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    • Action plan

    Developing a new product or service

    High effort

    High impact

    Businesses need to be able to stay one step ahead with products and services to maintain a competitive advantage and find opportunities for growth. Keeping track of trends and customer challenges is a useful way to inform a new development, but you need to plan carefully to identify high-quality opportunities and make sure your team isn't overwhelmed.

    • We’ve designed our action plans to be completed in the order of steps laid out and explained why each step is important
    • Customising your action plan lets you set your own completion dates, assign tasks to others and get notifications
    • Helpful tools are provided for certain steps while a tracking metric at the end will help you determine the long-term success of your effort
    • A downloadable PDF version of each action plan is available if you’d like to compete it offline
    What's involved? Ways to use this action plan Measuring impact
    1

    Spend some time speaking to customers and looking at market trends to identify potential opportunities

    Impact: medium

    Why will this help?

    Speaking to customers and researching competitors and trends will give you a broader insight into the challenges of your target audience and where there are gaps in the market.

    How to do a competitive analysis

    A competitive analysis helps businesses to understand who competitors are and what makes them different.
    2

    Leverage your network to find out how other business leaders embarked on similar developments

    Impact: medium

    Why will this help?

    Reaching out to your network lets you ask questions and learn from people who have gone through the development process, giving you a better understanding of the different ways to approach it.

    3

    Build a development roadmap that defines each stage

    Impact: high

    Why will this help?

    This exercise allows you to map out the steps you will need to take to develop your product or service and foresee when your business will need to increase capacity or access additional resources.

    Building a development roadmap

    Development roadmaps plan out the steps you need to take to develop a new product or service. Use this helpful template to get started.
    4

    Create a prototype of your new product or service and see how it performs with a small group of customers

    Impact: high

    Why will this help?

    Developing a prototype allows you to quickly test whether your idea has legs, before you invest fully.

    Use new product innovation as a marketing tool to engage customers

    Handcrafted cookware company Netherton Foundry gets ideas from customers and turns experiments into marketing opportunities.
    5

    Start the development of your new product or service, factoring in customer feedback you’ve received so far

    Impact: high

    Why will this help?

    Using customer feedback to inform your development will ensure you’re investing in the right areas.

    What can I do with this Action Plan?

    Start this Action Plan

    Add some extra information to this plan and we’ll help you get it done.

    • We’ve designed our action plans to be completed in the order of steps laid out and explained why each step is important
    • Customising your action plan lets you set your own completion dates, assign tasks to others and get notifications
    • Helpful tools are provided for certain steps while a tracking metric at the end will help you determine the long-term success of your effort
    • A downloadable PDF version of each action plan is available if you’d like to compete it offline

    Download and print

    Get a printable template for this Action Plan, fill it in with some target dates, and share it with your team. Pin it on the wall where everyone can see it.

    Get the printable Action Plan

    Learning Groups

    We also run Learning Groups on these topics where you can join other leaders tackling the same challenges.

    Find a Learning Group

    How will I know if my action plan is working?

    Customer focus group results

    Customer focus groups provide in-depth feedback

    Why this metric?

    A customer focus groups provide feedback on how effectively your product or service delivers against customer needs.

    How do I start tracking?

    Arrange a focus group of target customers to share qualitative and quantitative feedback that can inform the development process. Set up a follow-up focus group when you’ve implemented any feedback to see the impact.