In a consumer-driven economy, meeting customers' needs and wants has become paramount in generating long-term success and growth. Product development is key to maintaining and acquiring customers and staying ahead in a competitive landscape. In this fast-paced digital age, the speed at which a product or application reaches the market is a major factor in its ultimate success, and time to market can make or break a business.

Why is product development important?

Product development is the process of bringing new products to market. This process can manifest in different ways for different companies, but regardless of what it looks like, it is a business's commitment to improving itself. Focusing on product development can foster significant benefits for businesses.

Products undergo different methodical developmental stages depending on a business's customer relationships. To get ahead of competitors, companies can begin developing new products by identifying any gaps in the market or problems that need solutions. By being innovative, businesses can create revenue growth and strengthen current consumer relationships while building new ones.

Developing desirable products that are not only wanted but also meet needs can earn customer loyalty, as customers often buy from brands they know and trust. To help build consumer trust, businesses that are attentive to the quality of their products can reduce costs from customer returns, defects, and losses through product quality control. Quality products can also build a business's brand, growing its recognition across countries and the globe.

What are the stages of the product development process?

Beginning with research into customer needs or business problems, product development starts with an idea. Through conducting research, businesses are in a position to determine if their product ideas will add value and avoid wasting time. Necessary product knowledge to seek out regarding the product being developed is the sector, economic climate, and always any internal or external customers. Obtaining customer feedback can benefit businesses trying to gather product knowledge and decide whether or not to move forward with their ideas.

After identifying product ideas or solutions and conducting research, businesses should closely analyze and focus on understanding development and manufacturing costs, which can also help widen profit margins. Product design can occur from here, solidifying a product ready for the manufacturing stage's design. Only once a business is happy with the product design will ideas become a reality by creating a prototype and testing the product. While marketing the product still needs to occur, the launch—and the time it takes to reach this stage—is of incredible significance to the product's success.

What is the value of speed?

The time it takes to launch a product to the market officially is a factor that should always be on a business's mind. Product time to market plays a significant role in a business's competitive positioning, profitability, and customer satisfaction. A faster time to market provides the opportunity to launch new products and solutions before competitors, establishing a business as an innovative leader in its field.

The importance of speed cannot be stressed enough. Product launch delays can result in missed revenue, loss of market shares, and customer dissatisfaction. While the early bird really does catch the worm when launching new products and solutions, there needs to be a balance between speed and quality. Maintaining balance involves strategically aligning all stages of product development to produce a cohesive and efficient product timeline.

Speed and Medical Devices

One industry saturated with competition is the medical devices industry, with businesses focused on constant growth through constant innovation. This industry's value is massive. Medical technology companies are creating life-saving products that help people live longer and healthier lives.

However, the time to market for medical devices can have longer timelines than other industry products due to the lives at stake. These products go through the rigorous processes of many other products but are more extensive and can take three to seven years, a chunk of time that can double while acquiring insurance coverage—not to mention FDA approval alone can take one week to eight months. Additionally, maintaining a complete and up-to-date design history file (DHF), which is central to the lifecycle of a medical device, is crucial throughout the process.

Ready to help businesses launch products with speed is Matrix Requirements, offering a flexible software solution that bridges the gap between quality and compliance. This easy-to-use program simplifies requirement management and quality system compliance while providing total control. Their software helps companies build medical devices with complete traceability across the design process and tailor risk documentation based on procedures to meet any medical device's needs.

Aiming for shorter times to market sets businesses up to be better prepared to adapt and respond to market trends and changes. Companies can better capitalize on their product's lifecycle when quickly responding to a rapidly evolving market, thus obtaining a larger market share.