Findings from the Benchmarking Survey on New Solutions Development
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The results of our first-ever New Solutions Development (NSD) benchmarking survey are in, and they confirm much of what we’ve suspected about the process – it’s important, it’s different from product development, and it’s hard.
As we learned in our previous research, product marketers make up a large percentage of those who have solutions development responsibility. And while they’re comfortable creating the next generation of product features and functionality, when it comes to developing new solutions, where the final offer may include multiple products, several types of services, and partner or channel delivery capabilities, the process and approach are much less clear. Our NSD benchmarking survey looked at how B2B companies approach the new solutions development process – and what can be learned from their issues and best practices.
The Survey Respondents
The results of our survey came from individuals we qualified and validated as being involved in solutions development at 72 companies. The majority of the respondents represented companies with over $1 billion in revenues sold both products and services.Alignment Around the Definition of a Solution
To ensure that the survey participants had the same perception of solutions and solutions marketing, early in the survey we asked a question regarding the respondent’s definition of a solution. At Solutions Insights, we consider a solution to be: [quotes style="classic" align="center" author=""]A combination of products, services, and intellectual property focused on a customer business problem or opportunity that drives measurable business value and can be significantly standardized. The solutions components can be from either the vendor and one or more of its partners, and the solutions implementer can be the vendor, the partner, the customer or a combination of the three.[/quotes] Of the 72 companies that qualified for the survey, 70% were completely aligned with our definition and another 10% had definitions that were similar. This reassured us regarding the validity of the results.Survey Results
The survey gave us some great insights into how companies develop solutions, and the issues and challenges they face. The following are some key findings from the survey:Get Additional Insights into the New Solutions Development Process
If you’re interested in seeing more results from our benchmarking survey, go our website at http://www.solutionsinsights.com/pdf/Solutions_Marketing_Benchmarking_Survey_2014.pdf where you’ll find a downloadable summary of excerpts from the survey.
And if you have questions about the survey results, or would like us to present it in more detail to you or your team, please email or call me.
Email: shurley@solutionsinsights.com Telephone: 781-686-1607.
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