Bala Mageswaran is an experienced software professional and product executive with twenty-five years of experience in envisioning, developing, and implementing real-time control and status solutions for the transportation industry. Bala has hands-on experience in team development, product vision, execution, strong product culture, software design and development, systems integration, customer relationship management, sales enablement, cost estimation, negotiation, driving organic and inorganic top-line growth along with margin accretion with a global staff of multiple offices.
With the fast-paced digital adoption across sectors, which is further accelerated by the pandemic, Product Engineering has gained tremendous significance over the last few months. The term ‘product engineering’ refers to the holistic process of conceptualising, designing, developing, testing and deploying a software/ technology solution to generate maximum value for its consumers. From a business point of view, the two key reasons why product engineering has gained a lot of significance today are:
- Fast-paced technology adoption across sectors: various sectors like Fin-tech and health-tech to manufacturing automation, logistics and warehousing, retail and even education, are looking for accelerated digital adoption, with customised solutions, so as to specifically address current challenges. This, in turn, is driving several IT solution providers to focus on innovative product engineering solutions that can help meet the growing demands of a dynamic market.
- Global, price-sensitive and highly competitive markets: With the volatile and price-sensitive markets, competition is another important factor driving brands to adopt superior and innovative product engineering, which can help them to not just deliver timely and efficient solutions but to also cut costs in the long run.
How is product engineering helping its consumers? It helps by:
- Constantly innovating to remain relevant: The new normal has driven brands across sectors to identify, innovate, and re-imagine solutions in order to stay relevant. And digital adoption through customised product engineering is at the core of creating a holistic, optimised business operation which can drive a business in times of dynamic volatility and yet remain relevant, visible, and effective.
- Deliver reliable and smart technological solution: With the fast-paced business evolution in an increasingly competitive world, it is vital for brands to be able to deliver products and solutions that are not only cost-effective but also reliable and technologically superior. And holistic product engineering approach helps brands leverage this in the most customised and impactful manner.
- Product/ solution optimisation: Optimisation is the keyword in today’s business processes, and in order to continue creating products and solutions which are superior and relevant, one needs to embrace the best of tech-enabled processes. Effective product engineering helps amplify a company’s core product and solution design by supporting it with smarter, tech-enabled processes, thereby creating a customer delight and loyalty.
- Cost-effective and high quality: The role of technology adoption in creating cost-effectiveness is not unknown. Through customised and innovative product engineering, brands can leverage effective tech solutions to build superior and cost-effective products/ solutions which can help build a stronger brand reputation and customer acceptance.
- Speedy and agile Operations: Driven by superior product engineering solutions can help drive operational efficiency, by creating processes that help speedy, agile and customised operations. This can become vital, especially during times like these, which demand more flexible and customised approach to operations, while maintaining the speed and quality of product and service offerings.
- Faster Reporting: Last but not least, effective product engineering helps amplify not only the speed, agility and cost optimisation of core operational processes, it also helps smarter data-driven analysis and can be leveraged for automated and faster reporting. This can go a long way in streamlining internal processes, optimising resources and ensuring a smooth and timely operational process.
As we usher in the era of smart products and solutions, big data, IoT and AI-enabled connected devices, business process automation, and a global network of the connected workforce, it is time we acknowledge and understand the potential of effective product engineering, which is at the core of the Business 4.0 revolution. India, with its vast IT domain expertise and product organisations, is already a leader in designing and implementing some of the most advanced product engineering solutions and its time this expertise is leveraged by not just the bigger Multi-national corporates’ but also the fast-evolving start-up and the Medium, Small and Micro Enterprises (MSME) ecosystem.