When a OneDesk user sends you a request, you will receive the notification in your collaboration inbox, in the requests section.

What types of requests are available?

You may receive the following types of requests:

- A request for you to join a project
- A request from someone requesting to join one of your projects
- A work estimate request, which you may use to ask a teammate how many hours it would take to complete a requirement.
- A total cost estimate request, which you may use to ask a teammate how much it would cost to implement a requirement.
- A revenue estimate request, which you may use to ask a teammate what the potential revenue or savings would be if you implemented a requirement.

Throughout OneDesk, you will find request icons. Clicking on one next to a field allows you to send a request to another user and request information for the data.

To invite someone to join a project:
Follow the steps in this tutorial.

To send a data request within the requirements application:

- Go to properties tab (1).

To send a work estimate request:
- Click on the request icon next to Estimated Work in the costs box (2).

To send a total cost estimate request:
- Click on the request icon next to Total Cost in the costs box (3).

To send a revenue estimate request:
- Click on the request icon next to total revenue/savings (4).

In the issues/tasks application:

You can send a work estimate request under the properties tab, in the planned section (1).

Has innovation thinking gone stale in your organization? I highly recommend checking out the following product innovation articles:

1. Most people, most of the time (the perfect crowd fallacy): I am a big fan of Seth Godin’s blog and fresh insights. His thoughts enable us to think outside the box and look at general concepts in a raw, objective light. Check out his latest post, it can be directly applied to product innovation and marketing today.

2. Google Unveils Google Keep to Compete with Evernote: In order to innovate, companies need to know what is going in their industries. Google recently launched an interesting new product to go head to head with Evernote. Check it out!

3. The Powerful Art Of Resilience: Mitch Joel discusses the importance of persisting with an idea rather than giving up. Great insight that would inspire anyone to keep going, despite repeated failure.

4. Mark Shaw, One very dry demo: Sometimes, a product comes along that completely reveolutionizes the way we work, and play. THIS is one of those produts. Cahck out the latest product innovation to be showcased at TED.

5. Seven Critical Success Drivers – Why New Products Win: Greatproduct innovation article for anyone looking to launch a new product and successfully measure its success in the marketplace.

Simply send customers the link to your customer portal, or embed it in your website.

Use the instructions below to help guide them through using the customer portal.

When you invite customers to submit feedback, they will receive an email from OneDesk, inviting them to submit feedback to your organization.

As soon as they click on the link in the email, they will be taken to this page, where they will need to provide their information and create a password.

To submit feedback, customers should first login (1) or register (2) if it’s their first time.

Of course, you can choose whether customer need to be invited before they submit feedback, whether they can submit feedback without registering, or whether they can self-register. Learn how to do these here.

Customers simply need to enter their email (3) and the password they created (4).

They can then login (5).

Once logged in, customers can:

- Submit feedback (1).

- View feedback (2).

- Vote feedback up or down (3). Note that if they have already voted, they will no longer be able to vote (4).

- Discuss feedback (5).

- Clicking on the feedback will allow them to view any attachments (6).

- View the feedback’s priority (7).

- View the feedback’s lifecycle status (8). Note that keeping your customers updated on their feedback’s status is recommended, but optional. Choose whether they can do this when you set your customer feedback preferences.

- View only the feedback they have submitted (9).

- Answer polls that you have created (10).

How to submit feedback

Click on the submit feedback field (1)

Then, customers need to:

- Enter a title for their feedback (2).

- Specify the type of feedback (3).

- State its priority (4).

- Optionally add attachments (5).

- Describe their feedback (6).

- Optionally set custom fields (7).

- Submit their feedback (8).

The feedback they submit will arrive in the appropriate application in your OneDesk account.

Related blog posts:
New Facebook Theme for Customer Portal
Customer Portal Tip: Limiting Customer Discussions

Please feel free to share this infographic (as well as the video and slide provided below) on your website or social networks.

Related blog posts:
What is Project Management? – A Video Infographic (the video version of this infographic).
What is Project Management – Infographic slide (the PowerPoint version of this infographic).
What is Requirements Management? – A Video Infographic

We were very pleased with the response from the product management and project management community and wanted to take a minute to thank everyone who helped share this video across the social web. We are especially pleased to hear that some of you have even decided to incorporate our video into your PMP training courses (kudos, Jeff Furman) and webinars.

As always, the OneDesk Team is very active on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter – so come join the conversation!

Haven’t seen the video yet? You can check it out here: What is Project Management?

Spread the word!

Setting up an online research community is more cost effective and provides to many more new ideas at a faster rate.

One of the most popular type of research 2.0 hubs are the ones that allow the community to submit ideas and vote and comment on other people’s ideas. Research 2.0 takes into account that when a group of people who have no relationship to each other collaborate on ideas, it can lead to the discovery of breakthrough, innovative ones.

One of the most famous idea voting communities is Starbuck’s My Starbuck’s Idea. Since its implementation three years ago, Starbucks has been listening to their customers and as a result, have launched over 130 customer ideas.

Research 2.0 with OneDesk: Idea Voting

With OneDesk, you can allow your customers, employees and partners to vote on feedback. This facilitates the decision-making process, as you will be able to see which ideas everyone likes best.

- Ensure that your customers can view, vote, and comment on published feedback. For more information on how to do this, view this tutorial.

- In your OneDesk account, go to the feedback application, and select the feedback you wish to allow people to vote on (1).

- Under the properties tab (2), internal team members or even external partners you have shared this project with can vote on the feedback by clicking on the vote up, or vote down buttons (3).

- To allows customers to vote on the feedback, click on publish (4)

The feedback you chose to publish for votes will now appear on the customer portal.

You can now invite customers to sign into the customer portal. They can then vote the feedback up (1) or down (2).

Manage projects

Here, you can:
- View all the projects you are part of
- Create projects
- Share projects
- View the users in the project and manage their roles
- Modify projects
- Archive projects
- Leave projects
- Delete projects
- Find projects to join (under tools)

You can also quickly access the applications in a particular project, for example feedback (1), requirements (2), issues/tasks (3), polls (4), blogs (5).

All Projects

 
If you simply click on All Projects, nothing will happen.

The All Projects option allows you to view all information about all the projects you are part of, in each application.

Therefore, when you select All Projects, you must all select one of the applications (1).

Note that you must be in the All Projects mode to view/create roadmaps, use the social media monitoring tool, and access customer information (2).

Here, I selected All Projects, then chose to display the feedback application.

As you can see, we can view all the feedback (1), in all the different projects I am part of (2).

Organization Projects

Selecting organization projects, as well as an application allows you to view information about items in only the projects owned by your organization.

You’ll know that a project belongs to your organization if you see an “open box” icon (1).

Depending on your role, you can also share projects that belong to your organization by clicking on the share icon (2).

Related blog posts:
How to Use OneDesk’s New User Interface

Every project or product manager had to deal with one dreaded aspect of the job: Responsibility overload.

Handing your own tasks while managing your team and multiple projects can be challenging. Here are a few tips on how to deal with “too many tasks.”

1. Schedule time for unexpected needs

You know the drill – just when you think everything is going smoothly, things unexpectedly throw your schedule off-guard. Overrun meetings, tasks that finish late, customer problems that require immediate attention are some example of problems that usually arise at the last minute. By leaving some open time in your schedule in the morning and in the afternoon to deal with unpredicted needs, you will be able to get more things done, even if extra work presents itself.

2. Follow the 80-20 rule

While project or product management may be your main responsibility, you most likely have other responsibilities. As a general rule, do not let your main responsibilities exceed 80%of your time. Use the remaining 20% of your time to work on other responsibilities. For example, you may need to work with external stakeholders, fill out reports or participate in meetings for other projects. By ensuring that your main responsibilities don’t exceed 80% of your time, you will have better control over your projects, as well as your additional tasks.

3. Prioritize your other tasks

All additional tasks will always be requested as “urgent.” In order to prioritize them, make a list of all your non-main responsibilities (admin tasks, meetings etc) and rank them in order of importance. Of course, the meaning of “importance” varies from company to company. You may choose to asses the tasks based on:
- Value to the organization
- Time sensitivity and urgency
- Value to you personally, when successfully completed
- Consequences to you personally when not successfully completed

4. Learn to say no

A simple “no’ can make your day less stressful. If you can’t fit something in your schedule, let providing that it is not “urgent” (see the list above to determine what “urgent” is), it’s best to put it off until the next day. Check your schedule before accepting new requests. If you can fit something in without filling up the time you reserved for unexpected need (see #1), go for it. If not, just say no. This way, you are ensuring that the task will be done more efficiently at a later time, which will show your team that you are reliable.

5. Reassess your workload

Keep reassessing your workload throughout your project, about once each quarter. Keep your team updated on on the status of the project and tasks and work with them to ensure no dates are missed and that everyone is on the same page.

Got tips on how to deal with too many tasks or projects? Share them with us!

Source: 101 Project Management Problems and How To Solve Them, by Tom Kendrick.

Related blog posts:
What is Project Management? – A Video Infographic
Top 5 Gaps in Product Development
Good project management: Turning panic into process

1. Elizabeth Harrin: She is the driving force behind A Girl’s Guide to Project Management, where she dishes up tips and case studies surrounding project management challenges, successes and best practices.

2. The Cranky PM: Although she recently announced that she was taking a permanent hiatus from her epic blog The Cranky Product Manager, the product management community will still be looking forward to her new book, reported to be currently in the works.

3. Adrienne Tan: Adrienne is the glue that holds Sydney product management consulting agency Brainmates together. She also coauthored a chapter in the book Digital Experience Design.

4. Natalie Yan Chatonsky: Nathalie is a seasoned product professional who is chock-full of knowledge on everything from customer experience, product innovation and product planning and development. Check out Natalie’s most recent guest post on our very own OneDesk blog.

5. Cindy Solomon: Cindy is the founder of Global Product Management Talk, an extremely successful podcast. You can check out everything she’s been up to on her website. She is also very active on Twitter and Google+.

Also worthy of mention is Kari Ann Briski. Her blog, The Pink Product Manager, highlights the strengths and challenges women face, specifically in IT Product Management.

Thank you to all of you female powerhouses for enriching the product and project management space with your fresh, innovative insight, passion and dedication.

As always, please let us know if we missed anyone!

In an attempt to answer this tough question, we pulled out a variety of information from various sources.

Project management is defined by many things – by the tools it takes to carry it out, the lives it allows project managers to live and the success and failures that it has caused companies to go through.

This video infographic is a collection of some of the most interesting and shocking facts about project management.

We hope you enjoy it! Please feel free to share this video on your website or social networks – just mention OneDesk as the source.

Product command centers: The future of product development?

Michael Brito has spoken extensively about the business benefits associated with The Social Command Center: “Information is power, and when that information is at your fingertips, it empowers the individuals in your organization to make the right decisions and act on them.” Let’s explore this thought further: What if we built a product command center? A unified product environment that enabled us to react to changes in the stages of development in real time. A center with dedicated captains, er- managers at the center of all the action. In a recent article, Brito discussed why having a social command center is important for business today. Here are some of these key elements that can also be applied to product development:

Listening and Engagement: Organizations are quick to assume what customers want from their products and services, but we have seen many examples out there that justify the need to adopt a customer-centric approach to product development. Listen to feedback, engage customers in conversations, and take direct action.
Community: Successful product development requires the collaborative input of all stakeholders: Customers, Employees and even business partners both inside and outside the organization.
Content: Today, customer preferences and needs change by the minute. Having access to up-to-date, real-time feedback and other product related insight allows you to develop products that accurately align with current market landscape.
Product Innovation: New ideas for products can sprout up from anywhere. Make sure you know exactly where “anywhere” is, and use this information to fuel and support new innovative directions across the organization.
Customer Support: Capture customer issues and pipe them directly into the product development process.

I would like to add two more items, that relate directly to product development:

Decision-making: Having the right information that is both easily accessible and relevant enables individuals to confidently make better short-term and long-term decisions.
Visibility and Transparency: When an organizations encourages an open product development process, where information is shared and available, it helps to build trust, strengthens motivation and cooperation. Above all, it makes stakeholders feel like they are an important component of the product’s success.

Based on these elements, I think Product Command Centers are an innovative new concept, and a promising one at that. I would love to get your thoughts on this: Is this concept viable?

(Hey, it worked for Star Trek right?)

Microsoft Project files (.mpp /.mpt) files can be imported into OneDesk’s issues/task application.

Any information in all of OneDesk applications can be exported to .csv (Excel) format.

Importing a Microsoft Project File

Bringing your MS project files into OneDesk results in many advantages – learn about them here.

To import a .mpp or .mpt file:
- Go to the project you wish to import the file in
- Go to the issues/tasks application

 
- Select the Tools drop-down
- Select import .mpp/.mpt

 
- An Import Project window will appear
- Click Browse for project.
- Find the mpp or .mpt file you wish to import.
 

 
Information about the project and a list of import options will appear.
- Select the items you wish to import by placing a check mark next to the item (1).

 
- If you have chosen to import your assignments, a Resource mapping list, like the one above, will appear.
Here, you may choose to import your assignments and map them to a resource.
This is optional, but note that if you do not select any resources for a particular task, there will not be any assignments created for that task.

To assign a resource to your tasks:
- Click the drop-down arrows next to each task, and select a user resource, or a generic resource from the list. This list is generated from the resources in your project

- If you would like to create a new generic resource for a task (it will be named according to the imported resource name), place a check mark in the box under the New generic resource column, next to the task you would like to create the new generic resource for.

 
Then, begin your import. While it’s importing, you will see the progress at the top-right of the interface.

Importing and exporting .csv files

.csv files can be imported to and exported from OneDesk in all projects, or in a specific project.

Simply click on the tools button in the desired application and select import from CSV. Then, just browse for your file and import or export.

Here is a list of all applications and the .csv options available:

In the all projects view
Feedback – Import and Export
Requirements – Import and Export
Issues/tasks – Import and Export
Help desk -Import and Export
Ideas – Import and Export

In a specific project
Feedback – Export
Requirements – Import and Export
Issues/tasks – Import and Export
Help desk – Export
Ideas – Export

Here’s your chance to show your employees their real value in the organization. Employees are excellent sources of new product ideas. The reality is, organizations still fail to source internally generated ideas from them.

Building an internal idea capturing process

Set up an internal idea capturing system. Though this may seem like an obvious method, this approach is often times poorly executed internally. The issues commonly lie in the failure to outline a detailed plan. As a result, organizations encounter several problems that interfere with proper ideas and innovation management.

Here are some suggestions so you never miss any potential product ideas from your employees:

Assemble an idea-monitoring committee: It is always a good idea to designate individuals to keep the process organized, and on track. Put them in charge of monitoring new ideas coming through and providing reports at the the end of each month.

Publicize the news: Let everyone in your company know that you welcome their product related ideas. Seems obvious, right? Still many organizations miss out on great product ideas because they fail to let the right people know whether an ideation system even exists!
Tips: Organize a meeting, send out a personal email or an organization-wide newsletter.

Be open to every idea: Everyone has a different perspective and a different flavor to bring to your products and services. Some of the greatest product successes are born from companies taking risks and going in new product directions. Avoid belittling and or shunning ideas and remain open to exploring unconventional ideas. Case in point, this game-changing product innovation.

Make the idea capturing process accessible to everyone: TThis article is about employee feedback, but you are also going to want to open up the process to customers and business partners, too!

We want to know: How do you involve internal stakeholders in your innovation and idea management process? What specific methods do you use to source their ideas?

Businesses exist in dynamic, competitive global markets. In order to stay relevant many are innovating, developing new products and services as well as vigorously protecting their bottom line.

In this environment, Product Management is one function that can offer organisations significant benefits. Product Management brings with it good, solid business principles. No fancy acronyms, no catchy themes that fade with time. It essentially marries business objectives and target markets needs to deliver measurable, lasting benefits for organisations.

When practiced well, Product Management improves the product’s rate of success in the market, reducing costly product development efforts.

Here are some of other ways that Product Management can assist organisations.

1. Product Management Articulates the Customer Value That Sales Sell

Rightly or wrongly, the pressure to attain revenue targets in competitive conditions has increased pressure on Product Management teams to support Sales teams reach their short term sales targets. This propels both teams to sell products to ‘all and sundry’ even if it isn’t a good business decision.

Good Product Management applies a more sustainable approach and collaborates closely with Sales by ensuring that they are not pursuing the wrong customers. Product Managers who are in tune with the target markets and their problems are in a position to inform Sales on where the biggest opportunities are for selling their products.

Product Management articulates the benefits of products to their target markets, and can provide Sales with simple artefacts such as case studies of how their products are used by similar customers.

The increased dialogue between Sales & Product Management is a fantastic opportunity for both groups to identify new sizable target markets for existing products, and to identify any new market problems that may lead to new product development.

2. Product Management Reduces Risk of Product Failure

One of the first steps of effective Product Management is to prepare a business case before product development.

The very act of writing a business case reduces the risk of product failure. It doesn’t prevent failure, nothing can. But collating a set of assumptions, extracting business intelligence and scanning the market reduces the chance of failure.

The business case is a container for pertinent internal (capability, resources, business constraints) and external data (market conditions, market size, market trends, the competitive landscape). It helps organisations make better investment decisions.

Communicating the opportunity contained in the business case also further limits the risk of product failure. The proposal has to be sufficiently compelling to convince internal stakeholders to invest in the new product.

Developing new products without a plan that navigates the team towards success is like sailing a ship towards an unknown destination. There’s bound to be some expensive misadventures.

3. Aligning Market Needs with Key Organisational Objectives

Good Product Management ensures that any new incremental features, products or ideas that are launched solve quantifiable market problems which are aligned with business objectives. Whilst a focus on the customer is paramount, Product Management’s brings balance. It ensures that new products encompass both customer and business value to meet external and internal requirements.

If the development of the product does NOT satisfy or meet the business objectives even if there is an opportunity to be had, good Product Management should de-prioritise or discard it.

4. Product Management Future-Proofs Organisations

Product Management is a unique function in organisations.

They interface with many parts of their business and have the great visibility of internal projects as well as external factors to ensure the successful delivery of the product roadmap. They keep abreast of market changes, competitors, customer sentiment, the product’s performance and the financial intricacies of the product. Having up to date market and product knowledge will stand companies in good stead.

Whilst the role of Product Management was previously the catch-all of all urgent/non-urgent and important/unimportant issue that pops up relating to product, service or customers, its function has evolved to drive more value for the customers and their organisation.

The Administration section can be found under your user menu.

Note that to access this section, you must be designated with an Administrator role (explained under Users below).

What can you do in the administration section?

Users

Add users to your organization and set their roles and permissions. A user’s role defines what they are able to access in OneDesk. One of these roles is an Administrator. Administrators are the only ones who can access the Administration section.

Organization profile

Enter information about your organization so users know how they can contact you.

Custom fields

Add properties to feedback, requirements, or tasks to help classify and organize a particular item.

For example, you may create a custom field that asks your customers what category their feedback falls into: website related, pricing related, feature suggestion, defect, etc. By adding this custom field, each feedback can be classified according to your needs.

Forms configurability

Configure the forms that users need to fill out when creating feedback, requirements, or tasks. Optionally include the following additional fields/options: Assignee, category, customer priority, details, lifecycle status, publish (whether to publish the feedback for votes), requester, project.

Labels configurability

Create personalized labels and apply them to all your processes across the entire application. It’s a great new way to keep you organized and tailor your work items to reflect your organizations culture and strategic vision.
Simply locate the desired label under the default label, and rename the selected label by typing the new term into the corresponding custom label word box. Changes are updated dynamically and in real-time.

Types configurability

Configure the lifecycle status options of ideas, problems, questions, compliments, leads, general feedback, requirements and issues/tasks.

You can also choose to turn off any item you don’t wish to receive in OneDesk. For example, you may choose to only receive questions and problems.

Preferences

Set your company’s currency type, working hours, days off, holidays, and sign-in URL. Pro users can also upload their company logo here (pictured above).

Customer Feedback Options

Activate your customer portal and configure to control what your customers can view and what permissions they have within the portal.

Learn more about setting up your customer portal by reading these posts:
Receiving feedback through the customer portal

Customer Portal Tip: Limiting Customer Discussions

Strategies

Organization strategies are goals you set for your organization, or the corporate strategies you will devise to ensure that your goals are met.

Entering your strategies into OneDesk allows you to drive value to enterprise initiatives by making it easier to visualize which of your business strategies and goals are and are not well-connected to the product development.

Workflows

Automate your processes and create a system that practically runs itself. Set up automatic notifications, prioritize, and assign tasks to team members across your organization.

Learn more about workflows here.

My account

Here, you can access your billing account and history and change your plan.

As the saying goes, “happy cows make great cheese.”

This is a concept that can definitely be applied to a project management setting: Happy employees deliver great project results. It’s important for your project team to have high morale- happy employees tend to develop better relationships with team members, demonstrate positive attitudes, and sustain motivation towards projects longer. In addition, engaged team members produce at a higher quality. But most importantly, employees with a high morale are more fully aware of why the project matters.

Happy project teams: It’s about relationships…and tools.

As we all know from personal and professional experience, maintaining relationships can be hard work. Establishing strong team relationships is especially critical to the success of a project. All team members need to be on board, and on the same page. Projects are bound to come across some rough patches, and team members need to trust in one another and their abilities to pull through as one centralized unit.

Therefore, in order to keep project teams motivated, project leaders must:

1. Keep the team positive. Positivism is a mindset. As Henry Ford once said: ” Whether you think you can or that can’t, you are usually right.” Keep the team positive by providing them with continuous direction and the confidence they need to believe in the project at hand.

2. Give recognition when needed. Let’s face it, we all love to have our egos stroked but its more than just that pat on the back. Knowing that you are an important part of the projects success can make the difference between a dedicated project team member and one that sits on the sidelines. Explain to your project team exactly how their actions impact the end goal.

3. Remind project teams of the common goal. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in what we are doing we forget WHY we are doing it.Ensuring that your project team has a firm handle on the project’s goals and objectives, and how those goals relate to their personal accomplishments will make it easier for them to maintain focus especially during high stress and bumpy periods of the project.

4. Provide them with the right tools. Project management teams do not operate in a vacuum. Often times project team members have to interact and collaborate with other departments including Marketing, Product Management, Engineering and Support and Sales. In some organizations, teams are geographically dispersed or disconnected from the process altogether. There are solutions, like OneDesk, out there that can help you integrate product and project teams, increase communication, and promote the sharing of product related information across projects.

Related blog posts:
Requirements prioritization and analysis in OneDesk
Requirement tools and methods
Projects cost analysis with OneDesk
Software for IT Product Management
OneDesk’s Unique Requirements System

OneDesk’s new customer portal configurability options allow you to promote a positive customer experience. Customize your customer portal by choosing one of our themes, including a Facebook-inspired one, skins, colors or screen sizes that match your branding and website. You can also design your own.

How to customize your customer portal:

1. Upgrade to a Pro account.

2. Choose one of our pre-made themes and colors here. Select a theme, skin and color to view what it would look like.

3. Call us at (514)731-6878 or 1-855-OneDesk (toll-free).

4. We’ll take it from there and do the work for you. Feel free to request your own themes and colors.

Above: OneDesk’s customer portal in the red Facebook theme, configured for a mobile device.

Related blog posts:

Customer Portal Tip: Limiting Customer Discussions

Using The New Customer Portal: A Guide for Customers

From time to time we like to give a shout to the product community. This week, we decided to curate and publish the top 5 product management posts of the week. We hope you find these articles and blogs insightful, educational, and inspiring.

Here they are:

1. Everything a product manager needs to know about analytics: Quick overview for product managers about the importance of data analytics

2. Organizing product management :Steve Johnson gives us a quick lesson in product management organization.

3. Product Managers Need To Learn To K.I.S.S Their Customers: Do not be misled by the tile- this is not a post about a romance between a product manager and a customer.

4. Best Books for Product Managers and Product Marketers: Catch up on your product management reading.

5. What is product management?: A nice definition and breakdown of product management.

Enjoy!

Read something this week that you think would appeal to our readers? Share it below!

So what causes some products to succeed, and others to fail? While there is no magic formula, there are some common factors that will lead to failed products:

Poor assessment of the market’s needs

Many companies jump right into the product development processes without taking the time to fully understand the industry and market’s needs. An example of this would include Nokia and the Lumia 900 which they launched last year. If they had done a little bit more market research, they would have understood that their competitor’s phones had a much better screen resolution. Many companies rely on traditional customer surveys that lack in-depth information and studies conducted by traditional market research companies. These are not enough as customers needs change everyday.

For its biggest launch since Diet Coke, Coca-Cola identified a new market: 20- to 40-year-old men who liked the taste of Coke (but not its calories and carbs) and liked the no-calorie aspect of Diet Coke (but not its taste or feminine image). C2, which had half the calories and carbs and all the taste of original Coke, was introduced in 2004 with a $50 million advertising campaign.
However, the budget couldn’t overcome the fact that C2’s benefits weren’t distinctive enough. Men rejected the hybrid drink; they wanted full flavor with no calories or carbs, not half the calories and carbs. And the low-carb trend turned out to be short-lived.

Product are launched too soon and possibly flawed

When it comes to product launches, timing is everything, but only as long as the product is properly tested and it is sure that no issues will arise after the launch. When Apple released Apple Maps, it was full of errors, and called for the company to make a public apology. In an era where word about product can spread as fast as fire due to social technologies, it’s even more important for companies to ensure that their products are error free and truly ready to be launched.

There is no market for the product

A product may be new and revolutionary, while at the same time, not targeting a specific market. An example of this would be when Dean Kamen announced that he was going to release an “alternative to the automobile” a year in advance. When investors and the public learned that the product was actually the Segway, only a technologically advanced motorized scooter, they were dumbfounded. There was no real market for the Segway, and sales for this product were way below the projected number. Instead of selling 10,000 machines a week, as Kamen had predicted, the Segway sold about 24,000 in its first five years. Now it sells for far less to police forces, urban tour guides, and warehouse companies, not the general public. If there was ever a product to disprove the axiom “If you build it, they will come,” it’s the Segway.

The product or marketing message is complicated

If the use of a new product requires additional education and time spent learning it, customers may not want to invest in it. Companies should try to keep their products as easy-to-use as possible. If customers cannot figure out how to use it almost right away, chances are they will just stop using it right there. Likewise, if the public cannot understand what your product does in its marketing messages, the product will most likely not succeed.

For example, In 2004 P&G launched the Febreze Scentstories, a scent “player” that looked like a CD player and emitted scents every 30 minutes. The company hired the singer Shania Twain for its launch commercials. This confused consumers, many of whom thought the device involved both music and scents, and the ambiguity caused Scentstories to fail.

Disconnectedness to market

There are many new technologies that help businesses plan their product release. However, if these tools are disconnected from all the market opportunities out there, a lot of time can be wasted. Simply investing in a tool that allows companies to engage with customers, connect all stakeholders, assess market needs and plan product releases can help avoid product failures.

Source: All examples were quoted from this article in the Harvard Bsuiness Review.

Related blog posts:
Five Products That Failed in 2012
Why Was the Release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 So Successful?
Five of the Most Successful Product Launches in 2012

Though they have have become an integral part of software development, especially with the growing need to collaborate with geographically dispersed teams, issue tracking tools can be used in other areas which don’t deal with software specific projects. There are, in fact, a number of ways that other types of organizations can benefit from issue tracking software.

The benefits of issue tracking tools

Increase employee efficiency: Team leaders and managers constantly have to ensure that items and tasks meet quality control and organizational standards. They also need to make sure that employees are utilizing work time efficiently and therefore need reliable ways to measure their productivity. Issue tracking systems enable project managers and their teams to manage and maintain lists of issues as needed, while also allowing you to easily assign or reassign issues and bug fixes to individuals across the organization.

Easily monitor the status of issues: With issue tracking tools, leaders can easily review and monitor status updates of specific projects or tasks, instead of having to run around the office, or flood employee email inboxes. The added benefit is the opportunity for employees to work independently without feeling the constant pressure of micro-management. Finally, leaders can consult issue tracking tools to get quick answers and make forecasts related to the project: Completion rates, lifecycle status, unforeseen issues, scope creep and any other outstanding items.

Build a living knowledge base of issues and tasks: Individuals who are asked to handle specific tasks or issues may also be asked to identify and document the steps they have taken to solve that problem. Issue tracking tools will enable team members to log these steps, so that they can be retrieved, at a later time, if needed. Creating this living knowledge base, will future members to understand the procedures when a similar issue is raised, as well as save the organization valuable resources and man-hours.

The need for integrated issue tracking tools

Issue tracking tools, as discussed above are extremely useful and organizations should strongly incorporate them into their product development process. However, it’s about selecting the right issue tracking tools. Today, organizations, need a flexible tool, that provides visibility into organizational activities. What is therefore needed is an issue tracking tool that enables multiple teams and users to transmit and have access to information across the project. In most cases, knowledge management must occur across projects – a problem that organizations repeatedly face. Hence, more reason to leverage an issue tracking tool that allows for information to be stored and readily accessed by different teams across different projects.

OneDesk allows you to create teams and collaborate with colleagues, offsite team members, partners and customers. In this OneDesk Quick Start Guide we’ll teach you how to build your OneDesk team in three ways. We’ll also introduce you to some important concepts in OneDesk, like Projects, which are the essential building blocks for all teams and collaborations.

INSIDE YOUR ORGANIZATION

Advantages: By adding organization users to your OneDesk account, you can collaborate with colleagues and ensure your whole company is on the same page. When you sign up for a free OneDesk account, you can add two free users to your organization.

Here’s how:

• To add users individually: Go to your user menu –> Select administration–> Users –> Create a new user.
• You even have the option of adding users from Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo Mail contacts.

Note: Only users with an Administrator role can add users to an organization.

OUTSIDE YOUR ORGANIZATION

Advantages: With OneDesk, you can collaborate with other users by inviting them to join a Project. Within a Project, members are able to discuss, develop, and share information and manage feedback, requirements, issues, tasks, ideas, and help desk tickets.

Here’s how:

Projects can be shared with either users from your organization, or with external guests.

• Create a Project.
• Click share icon on the Project you wish to share.
• Share your Project with external guests: Search for them in OneDesk, import your address book, or simply enter their email addresses – They will be invited as external guests, and will NOT join your organization. (If they are new to OneDesk, they will be asked to create their own organizations).
• Or, share your Project with users from your organization: Just select the user from the drop-down list of users.

INVITING CUSTOMERS TO YOUR ORGANIZATION

OneDesk allows you to invite customers and collaborate with them.

Here’s how:

• First, create your customers: Go to the application drop-down –> Select customers and accounts –> Create.
• Then, you must invite them in order for them to get a registration e-mail. To invite your customer, click Send Invitation

Note: The customer will receive a registration e-mail, inviting them to provide feedback. They simply need to click on the link in the e-mail to confirm their registration and proceed to the customer portal. If you want a customer to actually collaborate with you in a Project, invite them as an external team member.

Related blog posts:
Customer Portal Tip: Limiting Customer Discussions
Sharing files in a collaborative environment

However, some companies were not as successful.

Here are five of the worse product failures of 2012:

5. Nokia Lumia 900

Nokia introduced the Lumia 900 at the beginning of 2012 at the Consumer Electronics Show, but sales never took off. The phone operated with a Microsoft Windows platform, which didn’t offer enough apps for customers. It was also criticized for having a weaker screen resolution than their competitor’s phones.

4. Sony Tablet P

With all the tablet hype and competition, Sony attempted to make the “portable” experience even more portable by designing a tablet that could fold in half. This backfired, as the screen split made it hard for people read and play games. After also receiving complaints about touchscreen sensitivity and about glitches in the operating system, Sony dropped the price from $549 to $199.

3. The Ultrabook

When Intel released the Ultrabook, many wondered whether it would be able to keep up with its competitor, the MacBook. However, the projected sales for the Ultrabook were way lower than expected, partly due to the increasing tablet and mobile market and partly due to its excessively high price.

2. Nintendo Wii U

Launched in the fall of 2012, the Nintendo Wii U was expected to be one of the hottest items on Christmas lists. but to date, the launch of the Wii U has caused Nintendo to not meet their sales goals for its first console in six years. Nintendo was hoping to sell 5 million game consoles by Mar. 31, but has recently cut that projection to to 4 million.

1. Apple Maps

Apple’s attempt to take on Google Maps and built their own maps product didn’t exactly turn out as they planned. Shortly after its release, users began reporting a number of issues: Incorrect information, such as mixing up Greenland and the Indian Ocean, giving directions that were so bad that the police issued a warning in Australia, un-visible points on maps due to clouds and so on. Luckily, Apple’s iPad mini made it to the list of most successful product launches of 2012.

It’s never fun to have to hear about product that failed (although Apple’s country mix-up was a bit amusing), and we hope all companies will have successful product launches in 2013. Stay tuned for a future blog post on why exactly products fail.

Related blog posts:
Why Was the Release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 So Successful?
Top Five Causes of Failed Products

There are many definitions of social business floating around the web, but at the end of the day creating a social business consists of three core elements:

• Collaboration
• Communication
• Integration

Once an organization has a solid understanding of these three elements, how they relate to one another and how they impact the bottom line, a business model can be put in place to enable these elements to successfully co-exist.

This week, we published two articles that directly highlight the important role that “social” plays in the product development process.

The first article in question, Product Management is Evolving – All Because of the Social Web! written by our very own Marketing Guru Kimberley Chan as she explores the relationship between product development and the impact that the social web has on customer engagement and the development of winning products and services.

The second article, Creating a Unified Product Development Process with OneDesk, is one that I wrote specifically for SocialBsuinessNews.com. In it, I discuss social business today, and the importance of integration:

“The key to creating a social business is to be able to identify core business processes that can be tied together to create transparency, and open the lines of communication between customers, employees and business partners. Furthermore, designing your business model to be adaptable to changing dynamics and unexpected issues or problems that may arise throughout the course of product development can be challenging.”

Thanks to Michael Brito and Adrienne Tan for all their help.

Don’t forget to show your team some love. Happy Valentine’s Day!

The release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, generated over $775 million in revenue in only five days. Fascinating, right? Let’s drill down and discover what made this product launch so successful.

Success factor #1: They listened to their customers

As economic conditions toughen, listening to customers is more important than ever. Activision’s CEO Bobby Kotick realizes this and spoke about this at the Web 2.0 summit in San Francisco.

“I think [listening to customers] matters more now than ever before,” Kotick said, as reported by Gamasutra, “because you have incredibly passionate and vocal consumers, and they are really thoughtful and articulate about what they would like to see in a game, how you can enhance the experience. So if you take the time and actually listen to what your customers have to say, you are going to create much better experiences.” (Inside Gaming Daily).

In order to listen to their customers, Activision has set up a community on their website, on which users can voice their opinions and suggestions.

Success factor #2: Uniqueness established over time

Activision did not just miraculously make over $775 million in five days. The first game in the Call of Duty series came out in 2003. Its success and popularity continued to build over the years, and each release broke a new new record. Call of Duty has stood out in its niche market since it was first released. Competitors have tried to copy the series, however, none have been able to match the unique nuclear explosions and creativity of a Modern Warfare game.

Success factor #3: Users NEED other users

The Modern Warfare games have a multiplayer function, which means players can connect with other players and play against each other. Activision has redesigned some game modes and introduced some new ones. As they explain on the Call of Duty website, “Modern Warfare 3 delivers a multiplayer experience that continues to raise the bar by focusing on fast-paced, gun-on-gun combat, along with innovative features that support and enhance a large variety of play-styles.”

Because the game has a multiplayer function, players need other people to play with to get the full experience. This most likely causes fans of the game to tell their friends about it and encourage them to play it too.

Success factor #4: Effective product marketing

There are already thousands of Call of Duty fans, but that does not mean that Activision was able to downplay the marketing of Modern Warfare 3. Activision believes that all their marketing efforts should be as creative and innovative as the games they create.

Activision knows how to create a lot of pre-release buzz. Before the release of Modern Warfare 3, they created a lot of hype by building anticipation to the release on the Call of Duty website. http://www.callofdutymodernwarfare-3.com/ They made an action-packed trailer and even built anticipation to it by announcing teasers.

Their Call of Duty XP event attracted approximately 8000 Call of Duty fans. Attendees of the two-day festival spread the word about the event through their social media accounts, which created even more awareness about it.

In between the event to the release date, Activision continued to build anticipation by blogging about the game, posting video teasers, and of course, giving fans something to be excited about.

We want to know: What techniques do you use to make your product release successful?

Related blog posts:
Five of the Most Successful Product Launches in 2012
Five Products That Failed in 2012
Top Five Causes of Failed Products

Secondly, it needs to resonate with your target audience. More than ever, customers have taken center stage in the decision making process and expect to be closely involved in the development of new products and services. So, it goes without saying that you should source feedback from your customers on a continual basis.

Source great product ideas from user portals

Online user portals are a great way to get feedback directly from your target audience in question. OneDesk’s customer portal allows you to set up polls to get quick answers to your product related questions. Customers can also submit any feedback, ideas, support requests and questions they may have.

Starbucks asks customer to rename their coffee

What’s in a name? Ask Starbucks. For years, they have been listening to their faithful coffee drinking customer community through user portals for ideas for everything from new product names to new ideas for flavours. Their most recent campaign, asks customers to submit ideas for the renaming of their popular Blonde Roast coffee. With customer-centric campaigns like these, It is evident that Starbucks CEO, Howard Shultz is fully aware of the importance of involving customers in the product development process.

Here are a few product launches that stood out in 2012:

5. The iPad Mini

Out of the many product that Apple launched in 2012, the iPad Mini is one of the most successful. It is the first tablet to feature a reduced screen of 7.9 inches, while still maintaining compatibility with the previous tablet. The iPad Mini was so successful that Apple had to had to double the number of units they expected to ship. Instead of the predicted 6 million, Apple had to ask display panels to ship more than 12 million.

4. Samsung Galaxy S III

The launch of the Samsung Galaxy S III caused Android phones to rise in the smartphone war make Samsung the leading smartphone vendor in the world.

3. Makerbot Replicator 2x

The Makerbot Replicator is an open source 3-D printer. The introduction of this product at last year’s Consumer Electronics Show allowed Makerbot to introduce 3-D printing to the world and open up a whole new way to creating and innovating. As the Makerbot website explains, you can “make an entire chess set with the press of a button.”

2. Black and Decker’s Gyro

The Gyro is the world’s first motion activated power screwdriver. Gyro was developed by Black & Decker to give users more control over the application, both in speed and direction. The trigger is on the back, so you just need to squeeze the Gyro you engage the power switch. To turn it on, you rotate it to the right. It starts very slowly, and the more you turn, the faster it goes. To slow it down, simply turn it back towards neutral or center. And then to reverse the direction, you simply turn it to the left.

1. Modern Warfare 3

Video game maker Activision has one of the most successful product launches ever. the launch of their video game, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, generated over $775 million in revenue in five days. In a future blog post, we’ll look at what exactly made this launch so successful.

Related blog posts:
Innovative Ideas: Important!
Top 5 Gaps in Product Development
Why Was the Release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 So Successful?
Five Products That Failed in 2012

Social media efforts can no longer just be used as a stand-alone strategy. Insight gained from these efforts must be integrated with other business processes such as customer service and help desk, idea management, requirements management, and project management. They must also be visible, and traceable across the development process. Finally, in the true nature of social collaboration, this information should be shared with both internal and external stakeholders such as business partners, employees and especially customers. It should also be accessible across departments like sales, customer support, marketing, product development and engineering.

The role of the social web in product management

The social web is quickly becoming a popular method for customers to express product and service related ideas, issues, questions and problems. Social conversations within customer communities are happening much more frequently and in real-time and are starting to receive a lot of attention in the product management world.

The question is: How can product managers use social media monitoring to build the right product requirements and make more informed product-related decisions?

Watch this video to learn more:

Related blog posts:
Product management and social customers
Social Customer Service/Community Management
Social customers: Who are they?

5 gaps that we identified in the product development process:

1. The Innovation Team Problem
The innovation process includes gathering ideas for new products and features, analyzing them, running polls and turning them into requirements to present to the executives. The gap exists here because of the number people involved in generating and capturing ideas, numerous locations, having information spread out within a variety of tools such as notes, emails, spreadsheets and documents.

2. The Product Management Problem
Following the innovation and ideas stage, product managers need to translate and propose requirements for the next release, and find a way to still maintain ownership. As in the innovation team gap, product managers also need to go through their own idea and requirements gathering stage, vet them, analyze the results and create proposals based on those. The variety of tools used for each process is as varied and disconnected as in gap #1.

3. The Engineering Management Problem
Product engineers need to ensure they have all the necessary requirements to plan and assign tasks to their team members. They are also responsible to making sure that all issues, defects, and tickets are tracked. A typical process for the product engineer includes the technical review of requirements, task planning/assigning, gathering issues and putting them in an issue tracking tool, and delivering user stories. Typically, they will use a different tool for each stage – a requirements management and analysis appl, spreadsheets, and product management apps.

4. The Helpdesk Team Problem
Once the helpdesk team receives issues and tickets, they need to gather them into a help desk application, export them into spreadsheets and communicate priorities and status to engineering via email. They then need to import updated items into the issue tracker so that engineering can be aware of them. However, in order to clarify the issues and tickets, chains of emails between all departments must be maintained.

5. The Project Management Problem
Project managers often need to account for problems such as late projects and going over budget due to unforeseen issues and scope creep. Again, the challenge lies within having to use disconnected tools while reviewing requirements in the product management app, validating assignments by email, running forecasts in spreadsheets and finalizing reports.

We want to know: What gaps have you identified in your organization, and how did you bridge them?

Related blog posts:
Managing Innovation: Now What?
Co-creators: Shaping product development

You know the feeling— the knot in your stomach caused by the fear of not getting a report, presentation or project done on time. The ticking of the clock on the wall is so loud, and it is all you can focus on. It seems that no matter how hard and fast you work, there is no way you are going to meet that deadline. When it’s all over, you sit with your head in your hands wondering to yourself, what went wrong?

Ok. Take a deep breath. There is no need to panic. What you need is to do is establish a structured process to ensure that you never miss another project deadline again. Sounds simple enough, right? Unfortunately, the reality is that many organizations and their teams suffer from what is known as Process Phobia – the fear of establishing firm, structured guidelines in the planning phases of project management. Sounds ridiculous, right?

Well for one, like many of us, when faced with high levels of stress, tight deadlines, we tend to skip a few steps for the sake of time and go right into doing mode and completely omit the whole “planning phase.” At the time, it may seem like the right thing to do given severe time constraints. However, the consequences of diving right in may really outweigh the benefits of proper planning.

Taking the time to put together a plan can make the difference between a product or service winning or losing in a competitive marketplace.

As of today, the little copper coins, worth one cent, will no longer be distributed. A quick social media search shows that Canadians have mixed reactions to this.

For some, the penny represented something of sentimental value, whether it’s the “lucky penny” superstition, or the the coin that could make your wishes come true by throwing them into a wishing well. But for many, the penny was simply an unnecessary burden; its dismissal paves the way to lighter wallets and less time spent rolling coins.

The Canadian penny is being retired because production cost exceeded its monetary value. It costs 1.6 cents to make each one-cent coin. The Canadian Government estimates that by ceasing the production of the penny, they would save $1.1 million per year.

What can the demise of the penny teach us about product management?

In an era where customer demands are constantly shifting, companies are always trying to find out what they can do to stay on top of the market and enhance their products so that they align with their customers’ needs.

But sometimes, trying to enhance or revive a weak product can be costly. It may also require more marketing efforts and additional resources, which drives the product costs up even more. Sometimes, in order to keep customers satisfied, companies must consider developing new products, but at the same time, eliminating the ones that aren’t doing well.

Keep your golden products alive by tossing poor ones into the well

Product elimination used to be looked down upon. However, these days, it is no longer considered as a negative aspect of product management. Rather, it is viewed as a positive and valuable product management tool that can strengthen customer relationships.

Eliminating products can be tricky. Businesses that go that route are faced with the challenge of choosing the right strategy and cut products without losing customers.

According to this study by David R Harness of the Huddersfield University Business School and Dr. Tina Harness of Leeds Business Schoolstudy, “the UK retail financial service sector provides evidence that product elimination can be used as a relationship marketing tool by allowing products to be eliminated without creating discontinuities.”

Conserve customers like those collectible pennies

In order to keep customers from turning to other suppliers, the product elimination process must be backed up by customer retention and relationship marketing strategies. Remember, products are cut in order to keep up with the changing customer demands. In order to retain customers, companies must ensure their customers understand that the product they are currently using will be replaced by an even better one.

Penny for your thoughts on this? Or should I say, Nickel for your thoughts?

Related blog posts:
What Facebook’s Social Graph Means for Product Development
Customer Lifecycle Value: Increasing customer retention

Top 10 social tools for companies

According to HR Magazine, there are ten collaborative social tools companies should promote and leverage in the workplace:

1. Crowdsourcing

2. Enterprise social networks

3. Microblogging

4. Social performance management

5. Online groups / Communities of interest

6. Mobile applications

7. Online presentation sharing

8. New-generation video conferencing

9. Online task management

10. Social learning

How major brands are proactively using social tools

Consider this infographic by Wishpond that shows how top retail companies are successfully incorporating twitter into their social media engagement strategy:

Image Source: http://www.wishpond.com

The graph below shows the specific results reported from a study conducted based on projects executed from 2002 to 2012. They define a successful project as “on time, on budget, and with all planned features.“

While the use of Agile methodologies in organizations is increasing, many are still unclear on what differentiates Agile and Waterfall, and how to effectively utilize both processes.

This slideshow on the two methodologies starts off with the following thought-evoking quote: “Agile leaders lead teams, non-Agile ones manage tasks.” As this mindset continues to grow – particularly in the product development and IT sectors – Waterfall is gaining a reputation as the “old-fashioned” way of thinking and working.

The difference between Waterfall and Agile

Waterfall is…
- Structured
- One big project
- A sequential process
- Suited for situations where change is uncommon
- Internal
- A process that requires clearly defined requirements upfront

Agile is…
- Flexible
- Many small projects
- Highly collaborative
- Best for those who want continuous improvements
- Involves customers
- A process in which requirements are expected to evolve and change

The debate

Many Waterfall worshipers blatantly point out that if Agile is a better way of working, why do some Agile projects still fail?

In this blog post, Eric Lies, author of The Lean Startup, tells a story of witnessing a product manager struggle to get results from his hard-working team. The amount of dedication and work put in by all team members using the Waterfall process only led to frustration and failure. In his post, he illustrates how repetitive some tasks are, and how much time you can lose by using this method. His goal is to see this team transition from the Waterfall process to an Agile one.

However, this article by Smart Data Collective states that “Agile is not right for every project team and is absolutely not a silver bullet that will solve your organization’s delivery problems. In fact, if you are already struggling, trying to change to a new methodology might make things worse.”

We want to know:
- Which methodology does your organization use?
- If you use Waterfall, are you thinking about transitioning to Agile?

Related blog posts:
Agile Project Management and The Social PM
Agile strategies and alternatives
Agile Technologies and Their Characteristics
Agile approach: Practicing it with OneDesk
Agile Adoption Statistics 2012

“We accept the firm’s assertions that to achieve success, it is important for employees, partners, and customers to collaborate — however, if the conversation is unstructured, it can waste a lot of time and go off track. In an attempt to answer these challenges, OneDesk sets out to enable effective social collaboration by directing the conversation toward business goals.”

I invite you to read this article and share your insights and reactions with our online audience.
Haven’t tried OneDesk yet? Sign up here to get a free account.

Related blog posts:
Requirement tools and methods
Requirements prioritization and analysis in OneDesk
How to prioritize requirements with OneDesk

Businesses are not the only ones who are making the transition to social. In 2012, many organizations saw a change in their customers’ behaviours. More and more customers have realized that they can talk to brands directly by connecting with them through social media. Near the end of 2012, we wrote about how McDonald’s recognized this and adopted the social concept by engaging with their customers through their own social media platform. http://www.onedesk.com/2012/10/open-business-mcdonalds-gets-it-right/

The following social business statistics fascinate me. While of the stats show that many businesses are slowly adapting to the concept of being a social business, some of them show how many organizations fail to respond to or meet customer expectations of requests and complaints submitted via social media.

Let’s start with some basic but interesting social media stats:

Each week on Facebook more than 3.5 billion pieces of content were shared.

Over 350 000 000 users are addicted to Facebook.

There are more people on Facebook (901M) than in Europe, Russia & Middle East combined (780M).

If Twitter were a country, it would be the 12th largest in the world.

There are 1 million groups on LinkedIn.

In 2012, watching TV became a social experience as television shows started designating Twitter hashtags for episodes and scenes.

Earlier in 2012, this interesting article from PCMag talked about how people were getting hired based on their Klout score. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2403567,00.asp

That being said, the social web is crawling with social customers:

80 percent of social media users prefer to connect with brands through Facebook. (Business2Community)

According to this site, older consumers are more likely to expect customer services responses via social media than younger consumers.

According to a study by Mashable, 13% of customers said they post updates about brands they like.

56% of consumers say that they are more likely recommend a brand after becoming a fan on Facebook.

In 2012 57% of comments about U.S. airlines on social media were negative. This seems to continue this year with all the hype about the American Airlines logo change. Read our story about this here.

With these in mind, these social business stats from 2012 are fascinating:

71% of companies today say they provide customer support via social media. 18% handle over a quarter of all customer care this way. (SAP and Social Media Today Report).

77 % of B2C companies and 43 percent of B2B companies acquired customers from Facebook. (Business2Community)

Two-thirds of businesses use social technology for marketing and related functions.

25% of the top retailers have never responded to a customer message on their Facebook Page wall.

Only 33% of consumers expecting a customer service reply via social media actually received one.

40% of retailers have actually deleted messages posted by customers to their Facebook wall.

Has your business made the transition to social? Tell us your stories of what succeeded and did not.

Sources:
Social Media Customer Service Statistics 2012 [Infographic]
The leading indicators of social business maturity in 2012 (ZDNet)

Related blog posts:
Social Business Trends for 2013
Most searched words in 2012 – Google’s annual Zeitgeist report

These statistics raise some good questions:

Are you responding to your customers? According to a recent study by Edison Research, 10% of online social customers expect to get a response back from a company within 30 minutes and 33% expect to get an answer within at least a day or so. Those statistics should be enough evidence to make you think about your current outbound communication process.

This infograph shows some of the other findings related to customer expectations:

Image source: Edison Research 2012

4. How effective is your knowledge management strategy? Implementing an easily accessible, organized knowledge base of customer inquiries enables customers to get quick answers to FAQ’s and even more importantly if well-managed, can save a company valuable time, resources and cost. Legget highlights the importance of knowledge management calling it the “Jewel In The Customer Service Crown”.

With these questions in mind it’s time for organizations to wake up and change the channel- the customer service channel, that is.

Manage your requirements

In the management mode, simply plan your requirements out.

1. Creation

Requirements can be created from scratch by simply entering them in the grid, or importing them from a .csv file. They also be created from feedback, ideas, or help desk tickets.

2. Planning

Assign it to a team member, link them to organization strategies, and attribute financial properties.

3. Adding details

Add additional details as well any attachments so that your team can get a full understanding of them.

4. Collaborate on them

Collaborate on them with team members by holding discussions.

Analyze your requirements

Switch to the Analysis mode and find out which requirements would help your company most.

1. Set analysis weightings

Click on the scale icon and set importance weightings. In other words, tell the system what your company values, and to what degree. Choose between strategic alignment, popularity, customer satisfaction, cost benefit. On the Global Score tab, you will find a combined ranking based on the relative weightings you assign to each of the four analyses.

2. Analyze the charts

View the charts on each tab. Each chart corresponds to one of the four analyses. By viewing the charts, you will be able to tell which requirements would help your company reach its targets.

See it in action by viewing this video.

Related blog posts:
Five Software Requirements Process Facilitation Tips
Product requirements management 2.0

The product roadmap lies at the heart of company strategy and direction, and yet all too often it is represented by static documents with no bearing on the reality of where your product is today and where its going. OneDesk’s automated product roadmaps are built from inputs across the platform, from ideas and issues to requirements and tasks and all the people, costs and decision-driving data in between.

Building a customer-centric product roadmap is the key to tackling all of the challenges and managing expectations. So what does this all really mean? Essentially this is a more evolved approach to product management. The idea is that we are taking all product related data into consideration, everything from requirements to resources, cost benefit analysis to market demands to help us obtain a focused product roadmap to ultimately make better short-term and long term decisions.

In this 30 minute webinar, we show you how OneDesk’s roadmapping application brings it all together in style.

Held every Friday at 11am EST.

Click here to register now!

Don’t forget to check out our other webinars!

Related blog posts:
Project Milestones: Setting them in OneDesk
Product roadmap planning with OneDesk
How to do a Gantt chart in OneDesk
The Microsoft Project Gantt Chart vs. OneDesk’s

Companies used to have full control over their products and services. They used to be able to decide what to develop next and what changes to make. Oftentimes, they used to need to guess what their customers wanted.

With the economy getting tougher, business practices have changed. Customers are demanding better products and services at a quicker pace. In the race to outperform their competitors, companies no longer have full control over their brands; what comes next for them depends on what customers want.

Keeping up with customer demands is not easy. Luckily, new technologies allow companies to reach customers quickly and find out what they want before their competitors do.

A good example of these technologies are social media monitoring applications. The idea of using these apps is that customers will talk to their friends and people in their online communities about what they need. They hold conversations about brands, recommend them to their peers and tell them what they don’t like about them. These tools allow companies to capture valuable information without needing to put too much effort in reaching out to customers through surveys, emails, and phone calls.

OneDesk’s unique social media monitoring tool

There are many tools out there, but OneDesk’s is unique. Besides letting companies capture customer comments from the web, it allows them to immediately take action on them.

As soon as a comment is tagged as an idea, problem, question, compliment, lead, or feedback, it appears in the appropriate application in OneDesk. Since all of OneDesk’s applications are connected, it’s easy to move that comment into the development process and implement it in no time.

You can learn how to turn a comment you find on social media into an actionable item by watching this 30-second video.

Related blog posts:
The American Airlines Logo Change & Listening To Customers
What Facebook’s Social Graph Means for Product Development

In today’s customer-driven marketplace, listening to customers is the key to creating products and services that delight. I recently read an article on Bloomberg Businessweek, by John Mayo, that highlights the importance of customer feedback integration into product branding and development.

On Thursday, American Airlines (AA) launched its new product branding for its fleet of aircrafts. The new design is evidently much more subtle than its classic design and logo, and apparently customers are turning to the social web to express their outrage and discontent with the new AA branding decision.

Retrieved from Twitter via OneDesk:

Courtesy of Facebook (From American Airlines Company Page):

Judging by these conversations, it looks like customers may not allow American Airlines transition into the 21st century quietly. The point of this article is not whether or not the redesign was a good idea (I will leave that up to the public to decide) but to raise some points about the importance of proper customer feedback management.

Proper customer feedback management means that we must:

1. Listen to customers on the social web

2. Capture feedback continuously throughout the stages of product innovation

3. Respond to customers, quickly and effectively

Let’s face it – this isn’t the first time a company is faced with overwhelming criticism after re-branding their product. We all remember the Gap and Coca-Cola fiasco. However, both of these companies were quick to put out the social media fires and use customer feedback to ensure they deliver winning products to market. Mind you, re-branding Coca-cola cans and Gap logos can be easily accomplished. But re-branding airplanes seems like a much more costly, larger scale endeavor.

We want to know: Should American Airlines listen to their social customers?

How is OneDesk’s help desk software different from others?

Capture help desk tickets effortlessly

The help desk application is linked to a customer portal, which customers would use to submit feedback, ideas, problems and questions to your organization. Just send customers the link, or embed it in your website. This eliminates the need to manually gather items from emails, phone calls, and surveys.

When customers submit problems or questions via the customer portal, your company will immediately receive them in OneDesk’s help desk application.

Customers emailing you? Just send them to OneDesk

Customers can also email issues to your dedicated OneDesk email addresses. You can also forward your support email to these addresses.

Listen to customer conversations, and create help desk tickets before they complain to you

OneDesk’s social media monitoring application is connected to all other applications, including the help desk app. Discover issues and problems by tapping into conversations on the social web. Easily turn Facebook posts, tweets, blogs and comments into tickets by tagging them as a problem or questions. Once tagged, they will appear in OneDesk’s help desk app.

Collaborate with customers and colleaques and resolve tickets faster

Once in the help desk application, you can quickly resolve tickets by engaging in one-on-one discussions with customers or open them up to discussion by the community.

Eliminate emails and phone calls; keep all customers updated on their submissions

One unique feature is that OneDesk’s allows you to automatically keep customers updated on the status of their tickets and feedback. Simply update the lifecycle status in your OneDesk account.

Respond to every single customer request

OneDesk’s powerful automation engine allows support teams set up auto-response emails to customers who submit feedback.

Take a look at this video to get an idea of how help desk teams use OneDesk

While many of us were slowly and reluctantly returning to work after the holiday season, Mark Zuckerberg was on a completely different speed. On January 17th, 2013 Zuckerberg unveiled his newest product innovation: The Facebook Social Graph (currently in beta), which enables individuals to perform in depth search queries about anything and everything directly, from their Facebook dashboard. The implications and opportunities are even larger for organizations. With these new social media tools, product marketers and developers will be able to leverage even more information regarding their target audience’s likes, dislikes, and behavioral purchasing patterns. In short, Facebook’s social graph will provide organizations with a wealth of customer data.

Social Media Drives Product Development

When a product or service fails to meet the marketplace’s needs, it creates a disconnect between the customer and organization. It also creates a negative reputation, which leads to a decrease in sales and revenue.

Social media tools provide excellent opportunities for organizations to avoid these pitfalls. They can discover what customers want from their products and services, and bridge the gaps between their company and customers. It also provides product marketers and developers with the opportunities to discover competitors in their industry, and new untapped markets.

The fact remains that smart, successful organizations recognize the value of these tools and have already integrated social media tools into their product strategy and development tactics, to capture customer insights, develop stronger relationships with them, and use that insight to make more accurate, targeted and informed product development decisions.

How Facebook’s Social Graph helps drive product development

1. A goldmine of customer information at your fingertips: Product marketers and developers will be able to leverage even more information regarding their target audience’s likes, dislikes, interests and behavioral purchasing patterns.

2. The need to establish a strong social presence online: Without a strong social presence, and with the recent introduction of Facebook’s Social Graph, your business will not survive, period. Furthermore, if your organization is still behind on adopting and integrating social media into the product development process, now would be a good time to take action and change that. The reality is, more and more customers live on the social web, and your company should too.

3. Integrated idea capturing and management strategies: Facebook’s social graph will provide a wealth of information for product developers. The question to consider is: How can organizations successfully capture, manage and make use of this insight without it being lost or miscommunicated? What is needed is an end-to-end ideation management system that allows for the effective capturing, and analyzing of product related ideas as well as the seamless integration of these activities with the rest of product development.

Moving forward, the introduction of Facebook’s Social Graph further highlights the important role that social media continues to play in product development.

Stay tuned folks, this is just the beginning.

We’re happy to announce that we have uploaded over 50 new videos to our You Tube channel.

The majority of the videos are short instructional videos designed to help you get familiar with OneDesk’s features, as well as the new user interface.

Also, in order to make the videos easier to find, we’ve grouped our videos into playlists.

Here are some of the most informative playlists on our You Tube channel:

OneDesk for different roles

Administration settings in OneDesk

OneDesk Project Management

We hope you find our new videos helpful. Think we’re missing a video? Let us know!

Related blog posts:
How to Use OneDesk’s New User Interface
Getting To Know OneDesk’s Feedback App

We are very happy to say that we have been published on CustomerThink.com. Head up by its CEO, Bob Thompson, CustomerThink is a well-known and respected online authority in the areas of Customer Relationship Management, Customer Experience Management and Social Business. Kim’s recently published article, Team Collaboration the 2.0 Way serves up some useful information for you to integrate into your current social business strategy.

Related blog posts:

Collaboration software: Why are they popular?
Collaborate on Issues and Tasks
Get collaborative in seconds

Do you have questions about how OneDesk can help you strengthen team collaboration? Leave a comment below, or email us at hello(at)onedesk(dot)com.

Whether customers or colleagues choose to send you feedback from email, social media, or from the customer portal, they will all arrive in OneDesk’s Feedback Application.

Once feedback has arrived in the feedback application, what do we do?

Once received, it’s time to take action and move them forward, or identify them as feedback that has already been implemented.

Set the properties:
- Allocate it to a project
- Assign it to a team member to be worked on
- Publish it for votes so customers can vote for them via the customer portal
- Set its priority
- Set its lifecycle status to keep colleagues updated on the feedback’s status. You can also choose to keep customers updated on the status of the feedback they submit, via the customer portal.
- Add custom fields

Add details:
- Add descriptions and say where they came from
- Add attachments for clarification

Create dependencies:
- Link feedback to related ones, requirements, issues or tasks. This creates traceability and allows team members to understand the origins of the item they are working on.

Hold discussions:
- Hold internal discussions and work on feedback with internal team members
- Hold one-on-one discussions with the requester
- Have an open discussion with your whole customer base about a particular piece of feedback

View this video for a quick tour of OneDesk’s feedback app.

Related blog posts:
How to Use OneDesk’s New User Interface

Customer feedback programs provide companies with valuable insight that can be used to better position products or services in the marketplace. Some companies are still not asking the customers who buy their products and services what they want and need, while many companies do not incorporate customer feedback into the product development process. What is the excuse for not having a customer feedback program? Several reasons could explain why some companies do not incorporate customer feedback into their product development and service improvement programs.Perhaps they do not realize that customer excellence is impossible to achieve without knowing or understanding what customers need. Have they forgotten that the end goal of collecting customer feedback regularly and proactively is to consistently exceed customer expectations? Maybe they are not aware that customer feedback programs can be used to create products or services that will ensure business success.

Webinar: Managing Customer & Internal Feedback in OneDesk

With all of the channels for product and company feedback available to customers these days, it’s easy to become overwhelmed. In this Webinar we’ll walk you through the OneDesk’s feedback management solution with some use cases that we’re sure you’ll relate to. We’ll also show you how to embed your own branded customer portal on your website and get customers engaged.

Click here to register now: Managing Customer & Internal Feedback in OneDesk: Application & Customer Portal

Navigating through the new OneDesk Interface

All of OneDesk’s applications and features are now grouped together under drop-down lists that make them easier to find. The drop-downs are also arranged in the order that they should be used in.

1. Choose a project
The first thing you want to do when you log in to OneDesk is to view information about items in a certain project, or in all the projects you are part of.

Under the Project drop-down, choose one of the following options:

Manage projects
- Create, delete and leave projects
- Share projects with other team members
- Set team members’ roles in the projects
- Modify projects
- View KPIs of each application in each project
- Manage releases

All projects
View information in all projects you are part of

Organization projects
View all information in all your organizations’ projects

Or, choose to view information in a specific project.

2. Choose an application
After you’ve chosen a project view, choose the application you wish to work in.

3. Choose a mode
Each application is divided into different modules – choose the appropriate one. For example the Requirements application has two modes: Management and Analysis.

4. Your user menu
Under the user menu, you can set your personal preferences, set your customer feedback options, upgrade to pro, and invite users.

The administration section allows you to set your organization preferences. You can manage your organization users and their roles, and configure forms, labels and workflows to fit your organization’s needs.

If you have any feedback about OneDesk, you can send it to us by clicking give us feedback. We look forward to getting your feedback!

Related blog posts:
Getting To Know OneDesk’s Feedback App
The Manage Projects, All Projects, and Organization Projects Options in OneDesk

That is precisely why OneDesk has just unveiled a new user interface! It’s the same great Unified Product Platform that allows teams to collaboratively plan out projects and get work done quickly – only, it’s now cleaner and easier to navigate. In this special webinar, new users will learn some helpful tips on getting started with OneDesk, and existing users will quickly get familiar with the new UI.

Register here:
Getting Started with OneDesk’s New User Interface
Monday January 14, 2013 to 11:30am EST

Hope to see you there!

Changes to UI Provides Users with Easier Navigation That Enables Them to Work Smarter and More Efficiently

Montreal, Canada, January 9, 2013 – OneDesk, developer of a powerful web-based Unified Product Platform has released its new and improved user interface. OneDesk leads the market in providing solutions that help companies realize the benefits of social product development, co-creation, and customer-driven innovation. This integrated suite of SaaS applications incorporates powerful tools: Social media monitoring & engagement, customer feedback management, innovation & ideas management, help desk, requirements management, product roadmapping and issues and tasks management.

OneDesk improves collaboration between teams by tying all product-related applications into one seamless, integrated system. Social collaboration tools like chat, discussion forums, emails, blogs, customer portals, real-time collaborative editing and real-time notifications help teams create structure, get organized and ensure all stakeholders are connected throughout the product development process.

A Testimony to Customer Feedback

Changes and updates made to the new interface are the result of valuable feedback captured from customers and users, as well as feedback from employees, and business partners. “We are thrilled with OneDesk’s cleaner, more intuitive interface that still provides users access to the same Unified Product Platform our customers depend on. The new interface is a good example of what can be accomplished from listening to customers, and capturing valuable feedback,” said Derek Gold, Vice President, Product Marketing at OneDesk Inc.

The new interface makes it even easier for marketing, customer service, engineering, product and project management to access OneDesk’s Unified Product Platform and manage their projects and plan out their products online.

About OneDesk
OneDesk is leading the market in providing products that help companies realize the benefits of social product development, co-creation, and customer-driven innovation. This blended suite of SaaS applications incorporates powerful tools: social media monitoring & engagement, customer feedback management, innovation & ideas management, customer service & help desk, requirements management, project management, product roadmapping and release management.

Contact information:

OneDesk
Catherine Constantinides, 1-514-731-6878
Toll-free: 1-855-ONE-DESK (663-3375)
Fax: 1-514-731-3348
hello@onedesk.com