CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
27 January 2009
Product News
Planview Announces Exclusive Partnership with Strategic Harmony
Planview® announced its partnership with the brand and product strategy firm, Strategic Harmony® Partners. As the exclusive Strategic Harmony product licensee partner, Planview is positioned to help product-focused organizations map their offerings to brand strategy, with metrics that better align products with customer needs and help insure that every product development dollar builds value, whether during economic recession or growth.
Brand value, measured by calculating how much of a company’s earnings are not attributable to tangible assets, makes up a majority of leading companies’ market value, as once again documented in the most recent Best Global Brands study by Interbrand. Analysis by McKinsey & Company further demonstrates that strong, well-leveraged brands positively impact shareholder value by producing higher returns.
New products, and enhancements to existing offerings, play a central role in determining how customer experience drives brand value. The challenge facing many companies is that product development strategy is seldom optimally aligned with brand strategy. Traditionally, product development groups have focused on incremental changes to existing products, and often create new offerings reactively to competitive and market forces. Marketing groups track how the market – consumers and competitors – perceives the company’s offerings in the context of the brand, but in most cases have no objective way to provide actionable input into how strategy for growing the brand should influence the product pipeline.
Strategic Harmony has developed a methodology to help integrate these two domains to drive better products that are aligned with brand strategy, increasing market perception of value and strengthening brands. This partnership enables Planview to build the Strategic Harmony methodology into its Planview Enterprise portfolio management solution, a demonstration of the Planview dedication to extending the benefits of portfolio management across the enterprise, into product development, marketing, and beyond.
“Partnering with Strategic Harmony will enable us to give Planview customers the tools they need to develop better products more attuned to market demands, by helping them infuse the product pipeline and portfolio analysis process with the science of brand management,” said Patrick Tickle, executive vice president of products, Planview. “This partnership is a natural extension of our commitment to finding new ways to help our customers create value with Planview Enterprise.”
Steven Cristol, founder of Strategic Harmony Partners, will also join the Planview Executive in Residence program, where his deep knowledge of integrating brand-building decision metrics into product development processes will guide the creation of portfolio management best practices.
“I chose to work with Planview not only because of its unparalleled track record of innovation in portfolio management, but also its forward-thinking vision of how to empower customers with more disciplined product development decision-making,” said Cristol. “The Planview commitment to making portfolio management relevant across the enterprise is a powerful context for Strategic Harmony’s approach to aligning strategies and applying brand drivers to the product development process – the missing piece for so many organizations. This partnership will help customers fill that crucial gap and improve business performance.”
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