One question to help you define a B2B minimum viable solution
Most articles about Minimal Viable Product, MVP, are focused on consumer facing solutions. However, in the B2B world, introducing a new product to an organization requires navigation of many constraints — existing operations, aggressive revenue targets and shareholder obligations. Delivering a MVP solution that creates more work, disrupts operational efficiency or impacts the bottom line just because it’s a first version is NOT acceptable.
It is especially difficult to build a minimally viable solution when every company has its own unique logistics and operations. When working in the cruise industry, we even had different operational challenges between the various internal brands. We built a food delivery app that started on one ship but when we tried to use the same model on a different branded ship, we discovered their kitchen galleys were set up differently. Therefore, we had to manage two different user flows, and this was at the same company! If not carefully managed, the product will quickly become heavy with features needed to support all the various operational needs. What can be done to deliver a MVP solution that can be lean enough to work across multiple organizations?
Solve the pain point without being the solution
Innately, I think product managers always want their product to be the solution in an attempt to show continuous value. However, it’s totally OK if the customer pain point can be resolved some other way.
While attempting to disrupt the drug testing industry with a mobile and web solution, our early customers started asking for more data insight into their drug screening process. When I first heard this, I started wire-framing a “simple” dashboard with cool graphs and various filters.
My head started to quickly spin once we analyzed all the different ways the data can be sliced. How were we going to decide which data and graphs were worthy enough to earn a spot on the coveted dashboard? We discovered the real solution once we finally asked,
Is there a way we can provide data analytics to our customers without absorbing the responsibility into our product?
Since we didn’t know what data was important to our users, creating a dashboard with pre-set analytics is an extremely limiting solution. Therefore, we elected to extract the raw data into an excel file and allow the customers to filter/search the data how they see fit. These businesses now have access to their data and over time, we will learn what is truly important. Finally, when the time is right, we can build a more accurate and robust dashboard solution with a high level of confidence.
What questions do you ask?
When B2B products are not properly scoped, it often leads to Frankenstein solutions that are littered with disjoined features lacking product vision. This creates a negative user experience as well as internal challenges to maintain and scale long term. What questions do you ask to help navigate the challenges of defining a MVP enterprise solution?
