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Time to market (TTM) is one of the most critical metrics for businesses today. It refers to the time it takes from when a product is first conceived until it is available for sale in the market Having a fast time to market can make or break a product’s success. This article will explain what time to market is, why it’s so important, and strategies for reducing your time to market
What Exactly is Time to Market?
Time to market measures how long your company takes to go through the entire new product development process, It starts from the initial conceptualization or ideation of the product and ends when the product is launched and available for customers to purchase
The complete product development lifecycle includes activities like:
- Initial brainstorming and ideation
- Market analysis and research
- Requirements gathering
- Product design and development
- Testing and quality assurance
- Manufacturing
- Marketing and sales enablement
- Distribution and logistics
- Launch and availability in the market
Time to market considers the total time taken for all these activities until the product can be bought by customers. It is typically measured in months or years. A shorter time to market means you are able to develop and launch new products faster than competitors.
Why Is Time to Market Important?
Time to market is important for several reasons
Seize Market Opportunities
Being early to market allows you to capture emerging opportunities and meet customer needs faster than competitors. You can gain first mover advantage and establish market leadership in a new product category.
Stay Ahead of Competition
A fast time to market helps you keep ahead of rival products. You can preempt competitors from gaining market share and maintain a competitive edge.
Generate Faster ROI
The sooner you can launch a product, the earlier you can start generating returns on your investment through sales revenue. A shorter time to market leads to better financial returns.
Meet Changing Customer Demands
Today’s market is fast-paced. Customers want the latest features and upgrades as soon as possible. A quick time to market enables you to keep pace with dynamic customer needs.
Shorter Product Lifecycles
Product lifecycles are getting shorter as new versions are released faster. Being speedy in development allows you to keep up with the market’s accelerated pace.
Gain Reputation as Innovator
Frequently launching new products fosters a brand image of being an innovator. It shows you are in touch with the latest market trends and can rapidly deliver solutions.
How to Reduce Your Time to Market
Here are proven strategies and best practices you can use to shorten your product development cycles and improve time to market:
Identify a Minimum Viable Product
Rather than building a full-fledged product from scratch, identify the minimum set of essential features you need for launch. This MVP takes less time to develop and enables quicker market validation.
Use Agile Methodology
Agile emphasizes iterative development cycles, constant feedback, and rapid adaptations. This approach is ideal for compressing development timelines.
Automate Processes
Automating repetitive tasks in requirements gathering, design, coding, and testing speeds up product development. Use tools like Jira to streamline workflows.
Outsource Select Activities
Outsourcing non-core functions like manufacturing and logistics reduces development workload and allows your teams to focus on faster product rollouts.
Pursue Parallel Development
Perform parallel tasks like design, sourcing materials, and seeking regulatory approvals to save time instead of doing them sequentially.
Integrate Vendor Inputs Early
Collaborating with vendors and suppliers early in the process ensures you get necessary components and certifications promptly.
Offer Employee Incentives
Provide incentives to employees for on-time deliverables and milestones achieved. This fosters a culture of speed and urgency.
Eliminate Process Bottlenecks
Analyze your development workflow to identify and eliminate process constraints impeding speed to market.
Reduce Feature Creep
Adding too many features can prolong development cycles. Carefully evaluate and prioritize must-have functionality for new launches.
Test and Validate Frequently
Conduct regular product validations with customers rather than waiting for final testing. Early feedback allows course corrections and saves rework time.
With the right strategies focused on streamlining development and bringing discipline, companies can significantly enhance their time to market. Though it requires some upfront investment, the long-term competitive benefits make it worthwhile.
Real-World Examples of Time to Market Success
Here are some examples of companies that succeeded by rapid time to market:
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Uber: Known for quickly rolling out its ride-hailing services in new cities by relying on a hyperlocal and decentralized structure.
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Amazon: Regularly launches new products and features by pursuing parallel development paths and frequent releases.
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Qualcomm: Uses its snapdragon platform to rapidly build new chipsets and modems for OEM customers.
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Samsung: Brings flagship models like the S Series to market ahead of rivals by frontloading product development.
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Apple: Launched Apple Pay within 6 months by leveraging its TouchID system and prior NFC investments.
These examples demonstrate that time to market is a key success factor across industries, especially in competitive spaces. Developing structures and processes that enable speed is imperative.
Balancing Time to Market With Other Priorities
While time to market is critical, it should not override other business priorities. Companies have to strike a balance between speed and:
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Product quality: Rushing too fast could compromise quality standards, leading to defects and reliability issues after launch.
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Development costs: Too much acceleration forces inflated budgets and resource allocations. It may not generate a sufficient ROI.
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Innovation: An obsessive focus on speed can restrict the innovation process and impair long-term competitiveness. Radical innovation takes time.
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Testing and validation: Quick timelines could mean inadequate testing and validation. This results in products not matching customer needs.
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Organizational culture: Pressuring teams too much to reduce timelines can hurt morale, creativity, and retention.
The right approach is finding the optimal time to market that considers these trade-offs for each product. While you may compromise on some factors, quality and validation should never be rushed. Strategic balance is key.
In today’s business landscape, companies cannot afford slow and lengthy product development. As product lifecycles shrink and customers demand faster innovation, time to market has become a major competitive advantage.
By employing the strategies discussed, you can significantly improve your organization’s time to market. This lets you respond to market changes swiftly, delight customers constantly, and stay ahead of traditional competitors as well as new startups.
Make time to market a priority KPI for your product teams. Invest in streamlining your development processes. And continue to find ways of launching new products rapidly without compromising too much on quality or innovation. Leveraging speed in bringing ideas to market will be a key driver of success.
Controlled changes minimize time to market risk as your product transfers to manufacturing
As you move from new product development (NPD) to new product introduction (NPI), it’s common for the design to continue to evolve based on prototyping and manufacturing feedback. However, procurement teams need to know which components are final and which are still being further evaluated so they can begin to order parts. For components with longer supplier lead times, you may decide to place a partial order so that build timelines won’t be compromised, but not place the full order and risk wasting lots of money on unusable parts.
These critical purchasing decisions require manufacturing to have accurate information in hand, which will only happen with a solid change process in place. Manufacturing teams also need to make decisions about where to build the product. Volume production requires the ability to build a high-quality product with a stable, repeatable process. If components and parts are in flux, you might decide to keep the product build under your internal control for easy monitoring. For example, if your product’s firmware is updated frequently, you might decide to launch the product with final programming and test in-house. Then once the firmware has stabilized, move that step of the manufacturing process out to a contract manufacturer (CM).
Having controlled change processes in place facilitates access to and communication of the latest product information, therefore manufacturing will have more reliable information to base decisions on. Quotes will be more accurate, supplier lead times better managed, and build timelines correctly projected. In addition, when you have a reliable history of product changes including what product information you’ve shared and with whom, it becomes much easier and less time consuming when you need to go back and debug a problem.
Here are some additional reasons companies care about improving their time to market:
- Efficient resource management — Having a reliable timeline will allow you to prepare in advance for transportation times and costs, build schedules based on part lead times and headcount planning to satisfy the needs in various project phases.
- Predictable schedules and launch dates — The product development process is long and complicated. If you can accurately predict when your product will ship, you can take advantage of tradeshows, holiday buying seasons, and other marketing opportunities.
- Increased total revenue — The earlier you get your product to market (without cutting corners or compromising quality) the greater the revenue you can generate because your product faces less competition. In addition, you earn revenue for more of the product lifecycle.
What is Time to Market? Meaning, Importance, Examples and How to improve it
What is time to market?
Time to market refers to the duration it takes to bring a product from initial ideation to market delivery. It’s a critical factor in determining the success of your product release. If you move too slowly, you risk falling behind competitors who might capture the market before you do.
What is time to market (TTM)?
Time to market (TTM) is the length of time to develop a product from conception until it is released to the market and is available for sale.
What is product time to market?
Understanding the concept of Product Time to Market is an excellent initial step for any Digital Product Company leader. Product Time to Market (TTM) is the duration needed to bring a product to fruition. This includes the generation of an idea for the product; its whole design cycle; development, and launch on the market.
How do you measure time to market?
Depending on the product you’re developing and your organizational processes, you might choose to measure: While the most common time to market metric is the number of months or years it takes to launch the product, you may use a combination of any of these KPIs depending on your organizational goals.
