While product management is mainly about creating a great product, this work cannot be executed successfully without the help of data and choosing to embrace this fact is actually one of the best decisions a product manager can ever make.
If you are a product manager and you have been struggling to accept the importance and relevance of data in your everyday life, here are a few things that will convince you to start loving data with all your heart:
Big Data is Essential to Product Management
Being able to understand and analyze data is a very important skill that is needed to come up with logical product features and innovations. All the information is critical in knowing your market and in delivering a product that perfectly addresses their needs and preferences. It is not enough to have great ideas for your next product, you need to base these ideas on what the statistics show you.
Big Data is not Math
Here’s some good news for you. If you happen to hate Math, big data is not Math. While the information presented to you involves numbers, you do not have to perform any mathematical equations when dealing with data. Nowadays, there are analytical tools and packages that present data in forms that can be easily understood. You will be delighted to see that big data actually provides a simpler, more concise presentation of statistics that is easier to digest compared to reading several pages of a report. If you need a refresher is statistics, there are various online courses you can take to better equip you with the analytical skills you will need when looking at data.
Big Data is Your Market
Customer feedback only provides you insights based on a portion of your market that consist of customers who are vocal about their opinions about your product. Big data, on the other hand, gives you a straightforward and objective report on your entire market, so you do not only learn what the vocal minority think about your product, you learn what your market as a whole feels about it – what they like about your product, what they wish you would add to it, and other very insightful figures that will help you create a better roadmap.
Big Data Leads to Better Decisions
Big data is not a substitute for customer interaction, though. One of the basics in product management training emphasizes on the importance of regularly reaching out to your customers and asking them about their sentiments on your product, so you have first-hand information from the users. Big data does not aim to eliminate this step. On the contrary, big data supports it. By using both processes, product managers are able to make better decisions, getting information both from a select few and from the whole population of users.
Apparently, big data is not your enemy. In fact, it is one of your best resources and it is here to make it easier for you to assess the market and make better and more informed decisions as a product manager.
Michelle Rubio has been writing for SMEs across the United States, Canada, Australia and the UK for the last five years. She is a highly-experienced blogger and SEO copywriter, writing business blogs for various industries such as marketing, law, health and wellness, beauty, and education, particularly on product management training such as those offered by ProductSchool.com.