Success is a relative concept. Some people’s goals may be considered a success for them, while achieving the same goal may not be a success for you. Likewise, what you achieve may be ordinary to someone else. It’s all about potential.
If you have set a goal for yourself and want to be successful in line with this goal, you should realize that you have to be successful in every field and process related to your goal.
For example, you have a goal of making a very good pizza. Your dough should be very good. Your dough turned out great, but do you stand a chance of making your tomato sauce bad? I do not think so. Your pizza dough and tomato sauce are perfect, just like pizzas in Italy; Do you have the luxury of choosing the other materials poorly? Not possible!
If you want to achieve a good and memorable pizza taste, you must be 100% successful in all processes while preparing the pizza.
Similarly, there are different types of roles and processes in the software world. Each of these roles and processes has different responsibilities. If you want to be successful in your project, you need to plan every detail well.
Today, I will focus on product management, which is one of the areas that you need to pay the most attention to when you want to produce a successful SaaS product! 🤸♂️
What exactly is SaaS product management?
Product management is the structure within a SaaS company that is responsible for the product. It takes an active role in the processes from the idea stage and is a decisive actor in the growth stage of the product.
Even when the expected success is not achieved and the project needs to be closed, it is the product manager who will carry out this in a planned way. Because such projects are charged with a subscription system. Even if you want to terminate your project, you have users that you are responsible for. 🤷♂️
Throughout this entire product life cycle, the product management team continues to work under the guidance of the product manager. Product management takes part in the intersection of UX, tech, and design. These different areas must act as one body to produce a good and successful product! 🏋️♂️
The product manager works with the customer to determine what needs to be developed. Then product manager works with developers and designers to create the new product requested.
So why does product management have such an important role in SaaS companies? Cloud-based technology enables businesses to upload and download software more rapidly. With this constant access, you can instantly push software updates and changes to the end-user– which means more frequent updates. As you can see, the product manager has an important role in the structure. 💪
This is how product management and product manager could be briefly explained. I guess it wasn’t too short? Anyway, let’s move on! 🚀
There are many different practices that product managers can use to make their contributions visible and promote their products. I will list the top practices which are used by product managers!
The product manager should be able to gather different insights from different fields:
If I were asked what should be the primary and most important trait a product manager should have, my answer would be: prioritizing changes and improvements in order of importance.
There are many areas in product management where you can gather insights. By doing competitor analysis, you can determine the features that your product does not have. You can list new feature requests from your customers in order of importance.
Sometimes the things you are looking for outside are in front of your eyes, and you may not see those ores. Your team, namely designers and developers, can have great new ideas. Listen to your own team.
Reports from your customer support team can help you define your roadmap. Because they often communicate and interact with customers more than you do.
Finally, follow the trends in your field of expertise and in SaaS companies with a broader perspective. If you want to make your product perfect, the traces of the latest trends should be in your product.
Yes, you’ve gathered a lot of insights from many different fields. Next is to rank them in order of importance and urgency. This is the key point in product management that will improve your product:
- Identify the product’s lacking features. ✅
- Gather feature demands. ✅
- List lacking features and demands in order of importance. ✅
- Make a plan to release these improvements. ✅
- Your perfect product will be ready soon! 👨🍳🥧
Communicate with your customers before they do:
Individual customers do not provide feedback unless necessary. However, if the customer you serve is a SaaS company, they usually have a habit of giving feedback. Because they have a product manager too!
Well, what would you think if I suggested that you contact them periodically to gather feedback? Of course, I’m not saying do this with every client. If you’re a midsize SaaS company, you already have thousands of customers to talk to.
Identify your most important customers and set up meetings with them. In this way, you can understand their real needs and demands. You can also determine why they prefer you over other competitors. Qualified feedback is often more effective than surveys.
Get in touch with your customers, and collect valuable feedback. Bonus: You will win their hearts with this special effort and attention!
Build your strategy data-driven:
If you want to be a good product manager and increase the performance of your product even higher, you should determine your strategy well and make decisions with the help of data-driven. For that, you must measure the usage of your product with metrics.
Data guides you in your product development decisions. Also, the data informs you more about the product and you can find the parts that need improvement faster. It’s easier to convince your team members when your source is data-driven facts.
Product management sounds easy, right? Not really, I’m just saying it like it’s easy.
Set up and measure metrics before making changes to your product, then wait a while for new features to become available. When you review the different data from different dates, it will be easy peasy to identify the points you need to improve!
Many different departments work in coordination with product managers on product management. Communication and approval processes can be challenging when large teams need to work in harmony. Different SaaS products are used to meet this challenge. Now, I’m going to make a few product suggestions that make it easier for teams to work in product management.
1) Figma
The role of product management in SaaS companies has always been to manage the software development cycle and to ensure that different departments work in a balanced way. However, in recent years, design has gained at least as much importance as other units and it has become difficult for teams to approve and share ideas on these designs.
One of the popular tools for SaaS product management in recent years is Figma. Figma is a cloud-based design and prototyping tool that enables real-time collaboration between designers, engineers, and other units.
Figma has become essential for many SaaS product management processes because it helps to streamline the design process. It also allows for better collaboration between different team members, which is essential in fast-paced SaaS environments.
If you’re a SaaS product manager who is looking for a tool to help you in prototype designs and facilitate collaboration, then Figma is definitely worth considering! Also, let’s get those who want to learn the differences between UI-UX design and why they are important here.
2) Jira
There is no denying that Jira has become one of the most popular tools when it comes to software development. In fact, a lot of SaaS companies are now using this tool to manage their products. Why? Because Jira can help to improve the quality of the software products and increase the efficiency of the product development process.
Jira can be used to track bugs, new features, and enhancements, and it can also be used to manage the product roadmap. With Jira, product managers can get a clear picture of the product development process and identify any bottlenecks. This information can be used to prioritize features and ensure that the most important ones are implemented first.
In addition, Jira also allows product managers to communicate with other units easily.
All in all, we can say that Jira has definitely made a positive contribution to SaaS product management. If you are running a product management team, I would recommend that you give Jira a try.
3) Hotjar
Hotjar is a heat mapping tool that allows you to see how users interact with your website or app. This information is invaluable for understanding what areas of your product need improvement. Analyzing the outputs and determining your focus is one of the main things you need to take your product to the next level.
With Hotjar, you can easily see which areas of your website are causing confusion or frustration for users. This data can help you make changes that improve the user experience and increase conversion rates.
Hotjar is just one example of the many tools that product managers can use to improve their products. By taking advantage of the latest tools and technologies, product managers can stay ahead of the curve and deliver better products to their customers.
4) I smell advertising! AnnounceKit
The three tools I have mentioned so far are tools that will help you with product management and provide insights in identifying the deficiencies of your product and focusing on these areas.
You can make as many improvements as you want; your product may have a great design, but unless your users adopt these new features, your improvements will be incomplete.
You can be one of the world’s leading authors. The book you have written can be described as a masterpiece in terms of the flow of the story and the depth of the characters. Well, if you can’t get this book to people, do all these valuable features make any sense?
A Similar formula works in product management, too. Another point that is as important as the improvements you have made is to announce these improvements to your users and to ensure the adaptation of the product features.
So, what kind of contributions does AnnounceKit have to product managers in product management?
Eye-catching notification widgets:
AnnounceKit delivers your important announcements and new feature announcements to your users with different methods. One of the most effective among these methods is the eye-catching notification widgets.
Thanks to the eye-catching notification widget, your users will easily notice all the product announcements, updates, improvements, and news you make while they spend time in your application. This feature will help you to improve your product adoption rates!
Boost your important announcements:
If you think we need to make a very important announcement, and our users should definitely be aware of this announcement, you can highlight your announcements thanks to the booster feature of AnnounceKit.
Boosters say hello to your user when a user starts a new session after your announcement!
Collect user feedback to improve your product:
All the planning and projects you do for your product serve one purpose: to perfect your product and increase user engagement. However, sometimes the things you think and plan may not turn out as you expected.
For example, when you develop a new feature, you may think that it will be a groundbreaking and highly successful feature. Sorry, you may find the opposite is true when data starts coming in.
I know someone who can guide you; your users! Why not collect feedback about improvements and new features? AnnounceKit helps you gather feedback for all the announcements, news, and new features you make.
That way, you have data to guide you before making your next move. Pay attention to user feedback!
Wrap Up
As you can see, there are a lot of practices for product management in SaaS companies. The most important thing is to focus on your customer and always think about how you can improve their experience with your product.
Other than that, it’s important to keep an eye on your competition and always be innovating so that you can stay ahead of the curve. By following these best practices, you’ll be well on your way to becoming a top-notch product manager in a SaaS company.
I’ll be around until the next post, ciao! 🏄♂️
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