Sustaining Innovation in Your Organization – Manage Rollouts Effectively: Part 4 of 6 by Dr. Carol Pletcher

Sustaining Innovation in Your Organization – Manage Rollouts Effectively: Part 4 of 6
by: Dr. Carol Pletcher

Last week we discussed how to effectively manage “missing the mark” when it comes to your new product, advertising campaign, and general innovation and growth portfolio. This week we will talk about how to effectively manage product/service rollouts in order to obtain the maximum ROI from your campaign.

Manage Your Rollouts Effectively

Strong companies will take a look at the average ROI on products and services that they introduced over the last period and make judgments based on what they discover. Often times, they will discover that, although their average ROI was high enough to keep them profitable, they weren’t realizing maximum benefits due to the rollouts of too many unprofitable products. A good marketing executive will look at the products and services available and realize which have the most potential for the least cost.

Far too often, executives will attempt to introduce too many products or services to the market but find that the project bottlenecks at the “resources” level. Before introducing a product or service, research must be done on the market, available supplies, etc. Research and development are also costly upfront costs when creating a new product. Manufacturing, shipping, advertising – all of these involve money that must be spent before the product can even hit the market, before a single dollar in profit is realized.

By minimizing your product rollouts every year, and limiting them to only those with the highest potential ROI, your company can grow financially. Managers must use what is called the “Effort to Benefit Tradeoff” when making their portfolio management decisions. Too many projects that involve high costs in R&D or manufacturing being rolled out in the same year will decrease the overall ROI of your portfolio. Having a good market sense and forward looking vision will allow marketing managers the foresight necessary to select the products with the highest potential ROI’s.

In next week’s article Delivering on Target we will discuss the last major problem that can arise with your growth portfolio, which is the failure to deliver on target.

About The Author

Dr. Carol Pletcher was a key leader in developing six new product lines aimed at product roadmapping with special emphasis on product life cycle management, food safety and quality assurance. Dr. Pletcher, former Chief Innovation Officer, Cargill, was key in the company’s efforts to enhance product innovation management. Dr. Pletcher has been recognized by BusinessWeek as one of its Top 25 Innovation Champions. For more visit http://www.sopheon.com