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Product/service definition is akin to developing a business plan on a micro scale, except it
is one step closer to implementation and therefore one further increment in the level of detail.
It is the material that is used by sales, marketing and technical staff to provide precise guidance for
implementation of the fulfilment plan.
Keeping your eye on the business drivers and tightly defining and refining what your offer
comprises and, importantly, drawing boundaries to exclude items that are not your responsibility,
is vital to satisfying your target market.
MorganDoyle has defined products and services as diverse as outsourced messaging, decision
support systems and hosted data warehouses. For a typical product/service definition
MorganDoyle research the following areas:
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Target market. The market composition,
size, value and window of opportunity is considered thereby setting the agenda for
the launch plan.
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Financial objectives. Revenue
targets, budgetary constraints and pricing structure.
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Customer & User profiles.
Characterising the target audience in terms of expectations, behaviour and financial profile.
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Sales/marketing support & campaigns
. Addressing the target market, defining appropriate channels and
relationships and identifying requirements for supporting collateral comprising
anything from brochures to demonstration systems.
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Functional specification. Core/optional
service features, including product bundling.
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Domain boundaries.
Delimitation of responsibilities and definition of interfaces between all parties (including
the customer) involved in product delivery and consumption.
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Platform dependencies.
External dependencies (network, data centre, management).
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Capacity planning.
Ensuring that sufficient resources can be deployed and scaled up to achieve the desired
performance and quality of service under given target usage. Account must be taken of
impacts on existing products and services.
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Operations.
Defining the process and support requirements for in-house service management and customer self
service outlining who, what and where this will come from.
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SLA. In most cases the SLA
is important enough to warrant separate consideration - see
SLA.
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