Five phases new product development process for business-to-business customers in a telecommunication service provider

Abstract

New products are prevalent in technology-intensive industries such as telecommunication industry to stay in business and provides competitive advantage against the competitors. On average, product or service readiness takes more than a year which exceeds customer deadline. The aim of the study is to improve the existing New Product Development (NPD) process for business-to-business customers in one Internet Service Provider (ISP) in terms of shorter lead time and superior product features. The research was conducted using exploratory sequential mixed method – document review, interview and questionnaire. First, relevant documents on NPD frameworks were reviewed. Next, a total of ten participants consisted of account managers, solution consultants and solution integrator were interviewed to understand the issues they faced as well as improvement recommendations with the existing NPD process at the ISP. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the semi-structured interview responses. Then, a questionnaire survey was developed based on the interview analysis, and was distributed to 68 personnel from pre-sales division. Frequency analysis was used to analyse the questionnaire responses. The data from the three sources were triangulated and revealed the issues with the existing NPD process. The main issues highlighted were long productisation duration, inefficient process, limited supported product features, high dependencies on solution integrators, and these caused high out-payment, low profit margin, and long project timeline. Based on the findings, a process flow t-NPD consisting of five phases was proposed. The t-NPD was tested against an Internet-of-Things case study, Smart Home, and the results showed a shorter productisation duration of six months, and an additional revenue stream of RM1million with profit margin of 40% approximately. In addition, the t- NPD was validated by three external product managers. The findings indicate that the t-NPD is beneficial to the ISP in terms of shorter lead time and improved profitability, and also useful to other internet service provider companies in Malaysia.