Many product development companies are facing the challenge of sustaining their current product lines to continue their revenue streams. At the same time, developing new features and delivering them to meet the growing expectations and demands of the customers is necessary, especially when the product starts maturing.

Once the product starts to mature, it is important to provide continuous support and maintenance, ensuring the consistent functioning and superior customer service which can help the company retain its customers. Earlier, the focus of product sustenance was only on ticket solving, resource augmentation and cost control. However, this may not help to leverage much advantage in the long- run as the customer’s needs evolve over time. Hence, a smart approach to product sustenance is much needed during this era where most processes are evolving with time.

What is a Smart Product Sustenance Approach?

A smart approach to product sustenance is inclined towards improving customer satisfaction and loyalty by providing quality products and services. Customers today are loyal to companies that provide quality products, adequate debugging and quick defect resolutions and response to customer issues. A smart approach to sustenance is a consistent effort to making the product more stable and robust by studying customer insights such as product usage and customer journey.

Adopting a smart approach to sustenance as a strategy will not only help in generating positive ripples among the customers, but also help in extending the life of the existing products and the future product generations. Apart from this, it provides following benefits to help you gain competitive advantage:

• Enhancing customer loyalty: By providing quality products and increased customer satisfaction
• Increasing ROI: By saving costs without affecting the incremental sales and improving efficiency in defect fixing, process improvement and achieving the highest degree of automation in processes, testing and elsewhere.
• Minimizing efforts: By minimizing focus on supervision, managing resources effectively, and focusing on core competencies.
• Identifying Defects: By using Business Intelligence, real-time tracking of performance, as well as analyzing and forecasting defects.

How to Implement Smart Approach to Sustenance

As said above, sustenance can allow the companies to gain the needed competitive advantage in the product offering by leveraging insights from the usage stage of the customer’s journey. In order to leverage these benefits, it is important to map the user’s journey, right from the search to purchase and then usage. Utilizing these data insights can help in propelling growth. The prime focus of implementing smart product sustenance lies in the following key ways:

Utilizing Insights

Companies need to capitalize on the insights derived from the user journey, which will help them to not only address product issues easily, but also at the same time be able to understand the needs and expectations of the customers. This makes it easier to develop products, which will meet the growing demand, while good products will always have customers coming back to the company for more.

Business Models & Partners

There are various business models that are followed, but companies opting for sustenance services need to choose a business model that best suits the purpose of their business and customer requirements. Also, there are sustenance partners who can modify and provide business models that are tailor-made to suit the business needs and customer expectations. However, there are key factors that determine the success of the process:

• Deep understanding of the customer’s industry
• Data analysis related to the product
• Continuous process improvement to achieve operational efficiency goals
• High degree of process standardization

Utilizing Business Intelligence and Analytics

Business Intelligence (BI) and data analytics can play a very important role in determining the success of the products. BI encapsulates different tools, applications and methods that will help in collecting insights, both internal and external related to products and customers.

For e.g.: The nature of the issues faced by the customers with the product earlier can help in predicting the issues that might take place in the future and can help the team in rectifying the issues before they occur. The defects can be prioritized and addressed based on their severity and effect on the functioning of the products. A real time dashboard can also help the company to gain insights and manage the devices on the go. Once the sustenance goals are set, the company then needs to carefully select metrics that will help them in achieving their yearly goals.

Adopting DevOps

Apart from this, implementing DevOps can also enhance the product sustenance process and allow companies to not only develop quality products for customer satisfaction, but also at the same time allow them to minimize any glitches or issues for a seamless performance of the product.

Adopting a smart approach to product sustenance can empower companies to utilize intelligent insights for customer satisfaction, offer quick defect resolution with predictive data, and respond to customer’s demand with the timely release of product features. Moreover, it helps companies to extend the life of their products, enhancing their operational efficiency, ROI and market positioning.

eInfochips offers product sustenance services to help companies leverage newer technologies, innovative methods and processes. Our product development and design team deliver innovative solutions that help in extending the life of the products, enhancing customer satisfaction. To know more, get in touch with us.