I speak to different product organisations every day and I’ve found they often experience very similar challenges when it comes to establishing product portfolio governance in order to deliver products to market, ahead of the competition. That’s why I really like the Kingspan Insulation story – it’s one that so many products organisations can relate to, learn from, and aspire to resemble. Here’s a summary of their story…
As one of Europe’s fastest growing building material manufacturers, Kingspan had experienced rapid growth through expansion and acquisitions. These growing pains added up to an out-of-control product portfolio as they struggled to manage new resources and a disparate number of budgets spread across multiple time zones.
For Kingspan, the last straw was spending two years developing a new product that got pulled from the market the week it was released. If Kingspan wanted to remain competitive, they would need stricter product and portfolio governance. They needed a single point of truth to make accurate business decision in order to regain its technological advantage and improve time-to-market.
If the premise of this story sounds familiar to you, I highly recommend you listen to their recent webcast, Establishing an Innovation Development System for Global Growth, where Joel Clarke, Innovation Development System Coordinator at Kingspan shares how they leveraged Planview Enterprise to power their own in-house Innovation Development System (IDS).
He shares how product portfolio management allowed them to become highly focused on NPD efforts and institute a phase/gate methodology – all while improving communication and project rationalization.
With better visibility into the health of their portfolio of products, the company acted on issues allowing them to kill projects, identify resource constrains, and more.
One of the most interesting facts is related to ROI. Within four weeks, Planview Enterprise had paid for itself with the cost savings from the canceled projects. That’s extraordinary! And two years later, Kingspan is still seeing the benefits.
Here are several of the benefits outlined in the webcast:
- Resources are comfortable escalating risk and issues as everything is directly accessible by project teams – so there are no more surprises
- Risks can then be more closely monitored by senior management and stakeholders trust the data
- Under-performing/high-risk projects can now be canceled early, saving time and resources
- Resource bottlenecks are easily spotted and decisions made to keep progress moving
Watch the webcast for the full story and benefits.
Today, senior management has both visibility and a single version of the truth through the system’s dashboards. It’s much easier to ensure new products match Kingspan’s strategic goals using a phase/gate methodology. And, by integrating R&D production and NPD, Kingspan can see the full product lifecycle – from a product being developed in a lab all the way through to its installation in a new building. That’s fantastic!
A big congratulations to Kingspan for maturing their NPD processes and portfolio governance! I think this is a story product organsaitons need to listen to. Get inspired and discover how Kingspan addressed their challenges to create an NPD processes that enable innovation and growth.
I’d like to hear from you. How are you currently managing your NPD processes and what are you doing to mature them to remain competitive? Share by leaving a comment below.
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