In today’s highly competitive TOB (Enterprise Customer) market, building a successful product is a challenge for every product manager and technical team. This paper summarizes the six iron rules of TOB product success through practical experience, from the importance of “scene special machines” to the necessity of “second-level maintenance”, and deeply discusses how to reduce costs and increase efficiency, improve customer satisfaction and build a scene ecology in the field of commercial products.
Over the years, in addition to TOC products, I have had the honor to participate in several relatively good and quasi-explosive TOB products. Although many times we rely on the company’s customer relationship and good channels to obtain orders, we still have a basic understanding of the basic methodology of TOB products.
Commercial products, whether they are commercial hardware equipment or commercial robots, need to focus on a core goal: to reduce costs and increase efficiency, and everything else is secondary. Either it can reduce costs (including reducing manpower), or it can increase efficiency (greatly improve efficiency), or both.
Then, around this core, there are judgments and principles for making products.
1. Be wary of general-purpose machines and pay attention to scene machines
There is a big pitfall in making commercial products: from the perspective of the enterprise’s self, blindly pursue multi-functionality, hoping to solve many scenarios and functional problems by reducing development costs and using general parts. Especially for product managers or bosses who have transitioned from home to commercial products, the most favorite strategy for making products is universal multi-function – I rack my brains to add a few functions against a function of competing products. It is true that this set is very popular in TOC products, because consumers feel that it is worth the money and is also very selling point when promoting. But in the commercial field, this set will bring many problems.
Why? Multi-function will inevitably be cut to fit in order to be compatible with multiple modules, do everything, and do no function thoroughly. Multifunctionality can also significantly increase product complexity, resulting in reduced reliability and unnecessary cost increases.
It can be said that the idea that a machine adapts to many scenarios is wrong. The correct way to do it is: find the core scenario, and do a single or small number of functions for the core scenario. The product made by focusing on the core scene is the scene special machine. For example, taking commercial cleaning as an example, it is mainly divided into supermarket scenes, table and chair scenes, building scenes, transportation hub scenes, etc. Different scenarios require different hardware solutions, software architectures, algorithms, and even operation mode parameters. Therefore, the first step is to find the core scene, go in the direction of the scene special machine, and give up the general machine is a wise choice.
What does a product manager need to do?
In the process of a product from scratch, it is not easy to do a good job in the role of product manager, in addition to the well-known writing requirements, writing requirements, writing requirements, there are many things to do. The product manager is not what you think, but will only ask you for trouble, make a request:
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Some people say, aren’t humanoid robots general-purpose machines? In fact, I have written a special article analyzing humanoid robots, and here I once again dare to predict that humanoid robots will take some detours, because humanoid robots are taking the direction and idea of multi-functional general-purpose machines, and will definitely encounter various problems such as scene adaptation problems, reliability problems and costs. In the end, you will find that it can try any scene, but it can’t compete with the special machine in any scene. For example, in factory scenarios, its efficiency will be far behind by robotic arms and composite robots.
In recent years, some humanoid robot manufacturers have begun to awaken and explore core scenarios, such as health care scenarios.
2. The scene determines the demand, and the demand determines the plan
The best plan and demand priority of the product are not blindly patted by product managers. Once the core scenario is relatively clear, in-depth study of the needs of the scenario can derive product solutions. It is not recommended to use cool new technologies for commercial products, and it is best to use mature technology solutions for optimization and trade-offs.
At this time, the essence of R&D and clear solutions is more of a matter of choice than a simple technical problem.
So as a product manager, at this time, there is no right to speak without investigation. It is best to carry a small backpack and run to the customer’s site to observe how the traditional solution is used, how people operate, how the environmental layout is, what pain points there are, etc. There are gods on the scene, and when you get to the scene, you will find a lot of potential product demand. Then, based on this scenario, the requirements are prioritized, and R&D is organized for technical feasibility assessment, and the definition of the product is basically out.
For example, the commercial cleaning supermarket scenario mentioned above: how to solve the problem of positioning loss caused by shelf changes? How to do a good job in narrow passage? How to solve the problem of residual water stains on the floor after washing? How to solve hair residue problems? How to promote in-store merchandise and more?
Product managers do not need to imagine product requirements out of thin air, but go to the scene to see how to use them and what pain points there are, and product requirements and solutions will naturally emerge.
I remember that I once made an automatic guided vehicle (AGV) for the transfer of battery pack production lines, and the early solutions were traditional contact charging and differential wheel drive, so that the cost was low, and the industry did it. Later, before bidding, I went to overseas customers for on-site research and communication, and the customer wanted to “replace the line with a car”, and the vehicle stopped at the station to charge while working, and entered the next station after the operation was completed. The lane between the two production lines is very narrow, and if such a large car turns through the differential speed, there will definitely not be enough space. However, if an omnidirectional steering wheel or McNamee wheel is used, the cost is too high.
In addition, if it is difficult to detect by LiDAR alone, the fork teeth are easy to collide with AGVs.
and so on, which were not fully reflected in the early customer demand materials.
Ultimately, we judged that the customer’s core needs were: charging at the station, omnidirectional movement, low cost, and suspended obstacle avoidance with tines.
As soon as these requirements and R&D are discussed, the solutions we give are relatively clear: high-power wireless induction charging, omnidirectional differential wheelset drive, and four-sided 3D camera suspension obstacle avoidance. Although it was thought that high-power wireless charging was difficult and immature at the time, because the customer recognized the scenario adaptability brought by this solution, they still invested resources to develop it after winning the bid. Relying on differentiated solutions, the product won the first batch of 50 million orders in the development process, won nearly 200 million orders in the first year, and continued to win various awards in the industry and exhibitions.
3. Simple and reliable, not complex and cool
The simpler the design and the more mature the technology used, the better. Reliability itself is also a core selling point in the TOB industry.
But this is not an advocacy for eliminating innovation and adopting outdated technologies, but rather an emphasis on optimizing solutions to achieve goals, as simple is often more difficult than complex. Many times, a clever simple solution is better than a bunch of complex tricks. The complexity in this includes two layers: one is multi-functional stacking, and the other is the use of complex solutions for single functions.
Let’s take an example of multi-functional stacking of commercial cleaning robots. Generally, commercial floor cleaning equipment, such as floor scrubbers, sweepers, vacuum cleaners, and grinders, are independent and single functions. However, new companies entering the field of commercial cleaning robots, in order to save mold opening fees and increase selling points, will do sweeping, vacuuming, washing, and mopping four-in-one, and can realize automatic switching, and can achieve multi-function without changing components. When the product concept first came out, it was very attractive to marketers and customers, and it was recognized, and it felt that it was worth the money and differentiated. So I blindly put it into mass production and stocked up a lot. Later, when I actually entered the market for POC testing or actual operation, I found that there were too many side effects caused by multi-function.
The task success rate monitoring data shows that when a single function is running, the task success rate is 95%. The task success rate is reduced to 78% for switching between two functions. When combining three or more tasks, the success rate is greatly reduced to 64%. The quality data reflects a similar trend: machines with multi-function configurations have twice the after-sales quality defect rate compared to single-function versions.
Finally, we promote version optimization, delete redundant functions according to the needs of the scene, and launch the supermarket floor washing version (that is, focusing on the supermarket scene, only doing the floor washing function, and making the floor washing function deeper and thorougher), which is very recognized by customers and greatly improves the stability of the product.
You’ve probably heard this story about complex solutions: a high-speed soap production line with empty boxes mixed into the finished product is a headache. A group of top engineers was summoned to set up precision sensors, write complex algorithms, and even use X-ray scanning to create a fully automated sorting system to ensure that nothing goes wrong. However, on another simple production line not far away, a small worker looked at the same problem, just silently moved a powerful industrial fan and aimed it at the conveyor belt – the light empty box was blown away, and the solid soap box moved forward steadily, and the problem was solved. Simple and reliable, it hits the core of the problem, rather than showing off skills and being cool.
4. The use income should exceed the maintenance investment
In the TOB industry, it is often mistaken to make a product that is several times more complex to maintain than using traditional tools, and the efficiency improvement is far less than the increase in workload caused by maintenance complexity.
Then this kind of product will definitely be abandoned and resisted.
It can be said that the ease of maintenance of commercial products, especially commercial robot products, should be the top three core functions.
Whether it is easy to disassemble and assemble the operating components, easy maintenance and cleaning, or easy to disassemble and assemble the battery, its ease of maintenance must be defined down to the second.
We recommend dividing parts into categories: routine maintenance components, consumables, wear parts, and durable parts. Product managers should define and accept each category in detail.
Acceptance can also take various forms, including inviting human-computer interaction experts, front-line operators, and novices to conduct blind operations and test and evaluate from multiple dimensions.
For categories such as robots, ease of maintenance is the core competitiveness.
5. Visualization and quantification of effects
Through cloud platforms, HMIs and even large-screen TVs, it is a good product solution to show the operating status and operational benefits of commercial products. Many times, the most difficult thing about an industry is that it is difficult to visualize the effect. For example, the commercial cleaning industry lacks unified standards and centralized means of effect display and evaluation.
Therefore, it is one of the core contents to improve customer satisfaction to clearly present the operation effect through pre-simulation, digital twin, task completion report sharing, centralized data display on a large screen, etc.
6. Layout scene ecology
Doing a good job in monitoring the life of consumables, building an order platform, and improving peripheral auxiliary products are all ways to increase TOB’s commercial success. Some categories, such as surgical robots and cleaning robots, rely heavily on consumables for their revenue and profits. Therefore, how to lay out consumables and surrounding ecological products is particularly important.
