The Final Word(s) on
Meeting Customer Needs:
Value, Value, and Value
 

Sheila Mello [Bio]
Managing Partner
Product Development
Consulting, Inc.  (PDC)

A growing chorus of voices has been singing the praises of fulfilling unmet customer needs as the path to successful innovation. Beginning in 1995 with MRT's first customer needs conference and continuing today with explorations of blue oceans and what customers want, these voices are reaching consensus. But accepting the primacy of customer need is just the first step. You then face a bewildering assortment of decisions -- whether to call them needs, customer requirements, or outcomes, and which of a laundry list of frameworks, methodologies, and theories you should use to discover them. What approach will lead you quickly and reliably to the goal of identifying new products that not only delight customers but cause them to reach for their wallets?

Over the last 15 years, Product Development Consulting, Inc. has helped hundreds of companies understand their customers in a more profound way than is possible using any other framework, and then apply that understanding to creating winning products. In this session, you'll learn the best approach to determining where to invest R&D dollars, whether at the product level for individual product features or at the portfolio level for entire product lines. Come discover what's missing from your current method of meeting customer needs and what you can do improve it.

At this lively session, you will find out how to:

• Integrate the critical customer research function into a cross-functional in-house team, rather than outsourcing

• Use a reliable and repeatable method of walking a mile in your customers' shoes to understand what impeded their success

• Position your organization to outpace competitors by unearthing innovative opportunites that are based on what customers value

• Balance your company's core competencies with market needs

• Re-think strategic, portfolio, and product planning along value dimensions

Exclusive study of product and service portfolio management practices Learn how your firm's process compares to others -- results to be sent to participants as well as shared at the upcoming MRT/PDC Workshop, Value Innovation Portfolio Management. We also invite your participation in the study; the questionnaire should only take 20 minutes to complete. Information will be kept confidential, and only consolidated results will be reported. In addition, study participants are eligible for special prizes. Click here for details on the study

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Sheila Mello
Managing Partner
Product Development Consulting, Inc.

Sheila Mello is the author of the best selling book Customer-Centric Product Definition: The Key to Great Product Development and co-author of Value Innovation Portfolio Management: Achieving Double-Digit Growth Through Customer Value. Sheila is the managing partner of Product Development Consulting, Inc. (PDC), and is a widely known, well-respected expert in the field of product development. Her clients benefit from her many years of executive and hands-on experience in product development, software and hardware, engineering, marketing, quality, manufacturing, sales and service. Sheila has done extensive research in processes for defining customer requirements and is an expert in helping companies implement and institutionalize market-driven product definition programs and value based portfolio management processes.

Sheila has helped scores of companies -- Fortune 500 companies in diverse industries and smaller high growth organizations -- to speed time-to-profit and market acceptance, achieve greater product predictability and profitability, identify improvement opportunities, and build capabilities that directly impact bottom line results. Sheila helps clients identify their "inch-wide, mile-deep" opportunities, build consensus, and implement the most effective solution. PDC has implemented the Market-Driven Product Definition (MDPD,) process discussed in the book at over 60 companies.

In addition to her consulting experience, Sheila is a frequent speaker at seminars and conferences on product development and is a recognized speaker on industry topics ranging from improving business performance and value-based portfolio management, to team management and organizational structure.

PDC focuses exclusively on product development, helping clients to optimize the process of developing products and services. PDC’s unique approach in providing collaborative product development solutions that speed time-to-market and increase customer acceptance enables their clients to stay competitive and run efficiently.

Before joining PDC, Sheila held director and vice president positions at Bolt, Beranek & Newman, Wang Laboratories, Palladian Software and Distribution Management Systems, and was a principal consultant with Arthur D. Little, Inc.

Sheila earned a Bachelor of Science degree, magna cum laude, in mathematics from Tufts University. She is a member of The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA), and the American Marketing Association.