How SNP Group created global team collaboration, feedback visibility & better products – with airfocus
Problem
A global product team didn’t have visibility of all roadmaps, and prioritization was vulnerable to subjectivity, making it difficult to ensure the best initiatives moved forward.
Solution
With airfocus, they have a single source of truth, and a transparent, data-driven prioritization process. They save time, and have clear direction as a department, building trust and better products as a result.
SNP Group is a global software provider specializing in enterprise data transformation. With its proprietary software platform, SNP enables companies to efficiently manage complex SAP migrations and IT modernization projects. Its product management organization, comprising over 40 people, works across multiple time zones.
The challenge: Connecting product teams across continents
“We are a cross-international team, so we have a lot of different time zones, different products, and that is a major challenge for us,” explains Kai Armbruster, Product Manager at SNP Group. The product organization spans across borders, and they have a classic product management challenge: passionate teams working hard on their own products, but without visibility across each others’ products.
Kai highlights the key challenges:
A lack of visibility: “We worked a lot with Jira in individual project teams around the world. There was always a little bit of ‘standalone teams’, fighting for their product, for their solution, for their ideas, never considering the other products in other teams.”
Inefficiencies: “There were a lot of challenges and time wasted – all triggered by less transparency.”
Limited customer feedback: “One of our biggest challenges at SNP is that we have such expert tools, so it's difficult to really come into connection and communication with the customer.”
No clear prioritization process: “Prioritization was a big topic at SNP, especially from our shift from service to software… sometimes it’s the one who shouts the loudest who gets heard. That's a problem if you want to get only the best ideas.”
The solution: A dedicated product management tool
Four years ago, SNP Group began the search for a dedicated product management platform – ultimately choosing airfocus for its flexibility, transparency, and product support. “We needed something where there's complete transparency and cross department and cross-functional work enabled – and that's definitely something airfocus can solve for us,” says Kai.
Roadmaps and visibility: “Everybody has access to our roadmaps externally and internally – everybody's now aware of what's going on.”
Customer feedback and collaboration: “With the challenges that we face in product management, some of the great features from airfocus is particularly the feedback feature where we can actually open that up to not just internal people that we're talking to every day, but partners, customers, and they can submit new ideas and new feedback.”
Democratized roadmaps: “Everyone can actively influence our roadmap as well. So it's not like one person only deciding what's going on. No, it's like a team effort, and we democratized the roadmaps in the end.”
The results: A unified team, saving time and building better products
“For me as a product manager it was always helpful to have one combined tool where I can see everything and where I can also have the understanding of where I'm coming from, what's going on and what are my next steps,” says Kai. “That's definitely something where airfocus is supporting my daily work and makes my life a little bit easier. That's something all product managers around the world can benefit from.”
The platform has become a home for SNP’s product teams.
Saving time through ‘self-serve’ information: “Having it in one place and having it where everyone can be directed to it, and see the same information, is really useful – especially when working across multiple teams.”
Collaborative, data-driven decisions: "Prioritization was a major improvement that we, as product management team, experienced through airfocus. I think the complete business is more involved in the development process and that's a big benefit. Not only our internal stakeholders, but also customers and partners – which is beneficial to creating the best possible product."
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