A survey of 45 product development professionals to understand their software tooling needs
During late 2023, NorvaSoft reached out to 100's of new product development (NPD) professionals requesting an interview to validate our NPDApp SaaS application. 45 of these professionals accepted and proceeded with a short interview.
About the NPD Professionals
The demographics of the interviewees was quite diverse. They included by:
Geography: Australia, USA
Titles: NPD Manager, senior management, engineering and consultants
Industries: All manufacturers covering building products, medical devices, food, cosmetics, engineering equipment, to name a few
NPD Software Tools
One of the key questions we asked each interviewee was the main software tool/s they use to manage their enterprises NPD process. The chart below shows the breakdown by software product.
Observations:
Six of the software tools accounted for just over 75% with the balance making up 25%.
No surprise that Excel was the most popular tool given it is familiar and easily accessible. The downside it is only a spreadsheet and will only address the most basic NPD process needs.
The balance of the top 6 are made up of generic task management tools that are not specifically designed for the new product development process. Typically, these tools need to be setup and customised to each enterprise's NPD process requirements. This can be difficult, time consuming and delivers a less than optimal solution.
The software tools making up the lower 25% consist of a mix of generic task management tools and NPD software systems.
NorvaSoft Assessment
Overall, it was surprising to see the mix of software tools used by enterprises leaned more towards Excel and the task management apps. Based on these statistics and feedback from the interviews, we think this can be explained by the lack of focus and experience the enterprise ICT groups have with NPD process and the available technologies. In addition, most ERP (Enterprise Resources Planning) systems do not have a module that covers the NPD process, with the NPD teams considered as an afterthought compared with finance and supply chain functions.
If your business uses Excel or a task management application for managing the NPD process, then contact us about joining the NorvaSoft NPDApp Early Adopter Program.
You can sign up here: Yes, I'd love to join the NPDApp EAP