Turns out that tech companies can have New Year’s Resolutions, too.
As the last quarter of the past fiscal year comes to a close, companies have an opportunity to reflect on previous choices and determine their capabilities for the year ahead. They can evaluate old goals and set new ones, and allocate the necessary resources for those goals. For a product team, this means figuring out what new features or products will best serve their customers, and plotting out a roadmap to make them happen.
Given this renewal, joining the team of a company around the turn of the calendar can be especially exciting. After all, new projects will often require new expertise or a larger team. Every company’s needs will be different — but if they’ve set and evaluated their goals well, they’ll have a strong idea of what those needs are.
Built In Colorado sat down with four companies with ambitious and exciting 2023 goals. As expected, they vary substantially: VIZIO is advancing the capabilities of its data and analytics team, Sunday is aiming to expand its customer base, Eventus Solutions Group is starting a new client contract and BombBomb is building a brand new product. What they all have in common, though, is the need to expand one or more of their teams to achieve their new year ambitions.
What projects does your product team have lined up for 2023, and how do they fit into your company's overall strategic goals for the year?
I lead product management for data and analytics at VIZIO. My team is the custodian of all the data — viewership, financial and more. Our charter's goal is to enable everyone at VIZIO to use data to delight customers, improve cost efficiencies and increase revenues.
In 2023, we will continue our journey to democratize data within VIZIO such that anybody, no matter their technical skills, can utilize data to make smart judgments for the benefit of the company. Additionally, we aim to supercharge the business with data-driven insights. Both are fundamental for us to hit our north star goals.
VIZIO has no shortage of data available to address business questions — after all, the company sees petabytes moving through its systems daily. Yet data munging is limited to a few analysts with the knowledge and skills to properly process and interpret data. This is not scalable, since it's impossible for any one group of experts to address all business challenges. With the wide range of questions decision makers are asking of data, our goal is to unlock data from its silos, make it available to the business users and empower them through self-service analytics to make more confident decisions.
What makes these projects particularly interesting, challenging or exciting for product professionals to work on?
My philosophy is to hire growth-minded individuals and design learning opportunities that challenge them, engage them and make them more successful in their everyday lives.
My role is always interesting because first, there is an endless range of questions to ask of the data, so the work is never boring or repetitive. Second, democratizing data and data-driven insights is no small feat and requires self-motivated individuals and avid learners. While a day in the life of product managers on my team involves switching between roles at dizzying speeds, they also get the satisfaction of guiding teams. This is done through research, development and execution, all while working on projects that are making the biggest impact on VIZIO and promoting their personal and professional development.
Our goal is to unlock data from its silos, make it available to the business users and empower them through self-service analytics to make more confident decisions.”
How is your team growing to help meet those goals?
This year, my team hired three product managers and will add two more next year. We are looking for product managers who don’t shy away from challenges, are avid learners, are fluent in business and technical realms, and thrive in a fast-paced and varied environment.
In 2023, the focus will be on bringing more machine learning (ML) product managers to assist in all aspects of building ML-based products. These roles require data literacy, superior interpersonal and communication skills, leadership skills to effectively collaborate and manage teams, and excellent quantitative and analytical skills. They also require a basic understanding of common programming languages and a good understanding of ML concepts, models and algorithms as well as mathematical and statistical concepts.
What projects does your product team have lined up for 2023, and how do they fit into your company's overall strategic goals for the year?
Sunday is known for our custom lawn plan subscriptions, which provide Sunday Neighbors with the product and know-how to care for their lawns. In 2023, to help Sunday Neighbors cultivate their dream backyard, we will continue to improve the experience for lawn care and extend our custom plan offering to more categories.
Sunday’s product vision unifies physical products and digital tools to go beyond traditional online shopping and provide localized guidance for your specific needs. We do this by leveraging turf science, ecology, data science and proprietary software — so all Neighbors, whether experienced or novice, achieve successful outcomes.
In pursuit of our product vision, we'll be building innovative education tools, deepening and refining our natural science models and re-inventing our shopping experience.
What makes these projects particularly interesting, challenging or exciting for product professionals to work on?
I love this quote by John Muir, who was known as the father of the National Parks: “In every walk with nature, one receives far more than he seeks.”
At Sunday, we see the backyard as the first and most frequent place where we engage with the natural world. As a product and engineering team, when we do our jobs well, Sunday Neighbors put away their digital devices and get out in their yards. Through the process of cultivating a vibrant and functional yard, Sunday Neighbors receive far more.
As a product professional, I love that we have an engaged customer base, technical challenges to solve and an aspirational mission that keeps us motivated, inspired and aligned.
When we do our jobs well, Sunday Neighbors put away their digital devices and get out in their yards.”
How is your team growing to help meet those goals?
We're looking to grow our product management team 40 to 50 percent next year and our product design team by 30 percent. For product management, we are looking for professionals early in their career who have the potential to grow with us. We will also be looking for a few more tenured professionals with deep data and technical product experience to support emerging tech innovation. For product design, we are seeking designers that have strength in UX but can deliver engaging UI as well.
Sunday is also growing our digital merchandising and analytics teams in advance of a busy spring. It is a really exciting time to be part of Sunday!
What projects does your product team have lined up for 2023, and how do they fit into your company's overall strategic goals for the year?
Eventus is leading a large contact center transformation project leveraging Amazon Connect for a large insurance company in Canada. Our client is moving towards an omnichannel AI-enabled contact center and has decided to move towards Amazon Connect CCaaS technology. They are looking for a partner who can provide thought leadership, consulting and industry best-practice framework for accelerated delivery and transformation.
Eventus proposed a 17-month, industry-proven transformation and migration approach which includes end-to-end transformation services — including program management, business consulting, design, implementation and development services. Eventus will be developing cloud migration accelerators and adapters for integration with backend systems along with proven delivery frameworks for accelerated delivery.
What makes these projects particularly interesting, challenging or exciting for product professionals to work on?
This project will be one of the largest Amazon Connect implementations to date. Due to its size and complexity, this project will allow Eventus to bring forth multiple aspects of our industry-leading skills. Eventus brings extensive experience of building, managing and transforming contact center telephony for over 500 customers globally.
Eventus plans to continue to create cross-training opportunities within our enterprise communications consulting organization.”
How is your team growing to help meet those goals?
Eventus plans to continue to create cross-training opportunities within our enterprise communications consulting organization. We plan to hire four-to-six team members to support our Amazon Connect Practice in 2023 — including additional strategic consulting resources, presales and architect-level expertise.
What projects does your product team have lined up for 2023, and how do they fit into your company's overall strategic goals for the year?
BombBomb's product offerings have been anchored around our one-to-one, asynchronous video product for the past decade. This year, we found repeated themes emerging in our sales process and customer interviews of our mortgage business segment, asking for increased ability in our software’s guidance, automation and scalability with video. As the Fed raises interest rates to combat inflation, our mortgage customers are compelled to respond with significant adjustments to their business. In light of these factors, BombBomb will build, release and iterate on our solution to these challenges with a new product called Vist.
Vist deepens our integration with Total Expert, a leading fintech software company that delivers purpose-built CRM and customer engagement for modern financial institutions. In our development of Vist, BombBomb has developed a patented technology that enables a marketing leader to review and edit email workflows, find the most appropriate spots for videos and make it easy for a mortgage team member to send them.
What makes these projects particularly interesting, challenging or exciting for product professionals to work on?
Product professionals at BombBomb are interested in the challenge of building into a broad scope of our technology all at once — whether on our video services, API development or product-led onboarding efforts. Vist product development allows the familiarity of working within a known technical space while permitting the reimagination of the user experience and technical solutions. This work is set in the context of BombBomb’s product ethos: Ship small, learn quickly and respond even faster. Product professionals at BombBomb have thrived within this product ethos and grown exponentially in their careers.
We carefully balance new product innovation with keeping our core products up to date in the market as asynchronous video becomes more widely adopted in our social network workflows. As a result, our product roadmap includes a 60 percent allocation to new product development and 40 percent toward refining existing technologies.
This work is set in the context of BombBomb’s product ethos: Ship small, learn quickly and respond even faster.”
How is your team growing to help meet those goals?
BombBomb currently has seven product teams, organized into areas of concentration: growth, foundational technologies, innovation, security and compliance, and platform. In addition, these efforts are supported by quality assurance and business intelligence teams. The construction of BombBomb’s product teams is influenced by Marty Cagan’s Inspired model — comprising product management, UX design and engineering.
We do not anticipate adding additional product team members in 2023 — our investments will likely be in disciplines like data engineering, product analytics, technical infrastructure and automated testing. We continue to invest in professional development programs for our team members, such as Reforge, Passionate Product Leadership and Scrum Alliance, ensuring our team is growing in areas they are interested in and passionate about. BombBomb provides formal and informal mentorship of our product team members, giving business intelligence and context to our technical team. We are committed to developing these aspects in our organization and investing in flexible PTO and first Friday off mental health initiatives, supporting a holistic career development methodology.
