Requirements mining and analysis is a critical task for product managers, but it is often misunderstood. The right thing to do is to proactively identify problems, collaborate with business people, and gain insight into the business. The article introduces the steps of demand mining through the case of fresh food processing plants: sorting out the business process, identifying the problem and analyzing the causes, providing solutions and verifying the effect.
1. What is your problem?
In the work of a product manager, requirements mining and requirements analysis are the most important. But many product novices and even some friends who want to transform into product managers often stumble in this key link. Have you ever had the experience of discussing needs with business personnel, but you have no bottom in your heart and can only be submissive? A well-designed product solution becomes bloated, logically chaotic, and completely out of shape in the end? If yes, it is likely that you have a problem with demand mining and demand analysis.
This is no small hassle, it can make you a functional product manager who only performs and does not realize the true value of a product manager. Today, as a product expert who has been working in the retail supply chain for many years, I will tell you about this aspect and help you master this key skill.
2. Two keys to changing the status quo
(1) Mentality change: from executor to leader
Many product managers have the wrong mentality when facing business needs. You know, product managers and business personnel are collaborative, and the common goal is to make the business more efficient and improve the company’s performance. If you feel that business problems are your own business and wait for them to ask questions before taking action, then you can only become an executive product manager. Although it can do basic work such as product function design and development assistance, it can only stay at the grassroots level.
To achieve these three challenges, product managers will only continue to appreciate
Good product managers are very scarce, and product managers who understand users, business, and data are still in demand when they go out of the Internet. On the contrary, if you only do simple communication, inefficient execution, and shallow thinking, I am afraid that you will not be able to go through the torrent of the next 3-5 years.
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The correct approach is to take the initiative to stand in the company’s perspective and take solving business problems as your own responsibility. Take the initiative to find problems, take responsibility, actively coordinate resources from all parties, promote the implementation of optimization plans and achieve good results. For example, when dealing with business needs, take the initiative to communicate with business personnel, understand their pain points and expectations, and lead the process of solving problems, so that you can truly be independent.
(2) Professional skills training: grow in practice
For product novices, it is not enough to have theoretical knowledge, but also to have an experienced mentor to take care of it. Follow the mentor through the complete project process, from demand mining, demand analysis, to communicating with business personnel to determine business plans, designing product plans, and then to promoting and iterating feedback on new requirements after launch. In this closed-loop process, continue to learn and practice, and gradually improve the ability of demand mining and demand analysis.
3. Detailed explanation of actual cases: demand mining and analysis of fresh food processing plants
(1) Case background
Take Company A’s fresh food processing plant as an example (to protect privacy, the real company name is hidden). This processing plant mainly processes bulk fruits and vegetables and processes them into standard goods of rated weight, such as packaged bananas, boxed oranges, etc. When analyzing the operating conditions of the processing plant, a strange phenomenon was found: a large number of finished product profits were concentrated at about 9 a.m., and losses were concentrated at about 5 p.m., which was seriously inconsistent with normal business logic.
(2) Business process sorting
In order to find out the reason, let’s first sort out the business process of the processing plant:
At 4-5 a.m., the supplier delivers, the processing plant conducts quality control and acceptance, and enters the received quantity and quality into the system.
After the acceptance of raw materials, the processing plant is immediately put into production, and the finished products are produced one after another.
The finished products are temporarily stored in the finished product storage area of the line side warehouse, and after reaching a certain quantity, they are pulled by the front-line personnel to the distribution temporary storage area of the fresh warehouse.
The fresh warehouse will distribute the received finished products before 9 o’clock.
At 9 – 10 o’clock, the fresh warehouse begins to load and ship.
The processing plant continued to operate until 5 p.m., and the receipt room began to count the day’s operating data, including raw material tailings inventory, production line waste cleaning, raw material packaging material collection and sales, and various operation core indicator statistics.
(3) Problem analysis
After in-depth investigation, it was found that the reason for the surplus of a large number of finished products at 9 o’clock was that although the finished products produced at 5 to 9 o’clock had been pulled to the distribution and temporary storage area of the fresh warehouse, the document room did not know the specific quantity, and could only estimate according to past experience, and the generated transfer order did not match the actual quantity. After the on-site inventory at 5 p.m., according to the real quantity of finished products and the transfer order, if there are more, it will be transferred back and dealt with at a loss, and if it is less, a new transfer order will be created.
This problem brings a series of hazards: the on-site and system operations are not synchronized, the system document flow cannot reflect the real production progress, the consumption of raw materials and packaging auxiliary materials cannot be accurately analyzed, and the quality of finished product quality control cannot be reflected in real time.
(4) Solution
Once you find the problem, you have to find a way to solve it. There are many ideas to solve problems, both from management means and with the help of information technology. Here we take information technology as an example:
Consider opening up the authority to make transfer orders to the porters, but ensure permission approval and data security (70% of the warehouse outsourcing personnel).
When the inventory of finished products in the temporary storage area of the production line side warehouse reaches a certain level, the porters will pull the finished products to the fresh warehouse distribution temporary storage area, and at the same time count the quantity and complete the delivery of the goods with the field control.
Since the system does not have the current quantity of finished products, the transfer order should be reversely cascaded to generate a processed finished product list (to realize the automatic outbound of raw materials and the automatic warehousing of finished products).
The processing order is automatically completed, and the finished product inventory is automatically entered into the inventory table management, and automatically deducted according to the transfer order process.
Considering that the porters do not have a fixed office location, the transfer function is integrated into the APP, and the function of recording each move is realized to facilitate the checking of quantity.
(5) Effect verification
After the implementation of the plan, let’s see if the problem is solved:
The problem of insynchronization between the on-site progress and the system operation has been solved, and the porters can operate and transfer on the APP when moving the goods to achieve real-time synchronization.
In order to let the system document flow reflect the real production progress, the production line immediately carries out tailings counting, scrap weighing and other operations after completing the processing of the rated quantity of finished products on the same day, and summarizes the results into a processing progress list and reports it to the document room.
The quality inspection report of quality control has been changed from once a day to once when the porter moves the goods, which improves the timeliness of quality inspection.
After the implementation of the plan, the business personnel will review together to determine the indicators for this optimization and improvement, such as the timeliness and accuracy of the system feedback on-site data, and the number of inventory orders reduced by business process optimization. The business personnel write the business requirements description, and the product manager designs the product plan and submits it to the R&D and testing team to complete the preliminary work from demand mining to solution implementation.
4. Summarize reproducible methods
Through this case, we can summarize a set of replicable requirements mining and analysis methods:
- Scope of requirements mining: In addition to the system document flow in the case, it can also be mined from various aspects such as business processes, user feedback, and market trends.
- Prerequisites for demand mining: A deep understanding of the business is key. Only by being familiar with the business can we keenly find problems from the statistical analysis of document flow, as in the case.
- Requirements validation: For junior product managers, validating requirements is essential. It is necessary to review with on-site operators, business supervisors, etc., and discuss solutions together.
- Demand priority judgment: After digging out the demand, it is necessary to determine whether it is worth doing and what priority it is in. It can be comprehensively considered from the aspects of impact on the business and the difficulty of implementation.
- Solution evaluation: After determining the requirements, evaluate whether management means or information technology are used with business personnel. The evaluation criteria include the long-term nature of the solution and whether the offline business operations are standardized and process-oriented. If information technology is used, it is also necessary to consider the resources invested, working hours and expected launch time, and provide timely feedback to the business party.
5. Summary and encouragement
I hope that through this article, you will have a deeper understanding of demand mining and demand analysis. The growth of product managers requires continuous accumulation and self-iteration, not only focusing on basic work such as drawing prototypes and writing PRDs, but also learning to explore needs from the business and promote the project forward. I believe that as long as everyone continues to learn and have the courage to practice, they will be able to go further and further on the road of product managers.
