Congratulations! You have a winner on your hands—or at least the data you’re getting from your minimum viable product development process says your plan is viable. So what happens next?

Your minimum viable product (MVP) is the minimum test of your hypothesis to ensure that there’s a market for your big idea, but not the final product itself. By now, it should be clear that in undertaking the MVP process, you’ve embarked on a learning adventure that prioritizes incremental iteration and action to minimize time to value. The MVP process is a critical aspect of The Product Mindset, which allows you to solve specific problems while gaining the ability to react to marketplace changes.

By testing your MVP, you’re confirming that your product brings value to your audience. Simultaneously, you’re determining that your digital product idea is cost-effective and marketable. After all, the last thing you want is to invest a ton of money into a full-fledged product only for it to fail. Instead, by validating your idea as an MVP, you ensure that only the best products go into development.

So what comes after the minimum viable product stage? The truth is that your product journey is at the beginning phases. We’re diving deeper into the product journey so that you understand the next steps after MVP.

MVP is a Process

The very first thing you need to understand is that, like any other digital product, MVP is not one and done. It’s a process. Perhaps more accurately, it’s the starting point for the product development process. What comes after your minimum viable product is reviewing your findings from the MVP process.

As part of the MVP process, you received invaluable feedback. Before proceeding, evaluate your findings and determine if you need to explore anything further. Ask yourself if any assumptions, findings, or ideas bear further testing and evaluation.

If you find that you still need more data, revisit your initial MVP process phases to test any additional hypotheses. On the other hand, if all the information points to moving forward, what comes after reviewing your minimum viable product findings is a roadmap review.

Reviewing your roadmap from the MVP process in light of the data you received may mean making some changes to your development process. Ultimately, this means breaking down development steps into smaller attainable goals to ensure product rollouts are functional, efficient, and effective.

If that definition sounds familiar, it’s similar to the process for the Agile methodology, which 3Pillar Global uses to create a best-of-breed product. MVP—and to that end, product development—is a similar process in that the product is never completely done.

By identifying small benchmarks that you can more easily—and successfully—achieve, you’re able to maximize each release. By ensuring that all new functions work well together, you minimize bugs and the need for rapid deployment of fixes and patches. However, following the MVP and Agile processes ensures that your team is able to quickly shift and deploy an update should the need arise. Suffice it to say, smaller rollouts and regular iterations, updates, and patches, allow for the fastest time to value.

The MVP is a Critical Step You Can’t Skip

The truth is you can’t go straight from idea to full-fledged product. You have to follow the MVP process from start to finish to ensure your product is viable and has a market before investing time, money, and effort into developing it.

According to Smashing Magazine, “The point isn’t to create leaner products. It’s to get the most basic version or concept of an app into the hands of adopters and evangelists.”

By gathering data and feedback from people who would be superfans, you can iterate the product to be more meaningful. Factoring in feedback from your evangelists ensures a better experience as well as the best possible future iterations of your product.

Following the MVP process and next steps ensures you avoid the biggest—and most costly—pitfalls of product development. As a result, you’re primed to follow best practices for creating a digital product. So what are those best practices?

Get early adopters on board in the beginning stages of your MVP development.

It’s worth noting that what comes after your minimum viable product is not finding early adopters. The truth is that because early adopters are integral to the MVP process, they should be identified early on. Still, if you find yourself inheriting a project with insufficient early adopters, it is possible to find and add them later in the game.

Developing a prototype before going all-in on the features.

In the product development industry, there’s much confusion regarding prototypes vs. MVPs, and for good reason. There are a lot of similarities. At 3Pillar Global, we define a prototype as an inexpensive, nonfunctional version of your product. On the other hand, your MVP is the first release of your product based on the simplest possible functionality.

By creating a prototype first, and then an MVP that focuses on the core features, you can validate your market before creating a complex product. That brings us to the next best practice.

While the industry frequently refers to DropBox as an example of an MVP that was effective in proving the concept, the truth is that because it could not be monetized as a video, it more closely resembles a prototype than an MVP.

Dollar Shave Club was also a video. However, because it had a call to action and drove a transaction, therefore monetizing the video, it truly was an MVP.

To further illustrate the point, Uber’s MVP started as an app only available to the founders and their friends. After a simple tweet by Travis Kalanick, the company hit the market big time.

Start as small as possible with minimal features.

According to Entrepreneur,“​​The truth is that more features usually make a product less usable, not more.” While you can always add more features and complexities down the road, starting small ensures that they work well. Facebook wasn’t always a complex behemoth of a digital product. It started as a simple directory to help people from different colleges stay connected.

Create a product that actually has a market.

It’s one thing to have an idea for a product. It’s entirely different to be confident that you have an audience of superfans eager to buy your product. You are automatically biased. That’s why we focus so much on getting early adopters on board from the very beginning. In order to ensure that what comes after your minimum viable product is actually developing and selling the product, you have to prove that users are interested in your solution and willing to pay for it.

Minimize your marketing investment until you have a viable product.

It’s not a good idea to go all-in on marketing your product until you’ve been through the MVP process. Why? Marketing costs money, and you don’t want to dump a higher investment into the product until you have data showing your MVP is delivering value. It isn’t to say that you won’t have to involve marketing at all. You will need some marketing messaging around your product to ensure you’re communicating details about your MVP to get your early adopters on board.

Gather valuable customer feedback every step of the way.

Qualitative and quantitative data both have a valuable place in the MVP process. In fact, they work together to tell the story of what people think about your product. Every touchpoint provides an opportunity to ultimately optimize your product and customer experience. To that end, getting real-time customer feedback gives you valuable insights into what they find valuable—and what they don’t. In turn, if you find that your MVP bears further iteration and development, that feedback can inform what comes after the minimum viable product stage.

The Next Step After MVP

By now, it should be clear that what comes after your minimum viable product depends entirely on what you learned from the MVP process and your future product development goals.

First, let’s explore additional terminology. According to Scott Ambler, Vice President and Chief Scientist at PMI, “it’s common for people to say MVP when they are actually talking about a minimal marketable feature (MMF), a minimal marketable product (MMP), or even a minimal marketable release (MMR). As you can see, these terms are very similar to one another, so we shouldn’t be surprised that there’s a bit of confusion around them.”

Let’s dive into what these concepts mean in terms of developing your product and determining what comes after creating your minimum viable product.

• Minimum Marketable Product (MMP): Is your MVP, the minimum functional version of your product also marketable? Even though market analysis is integral to your MVP process, your early adopter feedback may indicate that you need some additional components to package your MVP into a marketable solution.
• Minimum Marketable Features (MMF): Your MVP should be as simple as possible. However, does it have the minimum marketable features? Or are there any components you can strip out to simplify it further? Conversely, do you need to augment any features to make your product marketable? Once again, your early adopter feedback will guide you here.
• Minimum Marketable Release (MMR): Before you launch, it’s critical to understand that the product or update you’re releasing can stand on its own in the marketplace.
• Minimum Loveable Product (MLP): While solving a problem is your main MVP goal, you also want to create a strong user and customer experience in line with your brand promise. This is more important for established brands than for startups. However, you’ll want to ensure that your MVP aligns with your existing brand.

It’s wise to consider these terms as additional lenses for deciding if your MVP is ready for a broader market. If your product checks all boxes, you’re ready to undertake the next steps for your MVP. If not, it’s worth reviewing whether or not you need further iteration and testing to bring it to investors or the marketplace.

Launching Your Product

Whether you’re ready to move forward with launching your product, here’s what truly comes after the minimum viable product stage.

Depending on your early adopters and how your MVP fits within your current suite of offerings, you may not need to create a fake brand like Zappos. In fact, because MVP is more prevalent today, many of your users will expect incremental rollouts. Either way, you’ll want to update your product roadmap based on feedback and data.

Start Small

First, focus on releasing your product to your existing audience. There’s a caveat here. Depending on the product, you may also be able to release it to a larger market as well. DZone reports that after launching the first iPhone in 2007, Apple was able to expand its capabilities almost immediately based on user feedback. We see this trend continuing with every new release.

Continue gathering feedback and iterating.

Taking on a product mindset means understanding that there’s always room for improvement. As you iterate, be sure to use feedback from your early market adopters as your North Star for your roadmap. Instead of trying to tackle a wide range of potential solutions, stick to where you know there is revenue, relevance, and the intersection of both. When you focus on solving specific problems or adding features with each release, you can continually grow your customer base while improving your product.

Create powerful marketing for every future release.

Details vary widely based on your product, your company, and your audience. Ultimately, your messaging should focus on what your audience needs to know about each release to set expectations and show them what they can do as a result.

Your Product is Never “Done”

The biggest takeaway from any exploration of what comes after the minimum viable product stage is that digital product development is an ongoing, iterative process. Unless you decide to scrap your project because your MVP isn’t viable, doesn’t have a market, or isn’t cost-effective, plan to keep iterating and improving. Because the most successful products are rooted in Agile methodology, you can continue finding new benchmarks to improve the customer experience and solve problems.

Henry Martinez, Senior Director, Data Science at 3Pillar Global, adds, “In the spirit of Andrew Grove’s, Only The Paranoid Survive, also keep an eye out for competitive market disruptors and be ready to pivot, if necessary. It is a sure bet that your competitors are watching you too!”

The marketplace is always changing, which means that there are always new opportunities to delight your audience without biting off more than you can chew at any stage of the game.

Ready to test your big idea? 3Pillar Global would love to help you develop a minimum viable product and everything that comes after, from iteration to product launch. Contact us today to get started!

Your minimum viable product (MVP) is basically a hypothesis about a valuable solution your audience needs. Whether it solves a problem that keeps your customers up at night or improves the user experience, your idea has the potential to drive a significant impact. However, before you go all-in on developing your hypothesis, the Scientific Method dictates that you must test it. So how do you design the perfect MVP test to validate your big idea?

The best MVP tests start by clearly defining a hypothesis about the value proposition your product may deliver to your target market. It should state what you believe about your product and its market and the assumptions you want to test.

Specific assumptions or questions deliver specific answers. In turn, those specific answers allow you to make relatively quick decisions about whether to hit the brakes, conduct further testing, or continue pursuing product development. Using MVP tests to develop and iterate on an incremental basis ensures that you only invest in developing products and features worth pursuing.

By creating a highly focused MVP test, you’ll gain insights based on your hypothesis and be able to draw reasonable conclusions about the feasibility of developing a mature product. To that end, you’ll know which features to prioritize to increase value and minimize time to market.

Because of your narrow focus, your MVP testing plan should be simple and tie into your long-term vision or your product roadmap. Following your MVP test, you’ll gain valuable information and customer feedback to refine, improve, and expand on your roadmap. Best of all, your MVP testing process should allow you to speed up the iterative process allowing you to continue maturing your product and its future releases.

Why is MVP Market Testing Important?

Before undertaking your MVP market test, you need to perform market research to identify the opportunities—and threats—and create a hypothesis of a product that solves a particular need.

MVP testing ensures that your product actually fills that need. You’ll gain a blend of qualitative and quantitative data that delivers valuable information about your product. Better yet, you’re also testing the market and its users.

Qualitative data is user feedback that explains how they feel about your product and their experience. Conversely, quantitative data refers to specific user analytics with empirical measurements. Both types of data are valuable and work together to give you a complete picture of what people want, expect, and value.

Steps of Setting Up Your MVP Market Test

Pioneered by Roman Pitchler, product vision boards are perfect for defining the parameters of your test. In determining how to test your MVP, you might set up your test in many ways. With that said, here’s a process that we frequently recommend and follow:

Step 1: Choose a specific audience or audience segment based on your Business Model Canvas (BMC).
The narrower your focus, the easier it is to identify specific people to help you with your test. More importantly, it’s easier to determine whether or not the problem you’re solving is their problem.

Step 2: Identify the hypothesis you want to test before releasing your product to said market.
As we mentioned above, specificity matters. Clearly defining your hypothesis and any assumptions you want to explore, it’s faster and easier to design an MVP test to reveal answers.

Step 3: Define your value proposition and go as simple as possible to make your test even smaller.
While this sounds easy, sometimes it can be challenging to strip your big idea down to its simplest parts. With that in mind, here are three companies that did this well:

Before Stripe, setting up payment processors took weeks or even months. However, after getting the idea for Stripe, brothers John and Patrick Collison took two weeks to create a few lines of code that allowed them to process transactions. This MVP has turned into a $9 billion company.

Another example we love is how Dropbox, the ultimate lean startup model, used a video clip to test their idea for file storage and sharing. After it generated a tremendous amount of interest, they were able to continue maturing the product to become what we know today.

Zappos started as a shoe store that wasn’t. Founder Nick Swinmurn photographed shoes from a mall and put the pictures online for sale. When people bought them, he went out to the mall, purchased the shoes, and shipped them directly to his buyers. Having proved his concept, Zappos was born.

Step 4: Identify your risks.
Because everything we do—including getting in our cars every day—comes with risk, it should come as no surprise that every product has risks. Understanding them helps you evaluate and mitigate them. Most risks associated with MVP testing and development fall under a few categories. You can identify many of them by asking a few simple questions:

• Do people want this?
• Is my potential audience big enough?
• How can it work in reality?
• What is your marketing angle?
• How much profit is available or possible?

Step 5: Devise a test for each risk.
Now that you’ve identified the risks, think about how you can test your MVP against them and start prioritizing. Your first priority should be focusing on your hypothesis and how the risks can make it or break it. If any of the risks are irrelevant to the hypothesis, set them aside to focus on just one MVP test at a time.

How to Gather Data From Your MVP Test

After enacting your MVP testing plan, it’s time to gather qualitative and quantitative data. As we mentioned earlier, every test should feature a value proposition, the risk you’re testing, and how you can demonstrate it without going all-in on your idea.

According to GrowthMentor, “Your customers will feel more connected to you if you introduce a change based on their feedback. Asking for feedback better connects your product with its users. To get the best results, choose the questions that are most contextual to the user’s current stage.”

To that end, be sure to gather data and feedback from your users at regular intervals before, during, and after the test. Their answers will allow you to understand how they feel throughout the testing process.

We recommend using various methods to gather data, including user testing interviews and surveys, as well as data-driven behavioral analytics like heat maps and session tracking. Moreover, when it comes to user interviews and surveys, the best data comes from open-ended questions that invite long-form answers. These typically start with who, what, when, where, why, and how, also known as the 5W and an H. Some sample questions might include:

• What is your main goal of using our product?
• What were your expectations for our product?
• How did we measure up to your expectations?
• What were you able to do after using our product?
• What was the most important feature—and why?
• What could have made the experience better?

So when should you gather feedback for your MVP test? We recommend several intervals:

• Before users opt in
• After they opt in
• While they’re using the product at set intervals
• After the MVP test

During each phase, it’s wise to compare the qualitative data with your user metrics to gain insights into your MVP. You’ll learn whether or not it worked for your test audience, any shortcomings, potential opportunities, and how to continue developing your product roadmap for future iterations.

Even Failed MVP Tests Can Be Wins

If the data doesn’t indicate it’s wise to proceed, it may be tempting to feel upset that your idea didn’t pan out. However, a no-go means you’ve just saved yourself a boatload of time, money, and energy. Instead of throwing good money after bad, you can move on to the next big idea or hypothesis.

With that said, one failed test doesn’t have to mean a failed product. If you’re testing multiple assumptions, you can shift or pivot your idea. For example, Slack came from unexpected beginnings. Now one of the best-known names in business communication, it started as a feature for the online gaming world. Founder Stewart Butterfield quickly realized its potential and grew Slack into a $27 billion company before Salesforce acquired it.

What About When Your Product Passes With Flying Colors?

We’ve talked about what happens if your MVP test is a failure, but what if you win big? The next steps after the MVP test are to review the feedback and use it to prioritize features for future iterations. To that end, you’ll need to go back to your product roadmap and convert it into a maturity roadmap that outlines your plan for future releases and growth.

One of our favorite methods for getting this step right is Jeff Patton’s approach to story mapping. Patton says, “Building a user story map helps us focus on the big picture – the product as a whole instead of getting myopically focused on an individual story.”

When you get the user story right, you can make the most of your product by minimizing time to value and maximizing sales conversions.

Never Skip MVP Testing

The bottom line is that MVP testing is essential for product development. By testing at every stage, you ensure that you’re able to keep your process lean and your product’s value proposition updated to maximize ROI—ideally generating a recurrent audience for your products.

Have a big idea for a product and are ready to design an MVP test to determine whether or not to pursue future iterations and maturation? Contact 3Pillar Global today. Explore how we can help you design and perform the most effective tests to minimize time to value and maximize your results.

Minimum viable products (MVPs) are all the rage in product development circles and among businesses of all sizes. So what are they? MVPs are learning tools designed to provide value to users and unlock critical early insights into your product as well as the fastest path to revenue relevance.

Because the term MVP is so closely associated with Eric Ries and his Lean Startup Methodology, it’s usually discussed in relation to startups. That said, enterprise businesses can also reap the benefits of the early learning and product insights an MVP can provide. Angel Almada, Director of Enterprise Program Management at 3Pillar Global says, “An MVP can help any company regardless of size or maturity, as it can be used as a tool for the ramping up of a new product.”

While there are many similarities between startups and enterprises in terms of how to approach researching, building, and launching an MVP, there are also some critical differences. This article will discuss essential concepts to keep in mind when it comes to MVP development for enterprises.

Embrace An Agile Mindset (With Caveats)

When developing product ideas, some scaled agile frameworks, such as Nexus, SAFe, and LeSS, are specific to enterprises you can use. Enterprises have established their brand identity already, and existing customers have a certain level of expectations that you cannot violate without risking that relationship.

Instead, enterprise MVP development starts with research to better understand the customer segment and their priorities. Enterprises must ensure the MVP is high quality and produces value without investing in a complete solution. An article by DevTeam states, “You build an MVP with the least number of features, and your focus is to build a working product as quickly as possible.”

MVP development for enterprises requires striking a balance between producing value for your desired market segment and simultaneously ensuring it remains cost-effective. Ultimately, this balance reduces the time to market and gives you a greater understanding of the market through the use of the MVP.

Remember, your MVP is not a prototype but a fully formed product with minimal features.

Achieving stakeholder buy-in and practicing rapid iteration of your enterprise product idea can be tricky, but it’s crucial to find a way. A Proof of Concept (POC) is one way to get your stakeholders on board while also showcasing your product’s capabilities. What’s more, incorporating wireframes will demonstrate what the MVP might look like and how it might function. Providing wireframes can give stakeholders very real insights into how your MVP is a product that has surpassed the idea stage. This approach generates confidence, increases buy-in, and yields a solid plan that allows you to begin developing your enterprise-level MVP.

Scott Varho, SVP, Product Development, 3Pillar Global, says, “Getting the governance structure right and giving the product access to the necessary resources tends to be difficult for large enterprises. Someone needs to make decisions about what the insights mean and how that impacts the current plan. Changes may require work from other teams that have their own leaders, agendas, and commitments. Minimizing these overlaps is key to getting a market result for the MVP. You want to learn the market potential for this product, not how your internal organization does or does not support the MVP.”

Rethink Your Relationship to Perfection

Remember, in the Agile world, perfect is the enemy of done. Enterprises tend to strive for perfection before release, which frequently hinders the speed to value, quick wins, and insights you can gain. Truthfully, when it comes to MVP development for enterprises, perfectionism is counterproductive and inefficient.

Forbes describes the usual process for feature approval that’s followed in enterprise businesses: “After long requirements gathering and stakeholder analysis sessions, specs are sent to technical teams who then spend months or years building features to meet the instructions they were given. In today’s rapidly changing and increasingly competitive business landscape, this approach will fail due to its inherent lethargy and inefficient allocation of technical resources.”

In a similar vein, enterprises tend to embrace a “more is more” philosophy when it comes to features. This won’t work when developing an MVP for enterprise, as it violates the “minimum” condition. According to MaxCode, “Successfully implementing MVP-driven approaches in large organizations requires a mindset shift towards how to learn about required features in a structured way. The goal should change from releasing complete products to learning about the product throughout the release cycle and focusing future investments towards functionalities that have the greatest ROI possible.”

Launching An Enterprise MVP

While finding early adopters can be a conundrum for startups, this is much easier for enterprise MVP development, thanks to a built-in customer base. Cassi Lup, Senior Manager, Product Development at 3Pillar Global, shares: “Large enterprises have a larger pool of early adopters they can engage ‘on the side’ within their organizations, whereas startups need to engage with the market earlier.”

However, branding can be a more complex endeavor, as enterprise businesses need to juggle their existing brand identity with their messaging around their MVP/new offering.

Michael Rabjohns, UX Practice Leader (US) at 3Pillar Global, says: “For example, say Marriott wants to launch an MVP. How will it coexist with or within Marriott’s existing digital presence? Does it align with Marriott’s branding, etc.? A startup probably won’t have to worry about this because they wouldn’t yet have an existing digital presence.”

Aside from keeping current customers happy, you want to make sure you keep your internal operations running smoothly as you begin developing your enterprise MVP. DevTeam explains that enterprises developing an MVP must “ensure that you have enough competent people to support your core business applications so that the MVP development project doesn’t stretch your maintenance team too thin. Assigning both maintenance and MVP development to the same team could create priority conflicts.”

Be Proactive

Plan ahead to avoid problems down the line. Startups can launch their MVP first and redesign it later for scalability. However, enterprises need to think about scalability from the start. There are tools available to plan for scalability while remaining agile in your enterprise MVP development, including:

Product Roadmaps

Any enterprise product roadmap that does not harness and leverage its data is an express lane to obsolescence. If your MVP differentiator wasn’t “smarter product or smarter processes” early on in the development of your product, it must be part of your eventual plan. The disciplines required for data-driven products inherently promote healthier data governance and architectures sufficiently sophisticated to collect data for analysis and KPI measurement.

Value Streams

According to PMI, “The value streams layer encompasses the capabilities required to provide value streams to your customers. A value stream begins, ends, and, hopefully, continues with a customer.” according to PMI. This lets you organize your teams and products by the type of value they are providing, which allows for better coordination and collaboration.

Business Model Canvas (BMC)

According to Harvard Business Review, a BMC “helps organizations conduct structured, tangible, and strategic conversations around new businesses or existing ones.” Your BMC must factor in:

• Key Partner
• Key Activities
• Key Resources
• Cost Structure
• Value Proposition
• Customer Relationships
• Customer Segments
• Channels
• Revenue Streams

Where the left side of the Business Model Canvas—Key Partner to Cost Structure—is external, focusing on your customer, while the right side—Customer Relationships to Revenue Streams—is internal, focusing on your business. The Value Proposition is right in the middle.

Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs)

According to Growth Institute, a BHAG is “A term coined by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras in their book, Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies—is a long-term, 10 to 25-year goal, guided by your company’s core values and purpose.” Some well-known examples of BHAGs include:

• The shared dream of Bill Gates and Paul Allen of “having a computer on every desk and in every home.”
• Google’s dream to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

Open source software can be very helpful when it comes to innovation. However, if going the open-source route, you must be aware that many aren’t feasible for enterprise use. Some software lacks the necessary security features and scalability, so research your options before implementing any open source solution.

Conclusion

It’s not only possible for enterprises to develop MVPs, but it can also be incredibly beneficial to embrace this part of an Agile philosophy. Netflix, for example, added interactive experiences to its content library. These shows and movies feature a “choose your own adventure” quality giving the viewer some control over the ending. By bringing these experiences to their existing content, Netflix adds value to a different market segment while evaluating if they can expand and possibly break into gaming.

As Eachan Fletcher, founder and CEO of Nest Egg, writes: “In the enterprise, we have the luxury of working with the confidence that, even if the immediate next set of features don’t quite hit the sweet spot, we’ll be around for many more iterations yet before times start to get tough.”

Ultimately, the MVP development process for a startup differs from that of an enterprise-level company. Still, the overall goal remains the same: launch a great product with minimal features and learn what works and what doesn’t. Enterprises can more easily leverage existing customer bases and tend to have more resources available to streamline the process.

To learn more about 3Pillar Global’s services and how we can help you create a minimum viable product to test and validate your assumptions with real customers, contact an expert today.

The digital revolution is here. It’s been here for years, as companies everywhere discover the merit of modernizing and tackling their business challenges with technological innovation. Yet, even after the pandemic, some enterprises—even entire industries, remain resistant to change. If your organization can benefit from upgrading your legacy platforms, how do you get leadership on board? In this article, you’ll learn how to make a business case for platform modernization and demonstrate why bringing your legacy platforms to current standards should be a no-brainer.

Why modernize your platforms?

Before preparing your argument for business platform modernization, the first step is to explain what it is and what’s in it for leadership and the company at large. If they don’t understand the gaps in your legacy system or the opportunity presented by platform modernization, they won’t see the value.

At 3Pillar Global, we define platform modernization as the process of updating legacy platforms to improve your company’s agility and ability to scale. Technology updates include platform, user experience, and other front-end features.

Once leadership understands the “what,” they must understand the “why” of modernizing your business platforms. The most significant reason most C-suite leaders jump on board is a better ability to react to market needs.

With greater flexibility comes a greater ability to pivot based on what your customers want. By modernizing your applications, you’ll be able to excel at change and minimize your time to value while solving for the needs of your customers.

In addition to creating a more agile organization that’s able to adapt quickly to meet changing market conditions and customer needs, platform modernization leads to a myriad of other benefits, including:

• Ability to find and act on new market opportunities
• Improved scalability for long-term growth or the ability to flex for specific projects that necessitate time-bound expansions before returning to normal levels
• Improved customer experience and brand loyalty, which creates a competitive advantage.

Getting management on board with application modernization

Usually, when leadership begins to see how modernizing legacy business applications leads to the benefits above, deciding to take action is a foregone conclusion. However, actually achieving those benefits means that leadership must throw the full weight of their support behind your company’s platform modernization endeavor—it’s more involved than a simple tech upgrade.

The resulting organizational changes mean that they need to be on board with a larger scale optimization and the long-term, big picture benefits. In addition to upgrading technology, your team will need to adopt a mindset focused on solving for need which can represent a significant shift for many industries.

Identify who needs to support platform modernization in your business

In addition to getting leadership on board with your business case for platform modernization, you’ll need them to understand that their commitment to modernization in your business goes beyond agreeing to it.

In addition to buying into the benefits of modernization, they must commit to supporting your team during implementation every step of the way, including:

• evaluating processes
• helping them adopt a growth mindset
• undergoing new training and answering questions
• understanding how and why their roles may be changing

Because you’ll need support from the top down, you want to clarify who should be part of change management in your business at every level, from the Board of Directors and C-Suite management to individual teams. The next step is making sure that everyone on your implementation team understands the true impacts of modernizing business platforms. In addition to improved client experiences, many businesses also experience positive changes to company culture.

Understand the cost of doing nothing

Because change can be challenging at all levels, you may face resistance to modernizing your business platforms, mindset, and operations.

With this in mind, it’s critical to impress upon leadership that continuing on the current path and not modernizing legacy technology comes with substantial drawbacks, including:

• Inability to innovate or react to market-changing needs
• Inability to solve for customer challenges
• Lack of competitive advantage in the marketplace
• Decreased security as updates and patches may take more time to deploy
• Offline workarounds when your platforms don’t integrate well

Even if your legacy systems and platforms haven’t led to problems in the past, the longer you go without updating, the higher the chances your company will face these challenges down the road. The cost of failing to act now may be higher than your company can support in the long term.

Is platform modernization right for your business?

Now that you know how to make a business case for platform modernization, it’s time to decide if your company can take advantage of the benefits associated with modernizing your platform. And how do you know if it’s right for you? While there’s no one-size-fits-all series of questions to ask, here are a few key factors to consider:

1. The digital products you modernize should be big enough (read: sufficiently mission-critical) to make an impact. Is your product right-sized?
2. You must be able to set a reasonable and attainable schedule to minimize time to value. Can you show results in a relatively quick time frame that’s a matter of weeks, not years? Will the platform modernization allow you to react quickly to changing customer needs?
3. You must be able to define how you’ll measure success. Can you set key performance indicators (KPIs) that show the impact?
4. Your leadership must be on board. Do you have sufficient commitment to begin planning?

Your platform modernization isn’t “all or nothing”

Some businesses look at platform modernization and get overwhelmed by the process. However, you don’t have to update every single platform or process all at once. 3Pillar Global can help you evaluate your goals and prioritize what you want to focus on to help you determine which parts you want to modernize first. By focusing on business outcomes, we help determine priorities.

Additionally, not all parts of your platform require modernization. It’s absolutely possible and likely that the increased features and functionality your business gains with platform modernization will allow you to retire some outdated processes and technology. 3Pillar Global can help you make these determinations.

How to start your business platform implementation:

The best place to start undertaking platform modernization is by creating a plan:

• Assess your company and prioritize your goals.
• Determine the best platform modernization approach for your business.
• Identify your implementation team.
• Create a roadmap and a timeline.
• Implement, test, and launch your modernization effort.

Modernization is valuable for most businesses today. And while change isn’t always easy, choosing the right partner can ensure your application modernization successfully follows a roadmap to create lasting change in your business and for your clients. Ready to see how 3Pillar Global can help? Contact us today.

Chapter 3 discussed the 5 essential steps to create an exceptional platform modernization strategy, below is a distillation of that process in a more visual presentation.

The digital revolution is as much about mindset and innovation as technology. If your legacy technology is preventing you from growing market share, innovating faster than your competition, or reacting to the changing marketplace and client demand, then it’s time to modernize. By committing to developing a platform modernization strategy, you’re also saying that improving your clients’ experience is a top priority.

There’s a reason businesses of every shape and size are investing heavily in digital transformation. When your outdated legacy tech infrastructure forces your team into rigid processes and workflows, it hinders your ability to innovate or build an agile mindset. It may even keep your team in a mindset of “This is how it’s done!” instead of “I wonder what’s possible!”

Digital transformation isn’t the only use case of a strong platform modernization strategy. Your company can also use it to:

• Develop an enterprise strategy for digitization
• Plan for funding, mergers, acquisitions to improve profitability
• Modernize outdated infrastructure
• Retire technology that’s no longer needed after moving from on-premise to the cloud
• Uncover new opportunities and markets and quickly deliver industry-leading solutions
• Quickly adapt to changing market conditions

Once you’ve realized that you need to modernize your technology to improve your ability to innovate, it can be tempting to dive in. When it comes to tech upgrades and modernization, strategy should come first. The key to a successful digital transformation lies in creating a comprehensive roadmap.

Investing time in strategy to define goals allows you to validate the problems you want to solve while giving you a path to achieve your key objectives. To that end, you’ll be able to focus efforts on doing the right things to maximize efficiency and minimize the time to value.

So what should you include in your platform modernization strategy to ensure you’re fully aligning your tech to excel at change?

The 5 Essential Steps to Create an Exceptional Platform Modernization Strategy

3Pillar Global uses a 5-stage framework to create a custom strategy for every platform modernization project. We’ve developed this process based on best practices from hundreds of modernization products. Our strategic approach blends mindset with methodology to ensure that we factor in all variables and deliver the best possible outcomes for our clients.

Step 1: Assessment & Prioritization

Before looking at any technology, we dive deep into your business to understand your goals as a company. This step allows us to create a platform modernization strategy that actually serves your needs. Using those goals as a lens, we explore everything about your company, from your team to your processes. Through this exploration, we can identify inefficiencies and opportunities for growth and improvement. As part of this assessment, we evaluate each application you use. In turn, we can understand dependencies, tasks, and tech currently in place and how it serves or hinders your company.

Step 2: Determine Approach

The next stage of creating a platform modernization strategy is determining which approach is best for your goals. Many systems may need retooling or reconstruction with new processes and tech that allow you to achieve your target outcomes. It’s best to prioritize the system that can deliver the quickest, most impactful wins. From there, you can update systems one by one based on priorities.

Incremental change leads to greater efficiencies and better results than taking an all-or-nothing approach to modernizing your applications. Despite many people thinking “big bang” modernizations are the only path towards the future, this approach of sweeping change is dangerous and prone to failure.

At 3Pillar Global, we take a more gradual and sustainable strategy toward platform modernization. We find that the best practices for modernizing technology include identifying legacy systems we can modify to minimize the time, energy, and effort for our clients while also maximizing the returns. Adding new features that align with an improved business process and market needs while enabling cloud access is part of our success matrix.

Step 3: Identify Implementation Team

Digital transformation is as much about developing a new mindset as it is about creating technological changes. Your platform modernization strategy must factor in the necessary cultural shifts as well. Resistance to change poses one of the biggest hurdles you’ll face as you adopt new priorities that focus on:

• Identifying problems and solving them creatively
• Striving for continuous improvement and growth
• Developing a lean, agile organization that can adapt quickly to the changing marketplace
• Accelerating the delivery of value to clients

To that end, your internal implementation team must commit to fostering a mindset of growth and problem-solving. So, who should be on your internal modernization strategy team?

We suggest identifying team members in company-wide leadership and at the departmental level—particularly within the IT department—who can support implementation. In addition to the necessary technical training, they must also be able to answer questions about why your company is taking this on. This team is critical for ensuring that your company transitions to a mindset focused on solving for need and uncovering new solutions that create value.

Step 4: Create a Roadmap & Timeline

Armed with the priorities, approach, and team, it’s time to create a platform modernization roadmap and timeline. To shorten your timeline, minimize time to value, and accelerate your wins, we recommend that your platform modernization strategy factors in:

• Applications that must be migrated together: some systems are dependent on one another. Your minimum viable modernization efforts may include one top-priority feature and a second that’s lower on the list yet essential to optimizing the process.
• “Side effects” on company culture: we’ve identified that change requires effort, training, and mindset shifts. All of which are important. However, it also frees up your team’s energy to focus on higher priorities that allow them to utilize their strengths and deliver greater value to clients.
• Effects and progress each step makes towards goals: when you’re in the middle of a process, it’s not always easy to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Defining what every step looks like and allows you to help your team buy into—and maintain—the big picture vision.

Step 5: Implementation, Testing & Launch

Now it’s “go time.” Based on your goals, the approach we’re outlining here, and the resulting platform modernization strategy, it’s time to put the plan into action.

After rigorous testing and ongoing training with your team, we turn things over to you to keep the engine moving, so you can deliver value to your clients. With access to powerful resources and information, your team can continue innovating toward your goals.

At 3Pillar Global, we believe in continually striving towards perfection. And, because the marketplace and technology are constantly changing, your platform modernization strategy gives you the tools to react to both. Ultimately, this mindset empowers you to continue on a path of excelling at change, minimizing time to value, and solving for client need.

The Time is NOW to Create Your Platform Modernization Strategy

As our world grows increasingly digital, companies using legacy technology will get left behind. The time is now to start exploring how you can create a platform modernization strategy that allows you to join the digital revolution on a scale that makes sense for your company. A measured approach to modernization allows you to focus on your goals so that you can realize them one by one.

A powerful strategy for growth enables innovation within your company, strengthens consistency and stability, and empowers better decision-making.

Ready to transform how your organization thinks and operates so that you can succeed in the digital economy? Contact us today.

Award-winning digital product company augments talent organization by hiring Will Daniel to lead L&D

FAIRFAX, Va. – 3Pillar Global (“3Pillar”), a global developer of cutting-edge digital products and a leader in digital innovation strategy, today announced that Will Daniel has joined the company as Vice President and Global Head of Learning and Development.

Daniel brings with him over a dozen years experience in the corporate training space. In this newly created role, he will be responsible for advancing 3Pillar as a destination for building the world’s best digital product leaders and practitioners by shepherding the organization’s learning strategy and further fostering our high performance culture.

“I’m a strong believer that investing in talent can drive measurable outcomes for both 3Pillar’s business and our clients’ business,” said Will Daniel. “I can’t wait to work with the team to take the strong learning and development foundation they’ve built to the next level.”

Prior to 3Pillar, Daniel was Vice President of Global Client Advisory Services at Challenger, Inc., where he led a team of 70 global advisors to train over 40,000 executives annually across the sales, marketing and customer service functions. Previous to Challenger, he held a number of senior delivery and consulting roles within Gartner and CEB, which included working to develop, launch, and scale CEB’s training methodologies based on the best-selling books, The Challenger Sale, The Challenger Customer, and The Effortless Experience.

“We are excited that Will has joined the team and look to his expertise to advance 3Pillar’s learning & development journey,” said 3Pillar’s Chief People Officer, Jamie Whitacre. “Will’s passion for building market-renowned Learning & Development organizations & curriculum is exactly what we need to advance our mission of accelerating our team members’ careers the moment they join our organization.”

For more information on 3Pillar Global and their work building software products for digitally-transforming businesses, please visit www.3pillarglobal.com.

About 3Pillar Global
3Pillar Global builds breakthrough software products that power cutting-edge digital transformations and define the next generation of digital business. 3Pillar’s innovative product development solutions drive rapid revenue, increase market share, and ensure customer growth. Leveraging the “Product Mindset,” 3Pillar delivers disruptive and transformative digital and software products to clients across industries, from CARFAX and Fortune to PBS. Visit www.3pillarglobal.com for more information and career opportunities. To learn more about the Product Mindset, visit www.productmindset.com and pick up a copy of “The Product Mindset: Succeed in the Digital Economy by Changing the Way Your Organization Thinks,” by 3Pillar CEO David DeWolf and VP of UX/UI for CoStar Group Jessica Hall.

In 2010, if you were looking for an alternative to a pricey taxi cab ride, you were mostly out of luck. Unless that is, you happened to live in San Francisco and had an “in” with Uber founders Travis Kalanick or Garrett Camp. Back then, the product looked very different from the rideshare app you know today. The mobile interface was called “UberCab” and had an incredibly limited feature set. The service was only available in San Francisco, and you had to email one of the founders to gain access.

Within five years, the rideshare app was valued at over $60 billion and was active in more than 70 countries. Uber is an object lesson in the power of a good MVP launch strategy. By starting Uber as an MVP, its founders could better understand their target personas, both drivers and passengers. It made them better problem solvers and delivered insights into how their competition—traditional taxis—would react and the legal implications of being a disruptor.

The takeaway here? A well-executed MVP launch strategy can make your product soar. In turn, a poorly planned one can sink even the best product idea.

So, what factors should you consider when it comes to releasing your product into the world? This article explores the most effective ways of creating your MVP launch strategy.

Decide On Scale

Will you lean towards a friends-and-family launch or go all-in with a big bang? Kathryn Rosaaen, Manager, Product Development, 3Pillar Global, explains: “I’ve never found a situation where a friends-and-family launch was detrimental. I love this approach. It gets the dev team into a cadence of release, it gives you feedback, and it generally allows you to practice your “release/feedback” process. Think of it as a dress rehearsal, and who wouldn’t want that?”

However, it’s good to keep in mind that friends and family may not always be objective. If you want real-world feedback, you should explore other options. If you’re launching an enterprise MVP, you can implement an “early adopters” program offering select customers early access to a new product in exchange for feedback. A soft release ensures that you don’t disappoint your existing customers.

Unless you’re an enterprise with a proven audience, a soft launch is generally preferable to a hard MVP launch. What’s the difference?

With a soft launch, you’re releasing the product to a small and controlled portion of the target audience. The most significant benefit of this MVP launch strategy is that it reduces risks connected with product release. Starbucks plans to use only reusable cups by 2025. They implemented a soft launch strategy in select countries to gauge their success. During South Korea’s test run, they kept 200,000 cups out of landfills within 3 months.

A hard launch is typically on a larger scale and all-in. Due to the risk involved, it’s not advisable for an unproven startup. Marketing costs and other investments, combined with the promise of solving customer problems, make hard launches more difficult—and more costly—than soft launches. The hard launch’s value proposition needs to be more mature and targeted.

According to Business.com, “Large-scale hard launches might be the right choice for large companies such as Apple or Microsoft, who have the time, money, and resources for extravagant events and impactful commercials. However, for startups with limited resources and experience, I always recommend a soft launch or a targeted approach and scaling up later.”

Scott Varho, SVP, Product Development at 3Pillar Global, suggests considering a silent release in your MVP launch strategy, “Companies often make the mistake of announcing the day the product will deploy to a publicly available production environment. The deployment date and the launch date should have sufficient time for the team to work out kinks.”

Slack, the messaging app for teams, made the mistake of trying to launch too big, too fast. The product didn’t perform at scale, so they retracted and regrouped. Surprisingly, the company didn’t set out to create a communications platform for companies at all. They were creating a video game, and during the development of their in-game chat function, the team realized the potential of the feature.

Slack pivoted to friends at other companies and tweaked its offering before graduating to a larger audience and iterating further. Slack progressively grew the audience size based on what they learned. Co-founder Steve Butterfield says, “We begged and cajoled our friends at other companies to try it out and give us feedback. We had maybe six to ten companies to start with that we found this way.”

Set Goals & Monitor Feedback

Plan ahead and establish performance metrics in your MVP launch. Establish what you’ll do when results show good, okay, and poor metrics. A Product Roadmap helps you keep track of future features you plan to develop after determining your viable product.

Once you have your goals, you need to set specific Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure your product’s success. Your strategic MVP launch goals determine the KPIs you select to understand if it is a success or not. For example, if you want to earn a certain amount of money within a few months, you might use Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) to determine if you are successful.

According to 3Pillar Global’s Kathryn Rosaaen: “One of our clients decided to put a contingency plan in place when they launched a new shopping widget. If they found sales leads to decrease by more than 20% over the course of two days, they’d revert to the previous design. This did, in fact, happen. Because of the clearly communicated contingency plan, they were able to pivot and implement a ‘Plan B’ within 24 hours.”

Have a system in place in your MVP launch strategy to gather and carefully evaluate your feedback. It’s easy to jump the gun and try to react to every piece of feedback you get. But before you put a new feature in the backlog, think it through. Where is this feedback coming from? How many/what percentage of people are sharing the same notion? For how long have they been saying it? Can you back it up with data? User research?

Remember who your users are and the problem you’re aiming to solve. View feedback through this lens before acting on it, especially if you’re doing a friends-and-family launch. In the end, they may not be the same as your target market.

Things Will Go Wrong. Be Ready

One of the most important considerations for your MVP launch strategy is that things will invariably go wrong. So you must have conversations ahead of time. Engage in some “war gaming” so that your team is ready for hiccups in your MVP launch. Some potential obstacles might include an operating system update, an old browser version, or an edge case that wasn’t fully understood.

Knowing up front that roadblocks are a matter of when—not if—is key to making the most of your adventure toward success.

In these circumstances, the passion and efficacy of your response is what your early adopters will remember. Beyond your technical skills, demonstrating your company’s mettle will further distinguish your MVP and instill confidence in the team as well as the product.

So, how can you launch your MVP while ensuring your solution platform and or infrastructure is business resilient?

Start by creating a disaster recovery strategy. Since the best way to deal with a problem is to avoid having it in the first place, invest time in testing, testing, and more testing before your MVP launch. Another powerful preventative step is having escalation paths planned out before the launch. Having a preventative step in place will help you know who can handle different types of issues.

Of course, problems are inevitable. As you build your MVP launch strategy, plan for discretionary time and post-launch sprints to take on repairs without disrupting your product roadmap or quality. Take into account how quickly your DevOps can release a repair into production and assign resources to perform triage.

Additionally, if possible, build customer-care features into the product. Make it easy to detect or communicate with the product team when something goes wrong. Then, let your user know you’ve logged the issue and are on it.

Strive for Balance

Don’t get stuck in analysis paralysis. If you do, you’ll delay your launch and risk waiting to begin learning and iterating that someone else may beat you to market. Balance speed and flexibility with planning. Think fast, flexible, and focused.

You’re launching an MVP to learn as you improve your product. In other words, you won’t get it 100% correct right away. Entrepreneur explains, “When it comes to launching an MVP, progress is better than perfection.”

That said, do your homework. Only move forward with a relative degree of certainty. Lindsay Kloepping, Director, Product Strategy at 3Pillar Global, says you’re ready to launch “When you have a sufficient amount of functionality to help prove or disprove your hypothesis.”

Find a Balance Between Speed and Preparation

Your MVP launch strategy is a balancing act between quick iteration and effective products.

According to Business Collective, “The beauty of technology is that it allows for rapid iterations based on actual data, which allows you to respond to your user base. And a responsive mindset can drive engagement.”

The bottom line? Remember that your main goal is to begin learning and iterating as soon as possible while providing some value to the users.

To learn more about 3Pillar Global’s services and how we can help you create an MVP launch strategy, contact us today.

As customer needs evolve, the business models for delivering value to those customers must also transform and adapt. When it comes to customer experience tools like self-service, it’s not only about support. Self-service should be seen as a completely tailored and personalized customer experience.

Self-service is becoming the first choice in a string of other options for providing customers the choices they need and the answers they want. In the digital age, self-service delivers enormous value to businesses with savvy and capable target markets.

Building a solid foundation sets the stage for an engaging and optimized self-service experience.

What is self-service customer experience?

In terms of the customer experience, self-service is an aspirational experience where a good or service is provided to a customer with zero friction points along their journey. And in reality, this type of journey isn’t always linear.

In several classic use cases, self-service models offer support for many different needs of online customers without devoting a skilled representative to each separate case.

Some of the most common examples include:

• Sign-up options: Customers can manually sign up or register for a low-tier or individual service plan (instead of an enterprise level where a demo or personalized quote would be the first step).
• Help center: The Help Center serves as a database or library complete with materials and questions already answered by, for example, the tech team.
• Chatbots and widgets: AI-powered widgets deliver immediate answers to common questions for website visitors using known or pre-loaded playbooks and customer data.

Self-service characteristics

The self-service customer experience is defined by several characteristics. Although each experience provides something unique, the similarities are as follows.

• It’s fast. Self-service models deliver on customers’ need for quick responses and turnaround times–without extra bottlenecks or frustrations.
• It’s around the clock. Many self-service portals deliver options during non-business hours or during times when full-time staff aren’t available.
• It’s consistent. Cross-channel options deliver a branded experience, regardless of how the customer chooses to use the self-service platform. It is a direct outflow of the person-to-person customer experience.

Why is self-service valuable to CX?

The self-service customer experience option is a highly efficient, low-cost way to deliver the speed and accuracy customers crave when interacting with online platforms and service providers.

Additionally, digital self-service also expands accessibility for many different types of customers while providing the clarity they expect from a trusted brand.

Many decision makers and enterprise leaders also favor self-service because it treats customers as valuable partners in the journey. Most options are uniquely designed to honor the customer’s time and knowledge by providing the right resources and displaying a commitment to the experience.

Which industries can use self-service customer experience?

Almost any industry can take advantage of the self-service experience. However, the right self-service platform might vary depending on how customers interact with the business.

For example, retail providers might use physical kiosks to give customers in-person options for making purchases and sending returns. Conversely, B2B companies may opt for FAQ pages, tech libraries, community forums, and chatbots or widgets to address customer issues online.

Regardless of industry, providing a relevant escalation method is essential. Self-service is never the end point for true customer experience and support. Additional ways to support customers are critical to helping those who weren’t able to receive the help via the various self-service options.

Self-service and the future of business development

Modern businesses often wonder what exactly about self-service makes it likely to have prominence in the future. For one, self-service is a way to install a personalized and unique experience–it is the combination of values and emotions specific to each customer.

• The value is being able to deliver specific results the customer needs in the way they want to access them.
• The emotions involve feeling equipped, confident, and in control. Most of the time, the emotional experience on the part of the customer contributes to increased trust and brand loyalty.

Build a foundation for CX success

To make your self-service experience as strong as it could possibly be, know the answers to questions your customers are seeking at all points throughout their journey.

What are their main pain points and headaches? Go to the data, access open tickets, and conduct one-on-one interviews to glean insights. Then, create solutions that are easily accessible.

Never send customers in circles looking for the self-service answer–it would defeat the purpose.

When it comes to crafting a true self-service experience, consistency is key. In other words, your organization’s branding and messaging should remain the same throughout each customer portal or access point. Additionally, be aware that establishing self-service options isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it scenario. Frequently run QA tests for quality and evolve with your customer and their questions.

Conclusion

If you’ve been strategizing self-service for your customer experience, now is the time for action. Make moves today, and deliver customer experience benefits to your customers for years to come.

Follow up with the team at 3Pillar Global for your own self-service strategy, consultation, or design. We’re here to help honor your processes and help you put your customers first.