Simplify New Product Development Process | Benefits & its Key Stages

To stay competitive in the phase of maturing products, several companies require a continuous stream of new ideas successfully developed into new products. The way to acquire new products is to have a carefully executed new product development process (NPD process).

But companies face a problem as thousands of products enter the process at the top, but only a handful eventually reach the market. Therefore, it is essential to deeply understand consumers, markets, as well as competitors to develop new products that deliver superior value to customers. You can say there is no way around a systematic, customer-driven new product development process for growing new products.

There are two primary components of the product development process- market research & analysis. In addition, you also have to create a proof of concept, test, as well as launch new products.

Benefits of the New Product Development Process

Some essential benefits of the New Product Development Process are listed as follows:

• Rise in revenue since new products can offer new revenue streams.
• Redesigning existing products decreases costs & enhances profit margins.
• Fewer defects, as well as top-most quality, are achieved through better-designed products & methods of assembly.
• The sales can increase via broader distribution networks, leading to an overall market share increase.
• The exploitation of market changes to match the existing products with the buyer’s requirements.
• Risk diversification is an added advantage of using a new product development process.

Eight Steps of the New Product Development Process (NPD Process)

With a basic understanding of NPD Process, let us now jump into the eight steps of the new product development process.

• Idea Generation
• Idea Screening
• Concept Development and Testing
• Marketing Strategy Development
• Business analysis
• Product development
• Test marketing
• Commercialization

Several stakeholders & teams can assist you rightly with the product development process. The prominent leader behind the product development process is the product manager, who oversees all product-related tasks and initiates ideation, research, development, & product launch. After that, the design team helps during the prototyping & designing phase to support the visual product concept. Then the development team helps with the implementation of the product on the website. Mostly the developers will work together to build the new product offering depending on the complexity of the concept.

The marketing team will assist with developing the marketing strategy and testing it before the product goes live. And then the sales team develops an effective strategy and reports on success metrics after the product has been implemented. The last call lies in the hands of the senior management. In addition, other teams that may be involved are finance, engineering, or any other related stakeholders. They also play an essential role in the product development process, depending on the complexity of the concept.

Final Words:

All the steps mentioned above for the new product development process are essential. The primary focus is on creating superior customer value. This is how the product can become a success in the market. As you know, only very few products get the chance to become successful. Do you want to complete a project successfully and flawlessly? It is important to follow all the steps of the product development process.