As a product manager, knowing the value of your products in the market is a never-ending pursuit. It is a fundamental gauge to determine whether the product needs changes and how best to position it in the market. There are different methods to assess value and use that to determine how to position the product. However, in this article, we will focus on Value Map, which is a tool to assess the positioning of your product in terms of price and customer value compared to the competition.  

Product management teams rely on competitive intelligence and market research to plan out their product lines. But what happens when you try to line up your internal product definition with third-party market research. The data schemas don't match, so what do you do? How do you effectively analyze and compare your own products to your competitors’ when the data is different?

Product Managers wear many hats… researcher, business manager, financial analyst, strategist, project manager, product tester, customer service rep, spokesperson… honestly the list is endless.   

It's a critical step in business; you have to know what you're up against to chart a course to success. Yet every year, many new products miss the mark, while others in the same market seem to have runaway success. What is it that sets these products apart? Technical capability? Marketing magnificence? Unimaginable innovation?

Staying competitive means keeping an eye on your competitor’s products and ensuring that your products have a clear differentiating feature against them. Competitor’s products go through changes. Keeping your records up-to-date and regularly revisiting your side-by-side comparison charts is essential in ensuring your product is still staying ahead of its competitors.

The Product Managers toolkit has traditionally relied primarily on general productivity tools like Excel, Word and PowerPoint. What happens when you make the change to something that has been specifically designed to help Product Managers?

Product lines sunset. Your teams need a space to experiment, learn, and review alternatives for a short period. You want to improve your product line organization. The feedback we receive from our users form the basis of how we improve our software. This is no exception.

Product Managers play a critical role in balancing what customers want with their company’s objectives when identifying products that will be successful. Once these projections are made, they then need to drive the team responsible for turning this vision into reality. However, successful product ideation is not a Product Managers’ only purview. Product Managers also help facilitate or make decisions on what the next generation of products and features should be.  

Competitive analysis is a common practice to ensure your product is unique and competitive compared to others in the market. Once you have the breakdown of each product's differentiating features, you can perform an initial assessment on what price you could offer your product to the market using Economic Value to the Customer (EVC).

Deciding what products and features to offer to your customers requires a clear understanding of your markets. Once you identify market segments, you can propose different product configurations to meet each segment's needs. You can perform an analysis of your products side-by-side against your competition in each segment to see how the segment is being served and find opportunities for new and improved products.