Ketharaman Swaminathan

Enhanced Remittance Data Could Multiply Electronic Fund Transfer Volumes

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My property management company in UK wanted me to quote the following reference along with my monthly rent payment: MCS MERIDIAN CLIENT ACCOUNT HOUSE RENT 98 MERIDIAN PLACE JUN 2008 The reference field in the fund transfer screen of my bank’s Online Banking was too short to support this narration. While I could’ve written it easily … Read more

Introducing “Multiply UI” To Reduce Churn Caused By Software’s 95% Problem

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In The IT Industry’s 95% Problem, Gartner Research VP Brian Prentice notes that an average user of a software uses only 5% of the product’s features. In other words, 95% of the features in a software create no value for the overall customer audience. While you could quibble about the exact percentages, no one will deny that … Read more

Why Do Software Companies Outsource Product Management?

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The typical tech startup’s backstory goes as follows: Founders observe a problem in the real world, find a way to use technology to solve the problem, and build a product around the technology. According to common wisdom, product management is the foundation of any startup. Sales, marketing, HR, finance and other functions can come in … Read more

Whose Customer Am I?

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I read the following question on Quora recently: You buy a pen from a store. Then, are you a customer of that store or pen manufacturing company? Normally, my answers on Quora are rather short. After seeing this answer by Quora's founder @adamdangelo, I no longer worry about whether my replies are too terse. https://t.co/V6UqD1qinA … Read more

Perils Of Blind Retargeting

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Since the time I published Retargeted Ads or Retarded Ads, I’ve come across many more retargeted ads exhibiting retarded behavior. Take for example the ones from Cleartrip. Well after I’d booked my tickets on its portal, I kept seeing its retargeted ads. I hinted to the OTA that it could try setting frequency caps on … Read more

Don’t Ask Your Customers What They Want When You Design A Product

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One perennial question that startups – and even product managers of established companies – ask us while designing a new product is whether they should ask customers what they want. Our standard answer is NO! Only a services company asks customers what they want. When a product company does that, it can prove counterproductive – … Read more

3 Ways To Get Approvals For Case Studies From Reluctant Customers

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In Right And Wrong Ways Of Using Case Studies, we saw when to use case studies and when not to. Let’s now assume that a technology vendor has reached a certain stage in the sales cycle when it is appropriate to use case studies. Building an inventory of ready-to-use case studies can be a challenge when … Read more

Just Because Customers Can Find Their Own Solutions Doesn’t Mean They Will

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There’s lot of data in the public domain. Buyer 2.0 is Internet-savvy. So they will help themselves to all that information and find solutions to their pain areas by themselves. Ergo salespersons should stop trying to sell solutions to potential customers. This is the sum of essence of one prevailing school of thought in B2B … Read more