xApp: Product Definition (SAP xPD)

For Product*, Brand and Marketing Managers who need to create innovation and make it happen the SAP xApp Product Definition (xPD) creates unique value through processing insights/ideas, concepts and requirements on new products, services, and marketing initiatives.

This Business Scenario Map is based on xPD 2.0 released in November 2005.

*A “product” could be a tangible product, a service sold externally, or an internal process.

Show Document Flow

Business Benefits

Increase focus and direction of insight and idea generation process through targeted ideation campaigns

Increase time-to-market for new products and services through smooth data flow from early market insights all the way through to product design and engineering.

Increase voice of the customer and reduce rework cycles between product management and engineering through a systematic requirements management process

Increase innovation process excellence and adoption of bext practices through continous monitoring and analysis of innovation process KPIs

Innovation Manager

Expert

Insight/Idea Submitter

Set up Targeted Ideation

Search Insights/Ideas or Concepts

Process Insight/Idea

Create and process Idea Bucket

Initiate Concept

Process and monitor Concept

Create Requirement /Requirement Structure

Monitoring and final approval of Requirement Structure

Analyze innovation process

Rate Ideas

Fulfill concept task

Search & view Requirements

Process Requirement

Submit Insight/Idea

Business Benefits

Increase sources of input for new insights and ideas through including all employees and external customers and partners

Reduce duplicated efforts through central and searchable repository for all innovation activities

Increase concept success rates through bringing together and constantly updating all structured and unstructured information on market potential, technical feasibility, etc.

Increase number of high potential concepts through finding and recombining complementary ideas, yielding "1+1=3"!


xApp: Product Definition (SAP xPD) xPD Key Capabilities include: - Set up targeted ideations on specific topics - Search the insight/idea and concept pool - Group insights/ideas in idea buckets, cluster and evaluate/rate them - Develop concepts using easily configurable concept and process templates (a concept typically includes structured and unstructured information on business case, market/technical feasibility of a new product, service or process) - Define, detai and monitor requirements resulting from a particular concept; approve/disapproved the proposed solution. - Track and document decisions taken on a concept - Report on and analyze the company's innovation process A typical xPD usage scenario could look as follows: The innovation manager is looking for new insights/ideas on a particular topic. He sets up a targeted ideation campaign for this and selects the appropriate target group. Adressed insight/idea submitters respond by submitting their input into the system. Once insights/ideas have been submitted into the system, innovation managers and experts can search the idea pool and review ideas getting routed to them. They process the ideas by finding the appropriate owner for them, requesting further information from the author and changing the idea status accordingly. Once he has identified and gathered a group of ideas relevant for a particular topic she is currently working on, the innovation manager creates an idea bucket as a container for this group of ideas. Within the idea bucket, the innovation manager can discuss, cluster and rate the ideas together with a team of invited experts. Once a promising idea cluster has been identified, the innovation manager created a concept from it and selects a concept development process to run on the concept. This includes determining the concept team and first tasks/content items to work on. The innovation monitors the overall progress of concept development, reviewing the concept content and preparing/implementing gate decisions on the concept. The involved experts work on concept tasks assigned to them, e.g. provide attributes, KPIs and documents on market potential or technical feasibility. As the concept becomes more refined, the innovation manager creates a requirements structure for it, specifying the most important market requirements for the concept. To create requirements for a new concept, users can search and reuse existing requirements or apply predefined requirement structure templates. Once the high level requirements are defined, technical experts can analyze them for any conflicts or dependencies and break them down into a deeper requirement structure. They can assign single or groups of requirements to a project or product structure in which the requirements should be dealt with. The innovation manager monitors the current status of the specifiied requirements. Once a solution for the requirements has been worked out, she reviews and approves or rejects it. The innovation manager analyzes the company's overall innovation process regularly. She reviews BW reports on number, processing time and success rate of submitted ideas and concepts.