Insights on How to Productize Services and Solution Offerings

Fear accompanies business model transformation and product innovation because these activities introduce ambiguity into your normal business operations. But to productize successfully, organizations must learn to face fears associated with change. In this four-part series, we outline our LEAP method for overcoming the fear that gets in the way of successful productization. LEAP stands for:

• Listening to your intuition
• Expecting less than perfect
• Asking for help
• Practicing gratitude.

Informed by the neuroscience of mindfulness, the LEAP method has helped clients and our team find the courage they seek to innovate and transform. 

One of my favorite professional events is right around the corner.  The annual Women In Product Conference is May 10-11 and it will be held virtually to allow more people to attend.  I highly recommend it for all women currently in Product roles (the conference has different tracks for entry-level professionals all the way up to Executive roles) as well as for Product leaders who want to help more women succeed in Product roles.

When services firms choose to pursue a productization strategy, they can face many challenges. I’ve seen companies fail because they didn’t have the right skills, poor product-market fit, or they under-invested in go-to-market. Another significant challenge is changing the organization’s behavior and culture to be more product friendly.  Consider this:

Most professional services organizations deliver their expertise through one-to-one customized interactions. When these organizations decide to grow through productization, they need to learn how to deliver expertise at scale.

Services organizations who want to pursue a strategy of productization first need to make sure their leadership team understands and supports the strategy. This includes building a business case for productization, collaboratively defining the new business model, and modeling necessary behavior change.       

One of the unexpected gifts of the pandemic has been our launch of (virtual) peer groups of Product Leaders. At least once a week, we get the chance to convene small groups of product leaders to discuss their challenges and share experiences. We cover a variety of topics such as how to better catalog and use customer feedback or how to reduce custom development. A very frequent topic is talent. Especially, how to attract and retain good product talent when you are not a tech company.

Fall is my favorite time of year. The kids go back to school (thank goodness), leaves change colors, pumpkin spice returns AND, for many organizations, budgeting season kicks off! As a Type-A planner, I love budgeting season because it's where we translate our vision and strategy into tangible spending commitments for the upcoming year.