Product Development Company in California, Why Develop New Products for Your Business?

Product Development Company in California

Amid the cutthroat competition, every business needs to innovate to stay ahead of competitors. No business can survive for a long time if it continues to offer the same old unchanged products. Innovation and the launch of a new product or service are necessary to gain the upper hand in competition and to increase profits. GID, an established new product development company in California, explains the importance of custom product development for every business.

Here are some reasons, why the lack of new product development can adversely affect the sales and profit margin of a business.

A Business has to Understand the “Needs and Wants” of the Customers

A consumer’s “Needs and Wants” varies continuously. Businesses should respond immediately to these changes through their services and products. Otherwise, consumers will switch to competitors’ products that fulfills their “Wants and Needs” in a better manner. For instance, consumers all around the world are becoming more health conscious, which is forcing companies to launch low sugar, salt and fat products. Coca Cola Zero and Diet Coke are the best examples of new product development, which contains no sugar.

Your Competitors in the Market

Having an upper hand on the competition is the main aim of a new product development. Due to the advancements in the technology, new products are constantly being introduced to a target market that welcomes change and innovation. Nowadays, customers are not scared of trying new products. In fact, they often want the latest product to exemplify their style and status. If your product is successful (hopefully), then competitors will introduce something similar to yours with the aim to share the cake.

According to the tech giant “Google”, they developed Android operating system in order to prevent the technology market, for products such as mobile phones and tablets, begin controlled by a single supplier.

Product Reaches the End of Its Life Cycle

Everything comes with an expiration date. The product launched by you today, maybe on the final stage of its life cycle by tomorrow. Therefore, as a smart entrepreneur, you should introduce new, improved, and updated version. For example, Microsoft has done this by shifting from the Xbox to the Xbox 360 and, now Xbox 360 to Xbox One, continuously refreshing the product to meet the market expectations.

Product is at The Maturity Stage of its Life Cycle

Apart from the expiration date, there are chances that your product may need modification at the maturity stage of its life cycle. After a certain period, it may need modifications and feature additions to stimulate an increase in sales. For example, Nintendo has replaced its DSi console with the 3DS console, which contains additional features, including an extra camera so that you can film in 3D, a 3D screen that does not require glasses, motion sensors and a joystick. The company also launched its Wii U that delivers HD graphics and a highly enhanced experience compared to the company’s previous console, the Wii.

Product May Require Environmental Changes

As a business, we need to capitalize on environmental changes to survive and to earn bread and butter. Here is the best example of environmental changes: Music firms are now selling more music through the internet downloads as compared to that of traditional retail shop. Record companies were pushed into selling through the internet following the success of the website “Napster”. Therefore, it is necessary to sync your business with the latest trends.

Every Product Experiences, Problems

Unfortunately, if your products in the market are facing poor sales, or suffering from a negative reputation then immediately change your product offering. For example, in 2001, the launch of the innovative iPod player reversed the fortune of Apple Computers. Since then, Apple Inc. has successfully introduced the iPhone and the iPad, and raised its share price from $9.07 per share to over $500 per share.

Conclusion

According to GID, a Product Manufacturing Company, new and innovative product development is essential for all businesses. It helps businesses to dodge fierce competition and stay ahead of competitors.

If you do not develop new products for your consumers, then someone else will, stealing all your customers. To survive and for long-term advantages, every business should understand the importance of custom product development.
For any query on product manufacturing, feel free to contact us at https://www.gidcompany.com/contact-us/

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Factors to Consider Before Custom / New Product Development

Product Development

About Product Development

“Custom Product Development” or generally known as “New Product Development” may sound simple, but it is the multifaceted process of designing, prototyping and manufacturing a new product from the scratch. To be honest, the designing and engineering phases involved in product manufacturing are truly complicated and beyond one’s imagination. It refers to a collective team effort among the major departments within the company, including, R&D, Operation, Marketing, and Finance. Under the hood of custom product development, each and every member of a product development company strives to find the set of innovative solutions to customer problems or customer needs.

Factors to Consider Before Initiating the Product Manufacturing

Generating New Ideas

Companies with a higher rate of success in custom product development make a concerted effort to produce a steady stream of new product ideas. All of these ideas undergo a thorough screening process, and many are discarded just before the potential winners are declared. Some ideas are left untouched because in management’s decision the need or problem they solve is not convincing enough to prompt customers to be highly motivated to make a purchase. The ideas that make it through the final manufacturing phase are those that offer customers something that is much more useful than anything offered in the market now. They offer user-friendly, understandable yet potent solutions. These are the products about which people remark: “I wish I’d thought of that!”

The Test of Marketability

For companies, “What will be the price of the product?” is the key point of concern at the time of introducing the product. For example, if you are a company that deals with consumer products, then it can be quite expensive for you to bring your product to the mass market. Additionally, the average length of the sales process affects your product’s marketability, as well.

Now days, for some technology-based business solutions, a series of meetings and presentations are held prior the purchase decision is made. Therefore, for better marketability, companies should make sure that they have distribution channels in place, or can immediately establish them, to get their products in front of potential buyers. Companies that knowingly or unknowingly ignore this step are often frustrated with how difficult it is to get their products on major retailers’ shelves.

Evaluation of Feasibility

A product idea may be left untouched because its manufacturing duration would be too long or there are plenty of design hurdles that can hamper the overall development period. Delaying the launch of a newly developed product equates to lost revenue opportunities. Moreover, the manufacturing cost of the product should be taken into consideration with respect to the size of the market of the product. Spending $6 million to produce a product that will only return $2 million annually doesn’t make economic sense, as it will take years to recoup the basic investment.

One more feasibility issue is whether the company has the in-house team for product development so the gross margin will be ample enough to ensure profitability. If the manufacturing cost is too high, the price charged to the customers may be too high as well, which makes a product less competitive in the market.

The Decision to Proceed

After a thorough research, lots of meetings and hundreds of presentations, a company devises a product plan that forecasts the bottom-line profit the company is expecting to yield from the new product development. In case, if the prospective profit of the product to be developed is not up to the financial performance standard of other products in the company’s line, the judgment may be made not to proceed with manufacturing it. However, there are some strategic considerations as well. Acquainting a product may allow the company to reach a large new market for other products it produces, boosting revenue company-wide. At the end, custom product development can solidify the brand image of the company.

All of the above listed aspects unite together in the final decision of whether to give the new product development the green light and proceed with introducing it.

How to Reduce Time to Market in Product Development?

How to Reduce Time to Market in Product Development?

GID is a product manufacturing company that assists its clients throughout the product development lifecycle, from product research and custom product development to quality assurance and maintenance activities. We also guide our clients in selecting appropriate technologies, platform and features before committing to any large financial outlays.

Reduce Time To Market Your product

In today’s competitive world and stiff market conditions, smart entrepreneurs must carefully allocate every penny. Not only money, but even time is critical in any product development because, when you plan to develop a product or service, you cannot be sure that your competitor will not introduce a similar product before you do. Therefore, time will decide the success or failure of your product introduction to the market.

There are many ways by which you can reduce a product’s time to market. A few of useful ways to reduce the project time is listed below. The points / tips are a good sample of the most common approaches taken by experienced project managers to reduce the project’s time to market:

Incremental Development

Incremental design and development is essential in decreasing product’s time to market and must be considered as the primary tool when starting a complex project. By incremental development, you can pick a subset of the features of the product specification; you work on that subset, test it and weigh it. The product is shown to the customer and to all stakeholders for comment. Finally, you can choose to release this subset to the market or move to the next step and pick other features from the specifications and include them to the product.

The beauty of this approach is that at any phase, you have a product which is functional and could be released to the market. In addition, by showing the product to the customer, you get instant reviews at the end of every cycle in product development. With this method, there are no hidden surprises, and the development team and the customers are in sync throughout the product development lifecycle.

Testing and Re-evaluation

At the completion of every development phase, the product is tested thoroughly and prepared for the launch. This does not contradict the concept of continuous deployment. The product is constantly tested and evaluated. As time progresses, the product gets more and more polished and functional. At any stage of the development life cycle, the product can be shown to the customer or stakeholders for evaluation and feedback. The motto behind this evaluation, at the end of each lifecycle, is to determine whether the product is meeting the specification or not? Whether, new changes are required or not?

Regular testing and evaluation helps to reduce the risk of project failure or delay.

Cross Functional Teams

For the desired result in the limited period of time, the product development company should have different teams of experts, which includes R&D, manufacturing, marketing and engineering. Keep the size of the team as small as possible, because as the member of the team grows, its efficiency is reduced due to maintenance and management factors needed for larger teams. Increased number of members in a team also increase the chance of rivalries and politics, which you don’t need in your team.

Agile Methodology

Agile methodology is an old yet an effective product manufacturing concept. There are several advantages of agile methodology for product development and even the most renowned design and development teams in the market today are practicing agile methodology. In the latter, the product is divided into several phases or so called sprints. At the completion of each phase, the team has a functional product which could be launched to the market or be used as the platform for the next phase. Agile reduces time to market substantially for most product developments and as an added advantage, it decreases the manufacturing cost.

Conclusion

A complex project development takes a lot of time and resources to come to fruition. Time to market plays a crucial role in the success or failure or any product. By employing the above mentioned tips / steps, a product manufacturing company can reduce time to market, manufacturing cost, and can have a better quality of products for their customers.

For more information or for custom product manufacturing, feel free to contact GID at www.gidcompany.com/contact-us