Developing and Launching "Whole Product Offerings"

Whole Product Offerings (aka "WPOs") are central to the success of any new product development and launch. Development, product management and marketing teams now face the mandate from senior management - and customers - to deliver Whole Product Offerings globally.

Gone are the high tech glory days of designing and launching a complex feature-rich "box" which sits in the data center, wiring closet or service provider node. Customers - enterprise and consumers alike - have long since demanded total solutions, which most commonly include:

Hardware
Operating Systems
Applications
Services
Support

... and full interoperability with solutions from other vendors.

What is the take away for product management and product marketing teams involved in preparing business cases, comparative ROI assessments and manging product/solution roadmaps for management? Answer - not only start with the customer, however, take a holistic view from day one to understand the customers' complete business need. It is no longer good enough to understand your customer's need, rather to understand your customer's customer as well. See article from FreePatentsOnline provides a good starting point for defining a WPO