The function of product management is evolving within manufacturing companies.  Senior leadership is pressing for more growth, more innovation, more diversification, more market expansion.  All of this falls in the lap of product management to figure out the path forward. It is more important than ever for product management to revisit the tools in their proverbial toolbox.

Today, we are excited to announce the general availability of Value Map charts to help product portfolio managers take advantage of the market conditions and position their products for success. Using Value Maps, as a product manager, you can compare your products against competitors in terms of value and price to devise the best strategy to enter or adjust the position of your products in the market. 

In our continued commitment to bringing product managers and product marketing researchers competitive analysis spaces, today, we are happy to announce that you can import competitive products and features, including options, into the Gocious central library.  You can use competitive product records to create competitive dashboards to compare competitive products side by side with yours. 

We announced the availability of competitive analysis space and a repository to store and maintain competitive product data as the first of many capabilities we plan to introduce in this space. Today, we are happy to announce the general availability of product scoring in the competitive analysis space. With this new exciting feature, product teams can now analyze their products side by side with competition and have a quantitative way to visualize their product against competing alternatives.

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.  

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.

Doing an analysis on your competitive products is essential to making sure your planned products have the best chance of success in the marketplace. You must identify your strategic advantage and leave the competition in the rear-view mirror.