There are several aspects to consider when releasing a product or service into the market. With so much competition in all sectors, it might be hard for your product to stand out if you don't start by marketing it properly. Marketing, as well as how a user reacts to your product, is something that you should think of from the inception of your product to its launch.
The Time to Market plays a significant role in this development process. The time you conduct your product launch is crucial to how people will react to it. If your product is the first of its kind to be launched into the market, it can get almost 70% of the market share for that product. The number of users you will get is also more likely to be higher. If such a product already exists in the market, the expected market share can go down to almost 20%.
Here, we have discussed some of the best methods by which you can reduce the time to market and get a competitive advantage over rivals.
What is time to market (TTM)?
The period between the invention of a product from its ideation to its distribution on the market is known as the time to market or the TTM. Time to market is also described as the time between which the team begins working on the product to the time when the first edition of the product is sold. Time to market is one of the crucial product development KPIs(Key Performance Indicators) or metrics. As we have seen before, new market entrants enjoy numerous benefits in terms of market share, income, and increased sales. Being the first to market is a key component of most product development strategies. A quick time to market for a service or product is considered ideal.
The time to market a product has both qualitative and quantitative factors that affect it. Even though the first competitor to product launch may enjoy many competitive advantages, sometimes your development team may need more time to fine-tune your product. It takes perseverance, quick learning, and adaptability to product launch at the correct time to market. These qualities are what is needed by a business to get a competitive advantage.
Decreasing the time to market gives you a competitive advantage over rivals and improves your understanding of the production tempo. Business strategy is immediately improved by efficient time management and controlling all phases of development. Time to market that is quick and well-planned can make a difference.
Additionally, your staff will be better informed about what to do and when to do it. They will perform better, eliminate unnecessary actions, and concentrate on important objectives. The likelihood of a delayed launch will be reduced, and margin profitability will grow with a quick and planned workflow.
Product development time to market: Why it is important?
New technology, dynamic information, and other important market aspects frequently drive industry trends. Businesses must adapt to such developments. Time to market is also influenced by client demand for the latest tech, achieving the company's growth targets, shortened life phases, and demand from top management. For example, many customers now anticipate a constant stream of better features on an annual basis due to the tremendous rate of advancement in mobile devices.
If businesses miss their time-to-market goals, they also suffer economic losses. A project that is late by six months or more to be released into the market generates 33% less revenue over five years. But even if a project goes almost 50% over budget yet gets released on time, its returns are only reduced by roughly 4%. These numbers paint a clear picture of the importance of time to market.
Intense expectations from consumers, as well as market pressure, often fuel the growth of tech companies and manufacturers of mobile devices. Several IT companies have speed as their top priority. At the same time, others may concentrate on the time-to-market process because of pressure from direct rivals.
Tech firms frequently employ and find success with the idea of an MVP or a Minimum Viable Product in the B2C software sector. By releasing an edition with only the essential components, this strategy allows the team to act quickly and shorten the time to market, even though it entails some cost to consumer satisfaction. MVPs are also a good way to assess customer feedback and see places where your product can improve.
Types of time to market
You can do several things to speed up your development and reduce the time to market. The exact approach you choose can depend on your product and its specifications. You need to keep sticking to a schedule and come up with definitive rules to follow. By prioritizing these steps, you can ensure that your project is on the right track. There are different types of time to market that you should consider. Each of these strategies has its own merits, and you can choose the one you want based on your business goals.
The different types of time-to-market processes are:
Full speed development
It shouldn't take long for software applications and other online services to be launched. Full-speed development time to market involves deciding to move through each phase as quickly as feasible. Startups accomplish this time-to-market strategy by creating an MVP or a model prototype of the final product, which enables them to gather customer feedback and modify the product quickly. Here speed is prioritized, and the goal is to bring the product launch to the market as fast as it is feasible.
Agility boost
You can make adjustments and be adaptable during software development using this strategy to reduce time to market without delaying the final product launch. By using this time-to-market strategy, the business may communicate with the public clearly and adjust the products as soon as input is received. This strategy, in contrast to a minimum viable product, works in any industry.
Certain scheduling
Often, the length of your time to market is less important than how closely it adheres to the strategy. For example, on a particular day, a lot of products might be scheduled for launch. This might provide benefits for marketing initiatives that are scheduled for a set period. Such a time-to-market tactic aids in preventing tension and errors. Alternatively, you can create and adhere to a clear routine. The focus of this strategy is the schedule and maintaining it at all costs. The schedule created at the beginning of the product ideation should also be defined carefully. It should be realistic but profitable. The final product launch at the market should be done quickly as possible, but it is not as important as being on time according to the schedule.
Resource-focused methodologies
This time-to-market tactic is primarily concerned with the effectiveness of cooperation and production. You have the option of working with individual professionals. In this case, each of them must finish their task before proceeding to the next phase. The alternative is to work with a group of experts. This time-to-market method guarantees that every step of the company's product development process will be carried out, regardless of the situation. A team engaged in a task is prepared to reach a consensus and handle several tasks at once.
According to managers, if the time between a project's conception and completion is shortened, the cost of the project will naturally decrease because fewer assets are being used. Organizations minimize time-to-market costs by hiring more people, but in reality, this strategy may end up costing more as hiring personnel is an expensive resource. It would help if you decided on individuals or a team based on your project needs.
Tips to improve speed to market
Irrespective of which time-to-market strategy you choose from above, reducing this time-to-market is the best way forward. Focusing on certain areas of your product and having a good schedule to follow are some methods by which you can reduce the time to market. Let's look at some useful tips for improving the time to market that can help your product do better.
- Automation and integration
One factor that contributes to a shorter time to market is automation. Technology has emerged as a lifesaver in situations when a human error may result in issues. It relieves the project staff's workload and finds solutions to issues that might otherwise consume time. Automation is a useful tool for repetitive chores. It assists in controlling the fundamental phases of the product development process.
Another strategy for improving time to market is integration. At the early stages of its development, even a modest project could have huge data sets growing steadily. Establish one location to integrate and keep it in updated condition to prevent confusion and frequent validations inside the team.
- Verify product's viability with MVP
One method for improving time to market and researching your target audience requirements is to use an MVP. Creating a digital product is the most efficient way to determine whether your idea is feasible and prepared for distribution. An MVP is the first iteration of your project that just has the most basic functionality. Before the formal product launch, it is given to a target audience, and their input is recorded.
The MVP should be launched as soon as possible. It will allow you to tweak your product or, if needed, change it entirely. Don't strive to make your MVP flawless by adding every function you can think of. Since the subsequent editions of the product will be constructed using the same foundation, you will still have time to complete it later.
- Agile methodology
Utilizing a quick, lightweight, and reliable product development process can help you reduce and improve time to market. To eliminate inefficiencies from your system, evaluate your team. Customer feedback, design, and testing procedures should regularly be reviewed and improved. This allows you to see your workflow in real-time and identify any bottlenecks.
Many successful businesses use an agile methodology that depends on numerous revisions by the project team in response to user feedback and substantial participation from consumers. You can incorporate agile principles into all of the collaborative tasks to reduce and improve time to market. This essentially combines the benefits of the waterfall and agile approaches.
Consider no-code solutions
Finding good software talent often requires you to establish entire teams. On top of this, they might need training and will have to be integrated into the team. Using a no-code tool can speed up a company's product development process. The learning curve is much shorter, and this can provide benefits like saving time.
With the aid of no-code, creating software solutions is becoming increasingly accessible for the common individual. The abundance of no-code tools you can utilize on the internet is one of the best things about this technology. One of these is AppMaster, a cutting-edge new no-code platform that enables you to create an app entirely from scratch. You don't need to be concerned about ownership because your code is yours!
If you wish to use AppMaster to create a no-code application, you won't require any coding knowledge. You can complete your no-code software projects with AppMaster quicker, better, and less expensively compared to hiring a full software team. You can construct no-code web apps, mobile apps, backends, and much more with AppMaster.
AppMaster reduces time to market by ten times
AppMaster significantly reduces the time to market for any product, and this is because most of the things that are used in software development are already built into the application by default. As soon as the user creates a new AppMaster project, we automatically create a standard backend for them, which already includes a minimum set for working with the database, a completely ready-made user group authorization, and endpoints. This includes all the basic things that developers usually create, and it takes from 5 days to two weeks for developers. In the case of AppMaster, everything is already built into the project. That is, 15 seconds after the start of your project, you already have all this plus all sorts of useful things from best practices - for example, a good Zap logger from Uber is already fully integrated into our platform. And for this, nothing additional needs to be done. On the other hand, in traditional development projects, connecting the Zap logger can take a week. We already have it all pre-installed.
All typical operation that needs to be performed during software development, for example, creating endpoints, creating business logic, or creating new data models, are performed completely in a graphical form. This means that no one needs to write code. Usually, it is 10, sometimes 100 times faster since all auxiliary things, all wrappers, and all types of definitions are automatically written by our platform.
So, for example, consider the situation where you have already completely created your endpoints and your business logic and data models and finally stepped over to create your front end, a web application, or a mobile application. Our platform will automatically prepare blocks for you so that you can use your endpoints; you don't need to write anything for this, just a simple drag-and-drop instead of a half-hour journey to create these endpoints in your web application or mobile application.
And what's more, we save a huge amount of time when making changes. Imagine if, for some reason, you need to change the data model, which is already registered everywhere in the back and front-end. That is, in your entire project, if you suddenly need to change something, it can take weeks and sometimes months. This is because data models permeate your entire project. They are in endpoints. They are referenced in the business logic and the front end - web and mobile applications. In AppMaster, this is done as simply as possible. Come in and change what you need, press the save button, and after a few seconds, the platform automatically makes changes to your entire project, to endpoints, business logic, and UI elements. In other words, all your changes were instantly applied. Here the savings are obvious, a few minutes instead of weeks.
Conclusion
Having a good product idea or software isn't enough in our digital age. Businesses need to be aware of aspects like time to market to get their target audience hooked. Understanding your potential customers and their needs is the best way to ensure success for your business. With so much competition everywhere, businesses need to plan to ensure a competitive advantage. Understanding the importance of time to market can help you find ways to reduce it. The above tips can help you take your product from good to amazing. Employing these tips for your next project can help you thrive in the market.
