You can learn a lot by studying your product data, but the real magic happens when product managers blend different types of data from different sources. If you want to blend data and intuition to make bold decisions that move your product forward, you'll need to open yourself up to new data sources - but where do you get this new information? Rene Kolga, Senior Director of Product and Marketing at Nyotron, knows the answer: from other teams in your organization! Join us as Rene goes through the different teams you'll find in a B2B organization, how to build a strong relationship with those teams, and what kinds of insights you can get that will benefit your product.

1. Leveraging Your Organization for Best Product
Decisions
Rene Kolga Hannah Flynn
With: Moderated by:
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Empowering Product Teams
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2. Revulytics gives any software producers deep and actionable insight into
who is using their software products and how they are being used, and the
out-of-box analytics that enable them to grow incremental revenue, convert
and retain customers, and make decisions about licensing and cloud
transformation strategies.

3. Empowering Product Teams
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Click on the Questions panel to
interact with the presenters
www.productmanagementtoday.com/webinar-series/empowering-product-teams

4. About Rene Kolga
Rene Kolga has 15 years of product management experience in the B2B space, with ownership over 40 enterprise
products and annual revenue up to $300m. He run Product teams at multiple Fortune 500 companies and Silicon
Valley startups, including Symantec, Citrix, Altiris, ThinAir and Nyotron. Prior to his PM career, Rene led global QA
and Support teams. Rene earned his Computer Science degree from Tallinn University of Technology and
received an MBA from University of Utah. Rene frequently writes and speaks on cybersecurity and product
management topics.
About Hannah Flynn
Hannah went to The University of Chicago, where she majored in Environmental Studies with a concentration in
Economics and Policy. She now works with Aggregage on social media strategy and webinar production for Product
Management Today and B2B Marketing Zone.
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POLL

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Agenda
• What is data?
• PM decision making
• Sources of data
• 10 internal teams to leverage
• Wrap-up

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What Is Data?
Data / Information != Knowledge
Data (definition):
• Factual information (such as measurements or
statistics) used as a basis for reasoning,
discussion, or calculation.
• Information … that includes both useful and
irrelevant or redundant information and must be
processed to be meaningful

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Reliance on Data
Data != Future
• Data [models], by their nature, are based on the past,
and on the assumption that patterns will repeat.
• Big data processes codify the past. They do not
invent the future.

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PM Decision Making
Awesome product decisions
Intuition/experience
Qualitative data
Quantitative data

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Sources of Data Internal:
• Product analytics/telemetry
• Marketing
• Sales
• Sales Engineering (SE)
• Technical Support
• Customer Success
• QA
• Engineering
• Finance
• Legal
• Execs
External:
• Customers
• Competitors
• Analysts
Our focus today

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Marketing
What can we learn from Marketing?
• Market trends
• Competitors’ moves
• What resonates and what doesn’t
(messaging)?
Source:
• Meetings
• Analyst reports
• Online stats
Frequency:
• Weekly

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Sales
What can we learn from Sales?
• What prospects are asking for*
• Pricing
• Customer profile(s)
Source:
• Win-loss reports
• Ride-alongs
Frequency:
• Bi-weekly
• Ad hoc * Thread carefully

13. 13
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Sales Engineering
What can we learn from SEs?
• Feature gaps
• Product rough spots (e.g. POC killers)
Source:
• POC notes
• Ride-alongs (on-site)
Frequency:
• Bi-weekly

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Technical Support
What can we learn from Support?
• Product rough spots and dissatisfaction factors
• Typical feature requests
• Product version distribution
Source:
• Ticket tracking system
• Top 10 issue list
• Tech support for a day
Frequency:
• Monthly

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Customer Success
What can we learn from Customer Success?
• Adoption hurdles
• Churn factors
Source:
• CRM
• Hot customers list
• Ride-alongs
Frequency:
• Bi-weekly

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Quality Assurance/Test
What can we learn from QA?
• Adoption bottlenecks/product rough spots
• Performance issues
Source:
• Bug tracking
system
Frequency:
• Every sprint
• Ad hoc

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Engineering/Dev
What can we learn from Engineering?
• Technology trends
• New features
• Better ways of doing things
• Tech debt
Source:
• Retrospective
• 1-on-1s
Frequency:
• Every sprint
• Every opportunity

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Finance
What can we learn from Finance?
• Revenue & costs
• LTV
Source:
• Financial
system
Frequency:
• Monthly/
Quarterly

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Legal
What can we learn from Legal?
• Legal risks (viability questions?)
• Privacy and certification requirements
Source:
• Face to face
meeting
Frequency:
• Quarterly
• New regulation
• New partnership
/integration

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Executives
What can we learn from Execs?
• Company strategy and priorities
• Hot topics
Source:
• Face to face meeting
• All hands
• Earnings call
Frequency:
• Quarterly
• Ad hoc

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PM Decision Making
Awesome product decisions
Intuition/experience
Qualitative data
Quantitative data

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POLL

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Wrap-Up
1. Don’t blindly believe one source of data (especially quantitative)
2. Quant data doesn’t predict the future
3. Broaden the aperture for information intake
4. Blend quant and qual data
5. Leverage your entire organization
• Other teams - UX/CX, pricing&licensing, DevOps, Security, internal
IT
• Make friends along the way

24. Empowering Product Teams
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Q&A
Hannah Flynn
With: Moderated by:
Sr. Director of Product, Nyotron
Linkedin page: /in/renekolga/
Twitter ID: @nyotron
Website: nyotron.com
Rene Kolga
Site editor, Product Management Today
Linkedin page: /in/hannahmflynn
Twitter ID: @prodmgmttoday
Email: hannah@aggregage.com
Website: productmanagementtoday.com
www.productmanagementtoday.com/webinar-series/empowering-product-teams