Product Lifecycle Management: a challenge and an opportunity for eCommerce

Technology has co-created the way an organization positions itself in the market. Companies are capable enough to interpret the consumer behavior to understand the requirements and build the essential products or features to improve the overall services and customer experience.

Earlier, the product lifecycle management function was only limited to focusing on design and engineering problem but, it is not true anymore. Now, it is being utilized by marketing, sales, services, maintenance and much more. Due to an increase in internet penetration rate and transformation in consumer behavior laid to implement the process in e-commerce sector as well.

In the past, product lifecycle management has been used by several e-commerce companies to define the product and make it success amongst stakeholders. The process allows managers/marketers to set the goal or objectives. All these are the fine words, but we should also look at the challenges that come along the way.

Customer Expectation: It is really important for the e-commerce players to understand the behavior and segment their customer base. As most of the products aligned with the customer’s requirement, one should do a thorough study on why the customer would require such new product, how the product can help them to fulfill their requirements.

While doing the primary research, marketing team should have the clarity on the customer expectations to ensure the product quality, user experience, and a streamlined purchasing model.

Resource allocation: Once the expectation is observed, the next challenge is to allocate the resources. It has been seen as one of the key challenges for every management throughout their firm, assigning priorities to such functions as product development, acquisition, and product abandonment while giving full consideration to the company’s overall corporate strategy and objectives.

Competition: The next challenge for an e-commerce company is to meet the deadlines to deliver the product or the feature to their customers. It is really critical for a company to make their product success and one should always keep in mind of what the close competitor is doing or building to tackle such inefficiency.

Managing associated services: There are tangible variables in e-commerce companies which impact the overall business for an example- if a company is adding feature of online payment to their e-commerce products then they may select a third party services but, If the integrated services are being disturbed then for the company it will be difficult to meet customer expectations.

Product Positioning: Once the idea has been executed and the product has been developed, then the right placement should be done by the marketers using the effective channels as most of the products or features get declined at this stage.

Scalability of the products: It is important to evaluate the idea of developing any product and set the criteria. Business strategy, corporate objectives, and business environment have to be aligned with Growth, Maturity and Decline stage for a grand success.

As the development of any of e-commerce product or feature goes under various process, Product Lifecycle Management allows them to understand the market potential and product life at all these stages, being ideation, development or marketing. It helps in product planning and execution throughout the product lifecycle, such as gathering and prioritizing product and customer requirements, defining the product vision by streamline engineering, sales, marketing and support to ensure revenue and customer satisfaction goals are met. It does help at growth level to measure the sustainability or decline in the market if the entire process is automated and streamlined as per the requirement.