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Strategic Roadmapping

Strategic roadmapping is being used by leading corporations around the world to better integrate strategy, product and R&D planning. As a result, these firms have been able to respond quicker to market opportunities, cut non-aligned R&D investments, and focus resources on a strategic plan to win in their chosen markets.

Roadmapping is particularly useful in industries undergoing rapid technological change, disruptive competition and open innovation partnering, and has been proven to apply to service organizations as well as product companies facing these industry forces.

A strategic roadmap visually displays the activities you are currently doing, the business objectives you want to reach in the future, and the network of activities you need to perform over time to reach those objectives.

A standard multi-roadmap framework enables different parts of the business to create and manage their own roadmaps as well as combine them into a single consistent view

This framework is essential to create roadmaps by both business unit and functional layer, such as: technology, product, customer, capability, channel, external events, and strategic goals.

 
Example of roadmap with 3 layers
IFT’s solution

The IFT’s roadmapping solution offers the following capabilities:

Fully integrated with idea management, strategic funding buckets, portfolio management, stage-gate governance and product lifecycle management

Roadmap and link multiple layers of the business, including customer, product, technology, channel, capability, external event and strategic goal roadmaps

Multiple what-if scenarios and versions for each type of roadmap.

Composite roadmaps combining activities from multiple roadmap Layers

Pre-defined style guides to enable consistent display of different roadmap elements with colors, symbols and text according to specific element attributes

Security to control read or write access to specific individuals and organizations, to enable team, business unit and enterprise level roadmapping

Benefits

Companies report very tangible benefits of using roadmapping, including::

Quickly identify customer segments that could be addressed with your existing technology or products

Combine complementary technologies into common modules and platforms that can be re-used across multiple product families.

Avoid development/continuation of technologies and products that are insufficiently related to market needs, opportunities or channel capabilities

Re-use existing technologies that were developed for a customer segment or product line to develop new or enhanced products for another set of customers

Remove or combine duplicate technologies or products from different business units that address the same customer segments

Identify missing channels for your products to address specific customer segments

Identify external R&D partners who could provide you with additional technology to better address a given customer need

Improve communication, coordination and response time between different groups of the organization and with external partners and customers

The most advanced roadmapping organizations also use roadmapping to optimize and redefine strategy, as well as execute it effectively. Corporations can use the insights gained from roadmaps to identify opportunities to create value by: identifying new markets; creating new business models; developing new approaches with partners and suppliers and acquiring, merging or divesting businesses.

 
 
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Example Solution Capabilities


Related NPD Processes