Innovation is a cornerstone of success in dynamic markets, especially for product-based companies. But the road to success isn’t a straight line — time to market (TTM) varies widely by industry, which means it can often take years for a product to reach the market (if at all). During that time, competitors can release similar offerings, or a product can stall in development, costing time and money. Additionally, building products that users love poses a challenge on its own, requiring not just technical prowess but also a deep understanding of user needs and preferences.
As competition grows and the business landscape evolves alongside consumer expectations, products and the development approach must also evolve. To succeed, product companies need a better understanding of the market, consumers, and their habits to develop resilient and distinctive products.
In response to these challenges and opportunities, HTEC created a specialist team under its Centers of Excellence department, the Product Innovation Office (PIO). PIO is a team of strategists who address product development challenges. The team’s senior product/UX design, user research, and management experts offer a wide range of product-related services that cater to customers’ needs throughout the product development life cycle. While dedicated product teams are not uncommon, what makes HTEC’s team unique is their end-to-end product expertise, experience in diverse industries and domains, and their swift ability to switch from one type of project to another.
PIO has helped launch many impactful products in cooperation with cross-functional teams of engineers, solution architects, and domain experts. Let’s explore what PIO brings to the table.
Creating impactful products through end-to-end services and capabilities
PIO was founded with two major objectives: building market-relevant product, design, and research capabilities internally and shaping new services to meet ever-evolving customer needs.
With the comprehensive service offerings, user-centric approach, extensive experience, and focus on the “why” behind customers’ product efforts, PIO helps reduce uncertainty for customers launching new products or improving existing ones.
To elevate internal product practices and expand product research, design, and development expertise, PIO established standards and best practices for the company. These are rooted in the team’s extensive experience across all phases of product development—from creating foundations for new ideas to scaling mature products. We caught up with Sara Oredić and Kiril Jakimovski, principal product managers and PIO members, to learn more about the team.
Q: You started as a small team of experts and gradually grew to handle large and complex product-related challenges. What is your secret?
It’s about keeping our startup mentality as the team grows. We have accrued unique expertise and experience over the years by working with discerning customers across industries. This gives us a comprehensive perspective, allowing us to respond quickly to customer requirements. Whatever pain point customers have, chances are we’ve already helped solve it!
– Sara Oredić
Principal product manager and PIO member at HTEC Group
Instilling a product-oriented mindset across the board
PIO members come from various backgrounds — UX/CX design, research, and product management. They collaborate with multiple stakeholders, including customers’ product teams and internal engineering, business development, and marketing teams. This allows them to understand customer challenges and the current product market from multiple perspectives. Simultaneously, PIO’s influence keeps growing internally, gradually shifting towards a more product-oriented mindset across the organization.
Q: How have you worked to shift HTEC’s product mindset?
Since the early days, we’ve tried to spread a product-oriented mindset across the teams we worked with, emphasizing a user-centric approach. Our work goes from user research to defining user personas, mapping the user journey, prototyping, usability testing, establishing feedback loops, and making data-informed decisions based on user feedback. Sometimes, customers miss this perspective, and by working closely with them as the extension of their teams, we can complement each other’s points of view. And you know what? It works!
– Kiril Jakimovski
Principal product manager and PIO member at HTEC Group
PIO’s unique services help clients regardless of where they are in the product development life cycle by identifying crucial gaps in product processes, organizational maturity, and other overlooked areas that influence product success. By streamlining and validating each product development stage with thorough research and testing, PIO services significantly accelerate time to market while cutting unnecessary costs. Here is what it looks like in practice:
Product concept
Validating product ideas and identifying those with the best market potential is crucial for innovative product development. This service is particularly valuable for customers with unique concepts aiming to create groundbreaking products, often facing high failure rates.
Kiril: “It starts with gathering intel about the customer’s business context and goals, product vision, and desired results. PIO then conducts user research, shapes this input into a product concept, creates a value proposition, and tests the idea with real users.”
MVP blueprint
Transforming customers’ ideas into a minimum viable product (MVP). During the MVP blueprint phase, PIO conducts and validates market research alongside the client’s internal product objectives to ensure the product attracts real users, addresses customer pain points, and aligns with business goals. Based on this research, the team outlines a prototype and creates detailed development and launch roadmaps. The blueprint defines the product’s development milestones and timeline and identifies the ideal team to execute the prototype.
Product scaling
Product scaling evaluates the business value and technical quality of an existing product. It explores how customers can leverage these products to create additional products or product lines that increase their return on investment (ROI). This evaluation runs parallel with user research and the current market analysis, which helps uncover potential product gaps and identify untapped growth opportunities.
Product due diligence
This service offers a fresh perspective with rapid yet thorough assessments to identify gaps in the customer’s product organization structure, strategy, and user experience.
Sara: “To assess and determine the customer’s product maturity level, we use an 85-checkpoint process, a unique, in-depth approach that leverages a point system to grade the customer’s level on a scale. Then, we provide a personalized recommendation that targets the most critical gaps within the customer’s organization.”
Accessibility as a service
Accessibility as a service enables clients to enhance their product’s usability and reach a broader audience. PIO supports clients in accommodating diverse user bases by developing or modifying products to meet accessibility standards, including the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). In their process, PIO organizes and oversees WCAG testing, ensuring the final product is accessible and easy to use for everyone.
Kiril: “PIO complements internal and client teams with an end-to-end product mindset. Our team can “zoom out” to better understand the problem we are solving. Then, we frame it, ideate it, and work on the solution. We’ve met clients at different stages of their product journey — from those who only have an idea to customers with established products they want to upgrade. Our experience and diverse backgrounds allow us to tailor our approach to different business scenarios.”
Benefits and impact of PIO services
While the benefits of PIO engagement — derisking product decisions, increasing ROI, accelerating TTM, and cutting costs — are clear, we had one final question:
Q: How do you build trust with customers?
Sara’s swift and confident response assured us customers are in the right hands:
“PIO has completed product discovery, research, and development processes with many customers over the years. We’ve helped them solve different pain points in diverse domains and industries. The blend of our specialized expertise and this broad context is a game changer for customers — and it gives them peace of mind knowing we have solved challenges like theirs so many times before.”
The PIO team is crucial for companies looking to refine their product development processes and save costs on investment. It’s estimated that over 90% of new products fail every year. To reach the top 10%, businesses must invest in upgrading their product practices and strategies.
Ready to take your products to the next level? Learn more about PIO offerings like due diligence.
