’s iterating with agility in response to customer and market feedback. When it comes to launching embedded analytics products, “once and done” is a recipe for the new “F” words: “Failure. Flop. Fizzle.” Successful embedded analytics launches require outside of the box thinking on new ways to monetize your data, unlocking the value that already exists within your core product.

Of course, you know all about the phased general rollout. But have you thought beyond the traditional market introduction and delivery of your product tiers? When you choose to buy embedded analytics, instead of build—a whole new world of launch options opens up to you. How does partnering with a leader in OEM analytics help you?

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Amplify your Impact with an Established Partner

Without question, one of the highlights of partnering with an established OEM analytics provider is the immediate seal of credibility it lends to your product. Any questions about capabilities, performance, and reliability can be immediately dismissed with market evidence and firm SLAs. GoodData’s product is tried, tested, and recognized as one of the leading distribution platforms for OEM analytic—offering not just robust product capabilities, but fast integration (with most launches occurring in <90 days), and an engaging user interface with an adoption rate that—at over 30%—rivals that of most consumer apps.

Furthermore, creating a relationship with a provider like GoodData offers you the opportunity to join forces to amplify marketing and PR efforts—creating shared value with press announcements, webinars, event speaking opportunities, and more.

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Create Tiered Analytical (and Product) Value

When you partner with GoodData, you don’t just buy into the product, you buy into a dedicated team of professionals that are here to support you from the planning phase all the way through launch. GoodData offers deep GTM expertise that will help you draft your strategy, accelerating your path to launch, and return. It’s one of the reasons we won the 2015 Gold Stevie Award for exceptional customer service.

Our product was designed, from the ground up, to deliver one-to-many analytics, with SaaS customers like you in mind. With GoodData’s secure, multi-tenant cloud architecture

you can quickly provision, deploy and update customer workspaces using our automated capabilities. Which means that you can introduce new features to customers in real-time—giving you enhanced flexibility to manage your product lifecycle and iterate as you build out your capabilities and your tiers.

We also offer enablement tools like our GoodSuccess platform, that allows you to do BI on your own BI, evaluating customer usage trends to evolve your strategy. Tapping into resources like these is essential to a rolling thunder approach that will help you capture and retain real market share.

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Unlock New Ways to Monetize Your Data

In launching your new product, think outside of the box on the ways you can structure, and monetize, your embedded analytics offering. For example, providing benchmarks to customers, or charging for the integration of third-party data. Both of these advanced capabilities can be delivered via GoodData’s secure, multi-tenant cloud.

GoodData customer Zendesk, for example, gives customers the power to measure themselves against their peers. It’s a feature that has dramatically increased customer engagement and stickiness, motivating customers to track their improvements over time. VP of Products, Sam Boonin, says: “We’ve seen that being best-in-class really motivates support teams, and it helps reinforce the case that great service leads to happy customers.”

Another GoodData customer, ServiceChannel, a cloud-based ERP system provider for management of facilities like shopping malls—became a leading source of industry insights when they combined their own data with external data on weather patterns, gas prices, and demographics. VP of Global Service, Sid Shetty, explains: “We are empowering our customers with GoodData’s tactical, operational, and strategic insight to change how the industry as a whole makes decisions.”

GoodData’s capabilities give you the opportunity, not just to differentiate, but to become a visionary in your space, becoming a leading source of macro-indicators for your market.

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New Horizons :: Partner with a Disrupter and Change the LandscapeThe final, and perhaps most important, element to a successful embedded analytics launch is choosing the right partner. A partner that can deliver seamlessly integrated analytics, distributed at scale; a highly-engaging end user experience that guides customers of all skill-levels to insight quickly; and the expertise and organization support you need for a successful launch.

We think we’re that partner. Gartner* has recognized us for OEM analytics in their October 2015 Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms.3 Similarly, Forrester has named us a leader in The Forrester Wave™: Agile Business Intelligence Platforms, Q3 2015.4

GoodData offers an industry-leading business intelligence platform and deep Go-To-Market expertise. The Powered by GoodData partner program helps ISVs quickly create new revenue streams and increase customer retention—embedding advanced, self-service analytics directly into existing SaaS solutions.

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Related Assets • Explain it to Me like I’m a CEO: What’s So Great

About Embedded Analytics

• Explain it to Me like I’m a CFO: What’s the ROI of Embedded Analytics?

• Explain it to Me like I’m a VP of Product: How to GTM with Embedded Analytics

• Powered by GoodData: Monetize Data with Embedded Analytics

Suggested Resources • Powered By GoodData On Demand Demo

• Growing a Cash Crop: How to Turn Data Into Dollars

• CITO Research: A Guide to Data Monetization

• Blue Hill Research Report: GoodData’s Role in the Next Era of Analytics: Data Monetization

Customer Success Stories • Travel: FCm Travel Solutions

• Health: MediGain Billing and Reimbursement

• MarTech: Autopilot, Demandbase, Influitive

• Operations: Zendesk, Bolder Thinking

GoodData delivers the market’s most complete multi-tenant analytics distribution platform, coupled with a hyper-intuitive user interface your customers will love. With fully-responsive, embedded analytics customized to meet your (and your customers’) brand and business needs—GoodData guides users to fast discovery and adoption using interactive recommendations.

Discover why SaaS leaders like Zendesk, SendGrid and Demandbase are choosing GoodData as their analytics partner. Contact GoodData today to learn more.

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1 “Application Adoptions Trends 2015: The SaaS Boom Continues As Businesses Demand Agility”, Forrester Research, Inc., April 24, 2014

2 “Digital Innovation Reshapes The Future Of Business Applications”, Forrester Research, Inc., July 17, 2015

3 Gartner, “Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms”, Rita L. Sallam, Bill Hostmann, Kurt Schlegel, Joao Tapadinhas, Josh Parenteau, Thomas W. Oestreich, 23 February 2015

4 “The Forrester Wave™: Agile Business Intelligence Platforms, Q3 2015”, Forrester Research, Inc., September 25, 2015

*Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

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