Congratulations, you now have a new product line under your responsibility, or you’ve just landed a new job with products that may be unfamiliar. You’ve probably already been asked to resolve a crisis or two and help out with a big account that needs attention. Since there aren’t any time-outs in business, you must tackle these immediate issues with little knowledge of the product, the politics, or the market. Good luck!

My advice to you: take care of the fires to establish credibility, but right after that, perform a product audit.

Just like new CFOs want to check the books to ensure there are no unknown cadavers that can haunt them one day, you, the new product manager, want to make sure you have a complete picture of your product’s health. You may know where you want to go, but if your product has some wasting disease, you won’t be able to get there!

Don’t let other people in the company form your own opinion of your product. Do use your current lack of knowledge of the product to your advantage and leverage your experience to impartially understand what is going on. Do a product audit.

What is a product audit?

A product audit is an objective description of the current state of your product. The simplest audit I have seen consisted of an inbound and outbound Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities Threats (SWOT) analysis.

What I recommend is an analysis on the following 8 dimensions in no particular order:

1. Industry/Market: is it growing? Are there substitutes or alternatives to our product? Can the product be applied to other markets? Do you have a definition of the business pains we are trying to solve for each market?
2. Market Share / Customer base: Is our market share growing? What are the market forces contributing to the trend?
3. Competition: Do we know why we win or lose?
4. Product Fit: How does the product fit with the target market? What are the strong features? What is missing? Can the product be deployed fast, easily and cheaply?
5. Technology: can we expand on our technology, is it scalable? Is the product quality adequate?
6. Profitability: Do we know our costs? How profitable is the product?
7. Strategy: Is the positioning solid? Is there a sustainable advantage we can count on? Is there a proven strategy already in place? How does the product fit in the current company strategy?
8. Marketing/Sales: Is there crisp messaging in place already? Do we have the right set of collateral available? What is happening with the sales pipeline? Is the sales force properly enabled? Have we explored alternative channels?

Since it is an audit, you must gather as many facts and figures as possible. If people disagree with the numbers, now is a good time to discuss it. I would not provide any recommendations or specific actions at the point you present the audit. You are just documenting the current state of the product in a factual, dispassionate fashion.

What’s in it for me?

Most and foremost the audit is a tool for you to assess your own situation. In addition, a product audit will provide a clear picture of the product to your management. No doubt your manager will appreciate your new and innovative way to proceed. In addition, an audit will help you prioritize your actions strategically based on facts. Finally the audit will allow you to meet all the stakeholders and establish a relationship with them based on honesty and trust.

An audit can be included as part of your day-to-day activity and completed in a few weeks.

Granted, there may be situations where performing an audit is politically difficult: you may be stepping in for your boss, or some of your stakeholders may not want to participate. This by itself is valuable information.

Let me know if there is interest and I will put together an audit tool as part of a further posting.