How To Spot Cutting-Edge Financial Product Developers
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In todays highly competitive financial services marketplace, there are two types of product providers: those who set the tone and those who simply repeat the same old message.
How to spot those who are innovators is the subject here.
While marketing plays a significant role in making products and features stand out, it is ultimately the product innovations that must captivate investment professionals and their clients.
Consistent innovation requires a process that goes beyond merely "valuing" or "encouraging" new ideas. Consistent innovators expect to pioneer, so they structure their organizations to support that expectation.
This requires combining speed with a rigorous process that keeps the focus on new ideas. In addition, cutting-edge developers use substantial market research to guide the process, ensuring the product will be valued.
Product innovation in the financial services arena entails several components. These are attributes you can look for, in assessing where your own companies and partners stand.
Creativity. This is the most important component of innovation. It is not something that can be delegated. It needs to be an integral part of the process.
Innovative companies foster creative thinking by committing time as well as people with the skills and knowledge to develop and test concepts.
Deep understanding of the external environment and the trends that drive the innovation process. What are the competitors doing? What products and services are the competitors developing, and what direction are they taking? What are the effects of tax laws, state laws and even political trends? All of these factors impact innovation and determine whether a product-to-be will see the light of day.
Distribution. The way a firm works, what it focuses on and even what its technological capabilities may be, are all important pieces of the puzzle in developing a product that will be well served through the distribution channels. Consistently successful innovators study emerging trends in the way products are distributed and sold. This is the only way to know who needs to see the value of the product-in-process, as well as how it needs to be seen.
Understanding what investors want. Understanding demographics and the trends in investor demand will help innovators develop a product that seems tailor-made for specific clients. Think of the recent trend of investors seeking guarantees in their investment products and how that has led to release of a number of guarantee-type products. Investors want it all, yet they have an aversion to risk, so they look for products that potentially serve both needs. Investors have embraced these types of products, and the companies who produced them have seen their efforts succeed.
