In today’s digital world, customer experience is progressively becoming a function of one thing: your product. Product-led digital transformation is now becoming the primary focus for many companies.
Gone are the days where the product is merely the vehicle by which you deliver core services. Your product itself is now the place where customers receive onboarding and support; sales and marketing messaging; opportunities to give feedback; and countless other kinds of additional engagement.
What does this shift mean? Above all else, the future of business is product-led. It’s a reality apparent across Europe. However, by any number of metrics, one country is especially taking the lead: France.
Product-led? Mais oui!
The 2022 State of Product Leadership report polled 350 tech product executives and managers across Europe. This report showcases that a product-led imperative for digital transformation is in France. According to the survey, half of the businesses in France say that product teams are the ones most responsible for driving transformation, compared to just 38% of companies in the UK.
In today’s app ecosystem, companies that want to thrive have no choice but to provide an excellent digital experience in their product. Nearly half of French businesses reported that customers’ shift towards the use of digital products would have a “major impact” on how they approach product management, compared with just 36% of businesses in the UK who said so.
Data-based decisions, s’il vous plaît
Given the primacy of products today, it makes sense that product managers are exercising increasing influence over driving business outcomes. They’re also playing a greater role in core business functions, including go-to-market strategy, customer feedback, and sales enablement.
How are they doing so? With the right tools and analytics, project managers and product teams can gain real insights into their customers’ data. This information could include: which features are being used most and adopted the quickest; where they may be struggling; and what in the product is providing them with the most value.
Leveraging these insights, they can then make better-informed decisions about what new features to prioritize, which existing features to improve or simply retire, and countless other product-related issues.
Here too, French companies seem to be leading the pack. 41% of French organisations say they’re using data insights to shape their product roadmap, compared to only 36% in the UK.
Au revoir to the old way of doing things
The product-led business model has transformed the way companies strategize. It has put the digital customer experience at the centre of everything. Organisations that want to thrive in a product-led world should take a page from their French colleagues. If they put the correct digital tools in place to harness data-backed insights in a scalable and efficient way, they will ensure their product is one that continues to amaze, astound, and above all delight their customers.
The data and insights provided here may be particularly useful to you to consider an expansion into the French market.