International product development requires a lot of planning. You need to get the insight required to give your product the best chance of success in each new market, yet you will want to remain as agile as possible and operate as efficiently as possible at the same time.
There’s always going to be the question of how much research you need to do locally versus how much you can effectively do from a centralised location. Having a single team will always seem more efficient, but there’s no point in being efficient if that doesn’t equate to success.
Here we’re going to explore how you can effectively structure and scale a product team, the difference between how to handle your primary market versus secondary markets, how to build an international research strategy, and how you can get any additional resource that you need globally.
Structuring your product team
This is no easy task. Scaling your product team effectively is never as simple as just hiring more product managers as you go. How you position and structure team members is going to be a vital component of your success.
The good news is there are plenty of tried and tested methods. Unfortunately, the bad news is also that there are plenty of tried and tested methods. Even some of world’s most successful companies have spent a lot of time trying different approaches over time to find the right structure for them.
The task here then isn’t to obsess with getting this right first time. It’s about understanding the different models that you could go with and then improving as you go based on your own unique set of circumstances.
You should take much solace from those who have pivoted many times until they got it right. Let’s face it, if a company found this straightforward, they’re likely not growing at a significant enough rate to have the problem in the first place.
Here’s a look at a few options when it comes to structuring and scaling a product team.
1) A product manager for each product or feature
This approach makes each product manager accountable for a particular product or significant aspect of a product, making them fully focused on one critical component of the business. With this approach every essential aspect is owned by a single member of the team so it has total attention.
2) Skill-based resource allocation
With this method you’re able to take advantage of the particular skill set of each product manager to maximise their value. You may have a product manager whose only focus is on research but across multiple products. You may have another project manager who specialises in tech across all products.
3) Cross-functional teams
This well-rounded approach involves creating individual teams that spend their entire time working on a specific area of the product. Each sub-team within the team is led by a product manager and they remain completely focused on their specific remit. That could be a whole product or a fundamental feature of a product.
This ‘cross-functional’ approach has served organisations like Spotify and Amazon very well. But does that mean it’s right for you?
Many factors come into play. The key is to assess where in your product journey you are and make the most informed decision you can on which approach would work best for you. There is no set answer regardless of the characteristics of your business. It’s a case of make the decision, implement your structure, and then adapt as you go.
Primary vs secondary markets
It’s normal for an organisation’s existing team not to cover all target markets in the same way and with the same level of attention.
When business starts, all resource usually comes from and is focused on the primary market, that’s expected. Then, as demand grows and organisations make the decision to expand internationally, they need to consider what may need to change in terms of establishing product and research teams.
In an ideal world they would just start selling their product overseas with the help of the infrastructure they already have in their primary market. More sales, limited additional costs.
For many reasons, that’s not always how it plays out. Whilst there may be demand for a type of product, even a specific product, small nuances are always a factor. There can be a lot of subtle cultural, behavioural, and emotional differences between markets. It’s important to be aware of them and how they could impact success.
You could end up with a product that doesn’t work in a secondary market at all without research and some product development for that market, or your product might be a success just how it is.
That said, even if you can simply start selling your product to a new market and see immediate success, that doesn’t mean you’ve not missed out on opportunity by not taking the time to fully understand how you could serve that market.
To maximise success you need to find out exactly what you need to do to optimise your product for each individual market. And that all comes down to research.
Building your research strategy for international product development
Research should form the foundation of your entire product development and delivery strategy when it comes to expanding into secondary markets. So it’s important to establish a clear, well-thought-out research strategy first.
Are you going to centralise your efforts using only your existing research team, or are you going to set about establishing local teams for each market or selected secondary markets?
What are the differences between your target markets? How much do you need to know about each market? Are there vast cultural and communication differences?
Of course, centralised research teams look more efficient on paper, but are they going to be capable enough to get all the deep insight that you need on a native level?
Adopting a centralised approach
The obvious, on the surface benefits of keeping all operational focus within your primary market are efficiency and speed. When research, product development and delivery are all centralised you can operate at pace.
If this approach works for your type of product then this would be the clear approach to run with, why take on unnecessary cost to set up local teams in this instance?
It’s a very rare entity though that can be successful adopting this approach worldwide. Especially over a period of time.
Product localisation and its importance
If there are any areas that cause any uncertainty when you’re going through your product localisation process, you need a local research team in your corner. Even the world’s greatest innovations need some adaptations for their secondary markets.
They may have still be a success in their original form, but why not make them the best they can be for every single market? Sometimes this could be just a language change, in other cases a product may need a fairly comprehensive redesign.
Customer centricity should always be front of mind when you want to be successful in a new market. Just because it’s a secondary market to you, to the people there they’re all that matters. They know what they want and they need to feel like you originally developed the product for them.
That’s the secret to success. Make people in every market feel like you’ve designed your product for their unique needs in intricate detail. They should never recognise your product as not being native.
That’s why you can’t underestimate the importance of high-quality, localised research. It correlates to success on every level.
The quickest way to ensure inconsistent performance across markets is by not respecting or taking the time to understand and adapt to the differences between the needs of customers in different markets.
Local research teams can help you uncover the minute details that could be game-changing.
Establishing local coverage
This is the challenge. You may recognise the need to research locally in each new target market but finding researchers in each location that have the capability to get you the insight that you need can be difficult. Plus, making hires in each location can be complex and unnecessarily expensive.
That’s why we’re here.
At UX24/7 we provide UX research services internationally. We can help you understand each new target market globally and provide you with the insight that you need, removing all the complexities associated with doing this yourself.
We’ve helped brands like Boden, eBay, M&S, Samsung, Shopify and many more to develop internationally with our research.
If you would like to know more about how we can help you with your international product strategy, get in touch by emailing us at hello@ux247.com.
