Despite being a nascent role, the Chief Product Officer is responsible for strategic, company-wide impacting decisions on a daily basis. There is a key difference between this role and any other Product leadership role. As articulated in the Path to CPO: “a CPO understands the end-to-end business, including the current financials, shareholder priorities, and customer/market perspective, and helps to drive decisions at that level.”
Any product leader today already understands the value, and applies, qualitative and quantitative research methods to a different extent to inform their perspectives so that they can make roadmap decisions and drive towards a positive outcome with every product release. Looking at the product from the eyes of the business is what is required on the next level of product leadership. It is a whole different dimension of data-informed decision-making that is required to drive a successful product portfolio strategy. That is where Product Operations value comes in.
A CPO, like all C-level executives, speaks to their peers and the Board with the language of finance. In order to have a holistic view of the business, they need to combine perspectives from different parts of the organization: finance, engineering, product, customer success, etc. By combining these perspectives, especially at a ScaleUp, one can make decisions based on what sustains and drives growth as well as what optimizes EBITDA.
It is Product Operation’s responsibility to provide insights to CPOs to:
- Manage a product portfolio strategy (make, take or partner)
- Defend investment cases
- Optimize spent
- Prioritize product efforts
- Drive retention
- Spot opportunities for Product Led Growth
CPOs, with the help of the outputs of Product Operations, hold the magnifying glass and slice the very view that CEOs and CFOs are already accustomed to looking at, to the level of contribution of each individual module within the product offering. This feeds strategic discussions among the C-Suite and the Board and enables the organization to fine-tune the levers towards growth and profitability.
