March 9, 2006 | AeA Product Development Roundtable

Voice of the Customer: Learning to Listen

While "low-tech" companies like Proctor & Gamble pioneered in-depth market research decades ago, high-tech companies are still fairly immature in this area. For example, we know that almost half of the features in enterprise software packages are never used.

In this session we will discuss how high-tech companies can more effectively determine what current and prospective customers really want and need. We need to understand just what solution will best generate customer value and maximize profits for us. This is an ongoing process, because customer needs change over time.

You will learn about:

• WHY customer research is paramount to success in product development
• Deciding HOW MUCH customer research you need to do
• What best-in-class high-tech companies do to define and quantify customer value
• Practical techniques to determine what customers will buy and for how much
• How to differentiate between what customers say and what they actually do
• Conflicts and compromises - balancing disparate needs and wishes
• How to ensure that customer value drives the entire product development effort
• Learning how to distinguish whether customer needs or priorities have changed
• Discerning what approaches will work best for your particular situation

Speakers

Steve Portigal, Principal, Portigal Consulting (www.portigal.com)

Steve is the founder of Portigal Consulting, a firm that brings together user research, design and business strategy. Portigal Consulting helps clients to discover and act on new insights about how their customers work, play, shop, entertain, eat, and live their lives around products and services. In addition to regularly speaking at design and marketing events, Steve contributes to several blogs and writes FreshMeat, a semi-regular email column about the relationships between business, culture, technology, products, and consumers. He is an avid photographer who has a Museum of Foreign Grocery Products in his home.

Chris Stiehl, President, StiehlWorks (www.stiehlworks.com)

Chris is the founder of StiehlWorks, a consulting firm that specializes in understanding customers wants and needs (the "Voice of the Customer") and how to respond to them. StiehlWorks helps its clients develop products and services to have the maximum benefit to customers, whether they are external or internal to the company. StiehlWorks has helped product and service designers in many fields, from hi-tech to non-profit to government agencies and more. StiehlWorks is currently engaged with several Silicon Valley companies. Chris was on the winning Malcolm Baldrige team at Cadillac Motor Car in 1990. Chris has an extensive baseball card collection dating back to the late 1800s and writes to hundreds of current and former players each year for autographs. Some have become good friends.

Moderator: Frode L. Odegard, CEO, Lean Software Institute (www.leansw.com)

Frode has more than twenty years of experience as an entrepreneur and trusted advisor to high-tech executives. Organizations he has helped include Sony Electronics Inc., Lockheed Martin, Candle, Conexant Systems, Mindspeed, and Plantronics. Frode is currently the CEO of the Lean Software Institute, which helps organizations adopt Lean practices to dramatically accelerate the development of software products. He is currently writing a book on Implementing Lean Software Development.

Location:
UCSD Extension
6925 Lusk Blvd, Ste 116
San Diego CA 92121-5704

Program:
0730-0800: Registration and Networking
0800-0900: Presentations
0900-0930: Panel discussion, audience Q&A

Cost:

AeA Member Companies:	$20.00
Non-Members:	$40.00

Online Registration:

http://www.aeanet.org/Events/EventsCatalog.cfm?product_major=SD030603

Manual Registration:

Contact Tammy Carney, the AeA event manager, at (858) 452-9288 or per email at tammy_carney@aeanet.org.

About the AeA Product Development Roundtable

The AeA Product Development Roundtable gives you the inside story on what leading companies are doing to generate profitable growth from new product development. Each month we feature high-quality speakers with powerful ideas and case stories from industry leaders. Participating executives enjoy unprecedented peer access. Time is set aside for interactive discussion, which helps bridge the gap between the concepts presented and their practical implementation.

In case you are not familiar with AeA, it is a nationwide trade association that represents all segments of the technology industry and is dedicated solely to helping its members' top line and bottom line. For more information, see http://www.aeanet.org.