Too often, product managers fool themselves into thinking that more is better. Yes, sometimes this can be true, but when it comes to keeping track of customers and product inventory, it turns out that using a database is the key to long-term success…
How things can get out of hand
Although we often talk about this problem when it comes to launching new products, it turns out that it can affect older products as well, it just sneaks up on them. In both cases, things start out good and then get worse.
When a company starts selling a product, it always seems to start with an initial sales channel. Your product account manager and business development manager will work hard to make this channel a success. In this modern age we live in, it may very well be an e-commerce channel from the start. Customers who purchase the product through this channel will provide the company with a great deal of information about themselves. This information will then be stored in the systems and databases of the electronic commerce channel. This all seems like a standard part of any product manager’s job description, right?
If the company chooses to expand this channel, for example by adding a gift card program, this additional functionality can come with its own database to retain information about the customers that interact with it. Now things are starting to get out of control. Throw in a little strategic management and you’ll quickly find yourself adding in-store purchase data collection and tracking systems and perhaps an inventory management system and you’ll find that things have gotten completely out of control.
Once product and customer information has been spread across so many different systems, issues can start to crop up, like products out of stock, but ordering systems don’t show that when customers place an order. Many companies try to overcome the limitations of this type of solution by having people manually type information that is in one system into the other systems; however, even in the best of situations, there is a time lag here. That means inventory levels for your product may change and your potential customers won’t know until after they’ve placed their orders.
The Power of One (Database)
So what’s a product manager to do? Good question. It turns out that the solution is easy to recognize, but difficult to implement. What a product manager needs to do is move to using a single database to handle all the information related to their product.
What you should be looking for is a single database that can hold all of your cross-channel sales data along with any inventory data your company has about your product. By implementing a solution like this, product managers will be able to offer their customers a real-time order management solution along with an improved customer experience.
Once a single database view of your product is in place, you’ll be able to do things as a product manager that you’ve never been able to do before. The first is that you will be able to engage in true cross-channel marketing and selling of your product – you will know what is happening so you can tell the right story to the right channel.
You will then be ready to move into the mobile (mobile) commerce space. Making it easier for your customers to buy your product and control the status of their orders. Finally, the customer’s shopping experience will be improved because the company’s personnel will have access to all the information, both from the customer’s order and from the inventory of their product, which will be necessary to answer any questions that may arise.
What all this means to you
Product managers know that for a product to be successful, it will have to develop multiple channels To sell. Once you start this process, it can be all too easy to start creating multiple databases that don’t talk to each other.
The problem with this is that once you start spreading important customer and product data across multiple databases, it becomes nearly impossible to get an accurate picture of how your product is performing. Product managers must take the time and effort to consolidate all of these databases into a single database.
This single database will allow them to overcome inventory disparity between channels that can slow down their cross-channel sales efforts. Putting in the effort will result in creating an even more successful product. That’s something you can add to your product manager resume!