THE CHALLENGE
A world-class global services firm was planning to launch a new legal solutions suite of products to the market. However, their project was not meeting their timeline to launch, nor were their internal resources from various departments aligned as a team towards this new initiative. Functionality was not agreed upon and dynamic, sales was not involved in the development of the revenue targets and therefore not aligned, product development was working toward an infrastructure upgrade that did not align with the product launch timeline. The management team was concerned for the success of the timely delivery and the success of this solution to market.
THE SOLUTION
VERVE’s team of business consultants got underway with the goal of aligning the project objectives, the inter-departmental teams, revenue expectations and deliverables with the expected timeline for the product launch. Enter VERVE’s team of program management, product management/owner and marketing project management support for go-to-market implementation and launch of a SAAS legal solutions suite of products.
On this project, VERVE’s Program Manager led a cross-functional Agile team which included Marketing, Product Management, Sales, Finance, IT and Support functions. Took client from ideation, product briefs and initial research through Proof Of Concept (POC)/soft-launch stage when the company encountered significant production headwinds beyond the scope of the program team and sponsor. Ultimately, VERVE was able to pivot the team to a new strategy to mitigate the resulting delayed revenue.
Our Product Management/Owner worked with the client team to understand and translate product strategies into detailed requirements for execution by technical service and operations teams, and managed project dependencies and requirements with Operations and Client Services.
VERVE’s Marketing Project Manager provided support to the product strategy and marketing teams. Working on simultaneous projects, our consultant worked with the client team to create and manage a plan for a 3rd party sales team to pilot a trimmed down product offering to obtain actionable market data for the product suite. The 3 phases of this project included set-up, execution and reporting. Further assistance included mapping processes and defining best practices. Separately, research was conducted and recommendations were made on project management information system and option for a shared digital library.
THE RESULTS
- Project management included all aspects of this new product launch, including market research, marketing, product development, sales operations and readiness, and product launch
- Assisted with Project Management to get the project “Actionable” as well as program manage across multiple initiatives
Fostered an environment of cross-functional collaboration and cooperation as the Client’s culture did not have a history of working cross-functionally - Developed and maintained appropriate prioritized backlog of user stories with precise and accurate criteria of acceptance for implementation
- Worked with Client’s Product Management team to ensure final solutions delivered were in sync with the product positioning, key benefits, and target customers
- Developed exceptional end-to-end customer experience for the features and services that were developed, ensuring the solution fit holistically within the broader customer experience
- Consistently prioritized development priorities with feedback and in collaboration with Product Management team responsible for overall solutions experiences
- Led the cross-functional team working on the product feature delivery through influence and facilitative leadership
Developed and maintained strong working relationship with the other Scrum team members, developers, scrum master and testers - Creation and management of the overall research pilot project plan
- Mapped processes and defined best practices
- Worked in partnership with relevant client teams to create project milestones, scripting, pricing, data capture method, continuous improvement process and KPI’s that were to be collected, analyzed and reported upon, etc. to define and manage successful project outcome
- Continuous improvement approach to determine the right approach and offer for the products to be the right offer aimed at the right people in an organization
- Ensured that all project resources are aligned and on track to manage their responsibilities to drive successful implementations
- Identified issues and risks for the team and project, and managed any open issue or risk to resolution
- Successful project delivery, including resources, schedules, and budgets and product launch!