FINAL WORD
executives that say their biggest customer is in favour of a feature that may take a long time and a sizeable budget to add .
If the majority of the market is ambivalent about that feature , then it would be counterproductive to deliver it . Therefore , CPO supremacy and a productfirst strategy saves the enterprise from a bad business decision .
Innovation pyramid
In this respect , product-centric thinking brings us back , full circle , to customer-centric thinking . But instead of prioritising how to diffuse customer frustrations about a product , the product itself becomes a way of avoiding the confusion and frustrations that lead customers to contact a helpline in the first place . Ironically , customer-centric thinking really only delivers what the sales team wants .
The customer is better served by a focus on the product . As are regulators . The CPO will spend a significant amount of their time getting to grips with what governments require , imbedding compliance into products in a way that sales managers , and even finance executives , may miss .
Putting the CPO at the top of the innovation pyramid is a way of drowning out the din of perspectives about the company ’ s direction . In BFSI , as in other industries , the company is the products it offers . It should be obvious that understanding how a product is helping deliver on business objectives is the only way to decide whether to continue or discontinue its availability .
Does it generate enough revenue ? Does it help the business expand into new regions ? Attract more customers ? More partners ? The answers to these questions will dictate the features of the product .
It is important to point out that in a product-centric environment , technology alone is not necessarily the answer . Technology is a delivery mechanism . Strangely , this is even true of technology products .
Spreadsheets and word-processing documents are a digital version of useful concepts that came before . Technology is but one of the five pillars of superior product organisation , the other four being people , processes , leadership , and organisation .
Final say
An enterprise ’ s challenge is to understand what its product does and what the gulf is between that and what customers and regulators want . Other voices , such as those of sales and finance , are important , but they must not drown out the instincts of a good CPO .
In a competitive space of digital banks , neo banks , FinTechs , and others , BFSI organisations that do not adopt product thinking will see their effort at digital acceleration fail to deliver on their long term objectives . They are doomed to be swept away in a storm of innovation . •
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