Case study 7
Creating product portfolios
Mainstream product management in BT sits in a central unit for traditional products and services or within supply partners for ?new wave? products. BT Major Business Marketing has to ensure that the company has a mechanism for advising them of market requirements.
The marketing team needs to ruthlessly prioritise its needs and work with partners and suppliers to ensure these are met. At the end of the day a proposition is a collection of products and services stitched together in a commercial wrap ? and if the product elements are not right the proposition won?t be.
The portfolio marketing team
The portfolio marketing team plays a crucial role here in ensuring the product elements are fit for purpose. They also work to ensure that the products are properly represented in the propositions ladders.
They will have a bigger role to play to decide which products go to market when conflicting offers are presented to us by supply partners.
BT's segmentation processes are significantly improving due to the fact that it has a pre-determined client base. The company is currently working on a mechanism whereby it will be able to segment using a number of disparate databases to establish small groups of target clients around proposition themes.
Filling the gaps
Portfolio management is increasingly being driven by the requirements of BT's clients as opposed to being technology driven. It is participating in lots of work in order to underpin the propositions and fill the gaps with external partners. This, coupled with a continuum approach to product areas rather than product 'stove pipes', allows BT to more easily migrate clients up through the portfolio value chain.
The alignment with the sales teams is improving with integrated sales and marketing campaigns, and the proposition themes are bringing this together. However, BT still has a vast desire for further improvement, as the next phase within the delivery still needs further attention.
An alternative to product marketing is solution marketing (which actually achieves the same goal by enveloping the appropriate products from the portfolio and delivers as a packaged solution).