72: Product Managing Internal Tools

How To Succeed In Product Management | Jeffrey Shulman, Red Russak & Soumeya Benghanem

In this episode of the How to Succeed in Product Management Podcast, marketing professor Jeff Shulman and The Product Management Center advisory board members Red Russak and Soumeya Benghanem welcome Charles Stewart (Autodesk) and Dimple Singhania (Walmart) as they discuss product managing internal tools. PMs should know about the internal tools that companies use to help automate workflows, store data information for security, and connect the different organizations in a company like marketing or finance.

Disclaimer: All opinions of the speakers are their own.

Support for How to Succeed in Product Management is brought to you by Apptentive, which enables product managers to measure shifts in customer emotion and gather actionable feedback across the mobile customer journey. To learn more, go to Apptentive.com/UW.

What to Listen For:

• 00:00 Intro
• 09:42 Measuring success when building an internal tool
• 11:25 Associate satisfaction
• 12:38 Building a common language for people to use
• 14:05 Think about the employee experience
• 16:18 Take into account the consistency of human behavior
• 18:28 Communication channels for PMs
• 22:03 Creating a tool that works for the entire enterprise
• 24:19 Taking a product market mindset to internal tools
• 26:08 Build vs. buy
• 32:09 Competitive advantage in terms of build vs. buy
• 34:15 Compatibility with your own already built or bought tools
• 38:45 Product shift
• 42:23 Pushing forward with the modernization approach
• 45:52 The friction unique to internal tools
• 48:37 Final thoughts