Product protocol

 When a new products group finishes the full screen and the financial analysis
coincident with it.
They have reached what many feel is the most critical single step in the new product’s
life , more critical than the market introduction and more critical than the building of
manufacturing capacity.
 This is the point where very important things all around the firm begin to happen.
 When process engineers are laying out the manufacturing system, procurement
people are not waiting for final word about when certain components are going to
be built.
 And while all of this technical/operations work is continuing, marketing people are
not sitting around waiting for a hand-off that will trigger their thoughts about
advertising and customer technical service.
THE PRODUCT PROTOCOL
What do we do? We do it all, side by side, doing what we can, when we can, making
minor commitments at some risk, holding on costly commitments.

All of these efforts are risky and will never work well without something that keeps
the team together , something that allows them to make reasonable speculations.
 That something currently has no standard form, no accepted name, and no
established practice. But most firms are doing part of the task, a few all of it,
waiting for the activity to gel. In this book we will call the activity protocol
preparation, and the output is a product protocol.
 A protocol is a signed agreement between negotiating parties
 In a product protocol, the negotiating parties are the functions—marketing,
technical, operations, and others.
 Signed agreement is a bit formal, perhaps, but the financial analysis that
triggered this phase depended on certain assumptions
 . One technique used by Toyota to get cooperation across functional areas, to
speed up integration, and to focus the team is the “Oobeya Room,”
 The Oobeya Room is conceptually very close to the idea of the product
protocol: It very effectively overcomes the challenge

PURPOSES OF THE PROTOCOL

 This can vary from market segment to market segment, and from time to
time.
 What the customer actually buys, however, consists of one or more core
benefits a
 formal product presentation (physical form or service sequence), and an
augmentation of things from presale technical service to a money-back
guarantee.
 customers and end users buy fully augmented products, and their core
benefit may partly come from the augmentations.
 This idea of how others use the protocol is what gave it the name product
deliverables . In fact, the first general purpose of the protocol is to specify
what each department will deliver to the final product that the customer
buys .
 Not all deliverables are known at this time, of course, but the critical ones
should be. Otherwise, we are not ready for release into a system of
parallel (or concurrent) development.
 The fact is, protocol (like many things in use today) states requirements
that force us to do what we should be doing anyway, such as good market
research!
 A second general purpose of the protocol statement is the same for the
participants in new product development. It communicates essentials to all
of the players, helps lead them into integrated actions, helps direct
outcomes that are consistent with the full screen and financials, and gives
all players their targets to shoot for.
 A third purpose of the protocol relates to time through the process, or
cycle time .
 Many firms place high priority on accelerated time to market, and better
product definition can help cut development time.
 Fourth, if done right, the protocol gives requirements in words that can
usually be measured. It thus permits a development process to be
managed.
 As the saying goes, if you don’t know where you’re going, any road
will get you there. Without protocol and its call for measurements,
you’ve no idea where (or when) you will end up.

PROTOCOL'S SPECIFIC CONTENTS :

Target Market ;
 Most firms manage most of their new product projects using
techniques we have been presenting.
 Other projects are wildcatting —betting on a technology that hasn’t
yet been shown to work, betting on a new application where some
end-user will partner with us to see what works, or just betting on a
scientist with a good track record for coming up with saleable new
products.
 None of these is appropriate for a protocol.
 however, we know the target market very well—first in finding their
problems to solve, later in asking if our new product concept meets
their need and seems reasonable to them, and still later in
screening factors.
The target market needs to be spelled out here, quite specifically. Some
firms like to have a primary target market, selected perhaps due to size,
growth rate, urgency of need, buying power, perceived ease of making

competitive inroads and so on.

POSITIONING ;
  Product positioning is the concept that
came out of the advertising world in the early 1970s. Essentially, it says, “
Product X
is better for your use than other products because . . . .” It announces the
item as
new and gives the end user a real reason for trying it.
 It shows the end user what problem it attacks and what about it
makes it better than whatever they are using now.
 Technical people are often not told what the positioning of a new
item will be. Misunderstandings on positioning have probably been
the cause of more technical/marketing fights than anything else.
PRODUCT ATTRIBUTES;
 Product attributes define the product. They are of three types—
features, functions, and benefits. Benefits include uses.
 Benefits
- Benefits are the most desirable form for a protocol to use—better
than functions or features. Information obtained from conjoint (trade-
off) analysis and other concept testing techniques can be extremely
useful in determining what combinations of features, functions, and
specifications ought to be built into the product.
 An advantage of specifying the protocol in terms of benefits is that it places
no (or every few) constraints on the R&D staff: They are given free rein to
figure out how best to design the product so that it provides the desired
benefit.
 It offered all of the customer benefits, and also turned out to be easy to cut
into shape and to dye into designer colors. The “Two-Bottle Tote” won awards
for product design and also inspired a range of similar products, such as beer
carriers and baby-bottle carriers.
FUNCTIONS ;
Function attributes sometimes cause confusion. Marketers tend to use them a
lot, and they are often called performance specs, or performance parameters, or
design parameters.
This requirement does not tell us what features will yield that performance. What it does
is answer the question of how the customer achieves the benefits of exciting (or safe)
start-ups.

Protocols for services are especially likely to be in performance terms since the
production of a service is a performance, not a good.
But protocols are also much less necessary on services because of the smaller
investment in technical development.
These producers can, in many cases, get to prototype very quickly, so that prototype
concept testing or even product use testing can easily gain confirmation of customer
need fulfillment.

FEATURES ;
Features are also a problem. Technical people often come up with features first,
based on technologies they have. A full protocol statement might have avoided that
waste of time.
Occasionally, a firm knows from long-time market contact what features are
associated with what functions (performance) and benefits.
DETAILED SPECIFICATIONS ;
On occasions, customers make such decisions and call for products with specific
features. This is dangerous. If the customers are qualified and have reason to know
better than we do what features will do for them, we are wise to listen.
In general, as a conclusion to this section on attributes, it is still the best policy
to write protocols in benefits, using performance if that helps explain and doesn’t
inhibit too much.

Competitive Comparisons and Augmentation Dimensions

- matching some important policy, the degree of differentiation
we have to meet, and many aspects of the marketing plan.
- Just as the product itself was described in attributes above,
the augmentation ring of the product can also be cited.
Sometimes the product itself may be “me-too,” but still is a
 legitimate competitive offering as it may offer the customer a
new level of service, a better warranty, or better distributor
support.
- Recall that there are three rings in the fully augmented
product—ring one (core benefit) is covered in the positioning
statement, ring two (the formal product) is covered in the
attribute requirements, and ring three (augmentations) is
covered here.

Other Components of the Product Protocol

Timing: Most new products today must come out faster, but not all do.
Some involve major technical breakthroughs that cannot be put on the
clock. The distinction needs to be clear to all. And if there is a date to
meet, it should be right here.
Financials: Typically, the protocol will include price level, discounts, sales
volume, sales dollars, market share, profits, net present value, and many
of the
Other financial data introduced in the previous chapter.
Production: This one is much like marketing requirements, some focusing
on
what the function will prepare to do and what that will accomplish—thus,
plants to be built, volumes, and quality to be achieved. Regulatory
Requirements: These are highly varied, but managements today
understand the need to have advanced understanding on them.

Corporate Strategy Requirements:

Key ideas (such as core competencies) will have already been captured
in the product innovation charter. Also, at this time, the assurance of upper
management supporting important.
Potholes: As we have seen before, there are potholes in product
innovation, just as they are on that stretch of highway as you drive at night
—and they are capable of bringing a new product down. Management that
doesn’t take a good look ahead deserves to hit one. We don’t usually drive
into known potholes, so listing them here helps.
PROTOCOL AND THE VOIC OF THE CONSUMER
What is the Voice of the Consumer ?
 it plays such an important role of the development of the product
protocol.
 VOC has been defined as a “complete set of customer wants and
needs, expressed in the customer’s own language, organized the
way the customer thinks about, uses, and interacts with the product
and prioritized by the customer in terms of both importance and
performance—in other words, current satisfaction with existing
alternatives.”
Hearing the voice of the Consumer :
 Several ways to access the voice of the customer: through
direct interviewing, for example, or by conducting focus groups.
 Some groundbreaking research on interviewing by Abbie Griffin
and John Hauser suggests a reasonable ground rule: about 30
individual interviews, each lasting about three-quarters of an
hour, produce close to 100 percent of all customer needs; 20
interviews produce about 90 percent of the needs

 The interviewer should be prepared with the right questions.

Interestingly, one of the worst ways to elicit the VOC is to ask
“What are your needs?” or “What are your requirements?”
Customers are all too willing to provide a wish list.