Product Acuity

Our Value Proposition

Interim Executive Leadership
Front End Planning & Execution
Organizational Development

Do you have a need for seasoned innovation leadership skills but can't afford or justify a new permanent hire?

Our interim executive services can provide the seansoned leadership skills you need, at a price you can afford.

We help you develp your plan, get organized, and get your resources up to speed and engaged in doing what needs to be done.
Have a new idea you need to get off the ground or need a new market growth opportunity to explore?

Our expertise in front end planning can help you quickly transform you raw idea into an executable program, with clear visibility to cost, resource requirements, and potential return.

We help you define exactly what is needed to succeed, and help you avoid costly mistakes in hiring the wrong skills or selecting the wrong partners.
Are you dissatified with your current level of return from your investments in new product development?

Do you seem to be chasing your competitors with results that are late to market, over budget, and failing to delight customers? Do you always find yourself in reactive fire fights with too many conflicting priorities?

We can help you get more from your current resources by improving your organization's ability to deliver successful new innovations.

We have specific expertise in these areas:

Software as a Service
Web 2.0+
Mobile/Front Line Solutions
Health Information Technologies

SaaS (Software as a Service) is rapidly emerging as a disruptive force in the IT industry, transforming the very nature of the vendor-customer relationships and creating new growth opportunities.

However, SaaS is far more than subscription payments for hosted software. It has profound impact on virtually all aspects of the business including sales, marketing, finance, support, operations, product development, and customer care. Failure to recognize and effectively plan for this impact can make entry into the SaaS market a painful if not disastrous endeavor for a classic software firm.

Our SaaS practice focuses on helping companies address the challenges of adding SaaS offerings to their product portfolios. Our services start with identification of appropriate market opportunities and continues with strategic planning, service definition, pricing, assessment and development of organizational readiness, as well as market launch. With our experience guiding the way, software companies can experience significant new growth opportunities through expansion into SaaS.
Web 2.0 applications and social computing technologies are changing the way the world communicates, allowing customers, business partners, and employees to easily share opinions, wants, needs, ideas, and motivations with each other.

These social computing tools are allow for rich collaboration environments, providing individuals users with access to collective intelligence and experiences of others.

Our Web 2.0 practice helps clients leverage this technology to radically improve interactions with all stakeholders, including: employees, customers, suppliers, and partners. These efforts can produce significant competitive advantage in the form of increased innovation, productivity, and organizational agility. Opportunities range from improving an organizations on-line presence through web sites that allow for user generated content and community involvement to internal applications focused on improved collaboration among project and innovation team members.
Information technology has evolved to become the central nervous system of modern business with the flow of information being critical to efficient business operations. However, efficiency is limited if your front line is not connected to your information network. We have deep expertise in creating solutions that solve this problem.

Applications include automating data collection from unmanned equipment at remote sites to on-demand information access by mobile workers. Relevant technologies include: mobile devices such as smart phones, handheld and tablet computers; automated data collection technologies such as RF-id tags, bar code scanning, and intelligent data probes; and communication technologies such as wireless networks, voice recognition, messaging, and video communications.

Our experience with these applications and technologies can help identify how they might be applied in your business or industry to provide significant competitive advantage and new growth opportunities.
We have extensive experience in developing health care information solutions and our consultants possess several important industry certifications. Prior projects include: cloud based electronic medical record (EMR) and practice management systems (PMS); patient portals; personal health records; and collaborative care applications.

Our experience in mobile front line solutions, knowledge of web technologies, and expertise in knowledge management and collaboration provides a rich idea pool for new products in health care. We are particularly well positioned to assist in development of applications that focus on increasing collaboration and communication with and between providers, patients, and payers.

Areas of specific interest and focus are applications for increasing consumer engagement and involvement in their overall health care.

We provide and drive: (click on titles to expand)

Strategic Analysis and Planning

Success begins with appropriate up front analysis and planning. We identify opportunities for growth and sustainable competitive advantage for your business based upon comprehensive analysis of the competitive landscapes and external environment, industry trends, customers, internal capabilities, and strategic goals of the firm. This analysis results in a slate of vetted specific tangible ideas you can pursue.

Program Definition and Execution

Already have an opportunity you want to pursue? We transform raw ideas into executable plans and programs. We develop the detailed plans needed to make it real and drive subsequent execution. Our expert guidance helps define compelling value propositions, market segmentation, product requirements, project plans, resource requirements, go-to-market channels, and expected revenues.

Customer Focused Collaboration

Creating market leading products requires cross-functional efforts. However the quality of these efforts can be hampered by differing and conflicting perspectives and priorities. We are experts in integrating these perspectivies and breaking down departmental barriers and behavior norms that inhibit quality interactions. The result is true cross-functional collaboration focused on customer satisfaction.

Improved Innovation Processes

As part of our engagement we will assess your current product innovation processes and will identify root causes of specific problems. We will then define a course of action to address identified deficiencies in a manner that matches the strategy and current culture of your company. The end result is improvement in the outcomes of your new product efforts.

Development of Staff Skills

The role of a product manager is complex, and changes as a company grows, often leaving current product managers ill equipped to meet the challenges of their ever evolving responsibilities. We can transform your product management function into what you need it to be, whether buidling the function from scratch, or taking current resources to the next level.

Technology Assessment

We provide technology advisory services and help you: (1) identify needs and appropriate solutions, (2) evaluate and select the right vendors, (3) negotiate supply or development agreements, and (4) monitor and manage implementation. Our services isolate you from the techno-babble of vendors, and assure you do not overpay for something you won't use or are disappointed by something that doesn't fulfill expectations.

IP Portfolio Development

We provide assistance in developing intellectual property portfolios through the identification of potential patents and can assist in the patent development and application process.

Fractional Executive Leadership

We provide interim executives for situations where seasoned leadership skills are needed but the addition of a permanent full-time position is not justified. This provides you with access to the high level experience needed for success without the corresponding budget busting expense. Our FEs are involved for the long-haul, setting direction, policy, and guidelines, and then monitoring and directing the progress of activities executed by your existing resources. We provide what you need to get new programs organized and initiated, and can then withdraw when the resources are able to continue the project on their own as part of their normal job.

Bridge Between Two Worlds

Our unique combination of “market engineering” skills allows us to bridge the worlds of marketing and engineering assuring the proper alignment needed to produce optimal results. Marketing executives are generally very well versed in market strategy, are tasked with lead generation, with a primary focus on what’s here and now. Engineers are well versed in technologies, tasked with delivering features and functions, with a focus on what’s next. Market superiority requires these two perspectives to linked, yet in many firms they are disconnected. We focus on bridging gaps making sure both market strategy and product implementation are fully aligned.

A Different Perspective

Our experience with a wide range of technologies and market applications often provides us with the ability to recognized opportunities not obvious to industry veterans. The one thing your company typically has is experience in your industry. However, extensive industry-specific experience often goes hand in hand with reduced awareness of what other industries are doing. Lucrative disruptive innovations can sometimes be as simply as being the first in your industry to use a technique used and proven elsewhere. Our diverse experience is the key to finding these opportunities.

Affiliations

PDMA (Product Development and Management Association)
PMI (Project Management Institute)
AMA (American Management Association)
AOM (Academy of Management)
HTC (Houston Technology Center)
Rice Alliance for Entrepreneurship
IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers)
HIMSS (Health Information Management System Society)
MGMA (Medical Group Management Association)
MENG (Marketing Executives Network)

What we do for you:

Our Value Proposition

We have specific expertise in these areas: