How to Decipher Your Customer Needs for Connected-product Strategy

A successful connected-product strategy starts with the foundational element of understanding your customer needs. This will help direct your go-to-market strategy, inform important technology and trade-off decisions, prioritize your development efforts, and set internal expectations about the results.

But simply understanding your customer is not enough—successful IoT solutions focus on addressing their needs, rather than merely piecing together technology without a clear vision. The questions below should serve as a primer to help you clearly identify the value your IoT solution will provide to your customer:

Identify Key Challenges

What are the challenges or behaviors your customers face that could be improved through a connected-product experience? Will users adopt this solution?

Qualify the Problem

Is this a problem that is worth solving, and would there be a financial impact if you did? If so, how will you attribute the success to your product? Will customers actually pay for this?

Understand the Business Impact

What is the business value of this product? Is it helping your organization sell more existing products and services? Are you saving money through new efficiencies? Or are you generating new sources of revenue (e.g., recurring software licensing or access to data)? Perhaps it's a mix of all three?

Complete Qualitative Research

Have you performed formal research with potential customers and users to hear them articulate their challenges free of any new product pitches?

Additional resource you may want to check out: IoT for Durable Goods Manufacturing.

To learn more steps to IoT readiness, download the full IoT guide today.