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Vesa Purho
Development Manager, Nokia
The Ansoff Matrix, which was first published in 1957 in the
Harvard Business Review is used to select strategies for
growth based on whether the growth is gained from existing
or new markets and with existing or new products.
As a result of analyzing the different possibilities,
management typically chooses only one of the four strategies
because spreading resources into different strategies can
easily fail. The strategy a company chooses should be reflected
in the customer documentation. Let's take a brief
look at the different options and their effect on
documentation.
Existing Products for Existing Markets
In this segment, a company can withdraw from some markets or
cease to make some products. Initially, withdrawal may not
seem like a growth strategy but, for example, if resources
are scarce, concentrating resources into products that
really bring revenue to the company instead of trying to
compete with strong competitors can be a smart move. In this
case, the documentation of the products stops if the
products are not created any more, or if the withdrawal
concerns only part of the market, the documentation may not
address the needs of that particular market.
Another option for the company is to improve the value of
its current products and services to maintain its strong
position as the market changes due to new entrants and
competitors' moves. This option requires increased usability
of documentation and, possibly, good training programs. So
studying users, gathering customer feedback, and monitoring
service desk calls are the actions to take to increase
customer satisfaction.
A third option is to try to gain market share by reducing
the price of the product. This option generally means
lowering the development and production costs, which means
that the documentation also has to be analysed carefully to
decide what is really needed by the customer and stop
spending money on nice-to-have documents or features in the
documentation.
New Products for Existing Markets
In this segment, a company develops new products for its
existing customers either by using its current competencies
or by getting new competencies. If the need for product
development comes from changing user needs, then the task is
to understand those needs and fit the products to them. When
the company is using this strategy, you can use your
existing user knowledge as a base to create documentation
for the new products and, perhaps even more important, use
your user analysis skills to find out the new requirements
and feed them back to product and documentation development.
Existing Products for New Markets
In this segment, a company may extend its products to new
market segments. For example, the company may decide to
market a documentation-management system, which was
originally created for managing legal records, to other
types of companies. This strategy usually means slight
changes to the product to accommodate the needs of the new
market. Another option is to develop new uses for existing
products, which then require changes in documentation to
reflect the terminology and tasks of the new use. The third
option is to move into new geographical areas, which may
then require translation of the documents, which in turn
means that the source text should be created so that it is
easy to translate or localise.
New Products for New Markets
Diversification is the most difficult transition a company
can make because everything is new. Related diversification
means that the new market somehow relates to the company's
current market. For example, a car manufacturer may start
making motorcycles as well as cars, or a manufacturing
company may start selling its products instead of using
resellers. An unrelated diversification happens when a
company moves to totally new markets, such as when a telecom
company starts making tissue paper. A company may also use
its competencies and resources to create totally new markets
that did not exist before.
For the documentation organisation, diversification also
means major changes if the company intends to create good
documentation. Understanding the new markets and customers
and creating appropriate documentation to support the
marketing efforts and initial pilots can contribute to the
diversification effort. This strategy can take place at the
beginning of a Technology Adaptation Life Cycle if the
product is a revolutionary high-tech product. Then the life
cycle model can aid in determining what kind of
documentation the users require.
Conclusion
Knowing what strategies a company is pursuing in general and
adapting the documentation to those strategies is very
important to gain recognition from management. Producing the
same type of documentation as you produced before may not
suit the customers' needs or the goals of the company.
Documentation organisations can support the company's growth
efforts by producing the right kind of documentation at the
right time. What it all comes down to is knowing the users
of your products. If you know the users and know your
company's strategic plans, you can be prepared for the new
challenges and can contribute effectively to you company's
efforts.
Read more about the Ansoff Matrix and its use online where
you can find many articles. One of the sites I found useful
was http://www.nvq5.com/businessreview/ansoff.shtml.
Also, an extensive discussion of the matrix and its effects
on the strategies and competencies of a company is available
in Exploring Corporate Strategy (Prentice Hall 1999).
Visit amazon.com
for more information about the book.
This article is the personal opinion of the author and does
not necessarily reflect the opinion or practice of Nokia.
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