What does a Product Manager do
'Hey, I'm a Product Manager for Telecommunications company!'
'Great. What's that then?'
I hear that a lot. So what is a Product Manager? What does the role entail within the telecoms business? In fact, a lot of the roles and responsibilities can be carried over to many other market sectors, not just telecoms. A Product Manager's primary role is, not surprisingly, to manage the companies products. That's a very short version of what we do.
I am concentrating on the job within the telecoms industry, as that's what I know, but you can easily see where the principals can overlap other industries.
My role consists of looking at the market, observing what products sell and what don't. I have to consider evolving technologies, industry standards and how well the end users are educated.
Within the telecoms industry, which covers everything from a simple door buzzer system to let people in and out of your building, large internal phone systems, CCTV systems and all the way up to massive data centres, the likes of which handle applications such as mobile phone networks, internet servers, emergency service networks and specialised applications such as the MET Office for weather forecasting.
As technology evolves, data speeds become faster, electronic components become smaller and more powerful and cabling systems become more refined, system specifiers, the people who say what a company should be using, see more potential for various products within certain applications. I'm the guy that needs to make sure I'm ahead of the game and have these products available to my customers when they need them. Hopefully beating the competition and winning the orders.
Of course, as this technology arises, standards are set in place to make sure all the manufacturers have products that will work correctly in real world environments. You don't to buy a network switch and find it doesn't work with your existing cables because it utilises a different standard. Whenever there is a new installation of telecoms equipment, the end user wants to ensure they are protected against the unpredictable, such as equipment failure. They want a warranty. To get this, the installer has to make sure everything they have put in works when they leave the site, so if it does fail it's either down to bad manufacturing or the customer. So they test everything, and to test new technology, you need a test tool that supports that technology. So there I am again, making sure I know the new standards so I can get test tools to work with them.
And lastly, the education of the end user, the people that will decide if they want this new technology or not. If they don't know about the new products on the market, how will they know if they want them or not? So another role I have is to market the products, raise awareness and promote the features and benefits. Quite often I will even go and demonstrate these products and teach people how they work.
So there you go. It's an interesting role and I'm sure you can see how it can be applied to other industries, such as Television - knowing what people want to watch next, automotive industries - what features do the general public want in their next hatchback and clothes retailers - whats the next big fashion of the season?
