hello everybody this is the minimum lovable product i am marco lanzi and i'm about to bring you behind the scenes of building digital experiences that people will love in the episode of today marcomena productly that you first accompany building digital software to actually digitalize queuing is going to tell us what cam first needs or ideas how do you change habits with digital technology and last but not least how do you break into product management so let's welcome marco welcome everyone and welcome back to mlvp uh we are here today with uh marco manna product lead at uh you first so welcome marco uh so tell us where does it come from and what what is it for yeah uh hello everyone first of all uh thanks marco to to to the invite the invitation uh what about you first um as you as you told uh to to to everyone before um i'm the product leader in you first you first operate in the virtual qms field uh and they own a suite of solutions for for enterprise customers that allow them to to handle uh everything uh related to the appointments uh cues and about the source the network of the source of this source so our our mission is to um optimize the user experience for the consumer so for the final user let me say but also for for the staff of the of the of the point of the of the office let me say uh and our vision is to help our customers in the process of digitalization of the user experience of the farmer's consumer uh working obviously with uh that created the approach because uh these allow us to better understand how it's working uh how is going to work into the into the network into the source and [Applause] work to optimize everything into the source let me say okay nice so i think like uh digital access to the store or to the facilities i think it's a i say from 2020 became a kind of uh must-have really hot topic so is this an idea that was born with kobe it was born pre-covered so how does it relate to it no the idea and the business already exists before the the coffee situation obviously and obviously during the pandemic we lived a a really fast growth in terms of obviously of of clients of dimension of the teams and blah blah blah because the kovid create a new sort of needs not only for the for our customers for the clients but also and mainly for the final consumers that start to think to optimize my experience what optimize my time i need to book an appointment to have the access to a specific service so before the copied we worked to create a stable platform and we was lacking the unlucky situation uh because we let me say have the base to to to better work during the the the corvids and to intercept and you need uh growing in terms of of business and arrive here with the vision to change the approach in terms of how the service our are provided consumers okay okay nice so was something that actually is like one of those examples where like you guys anticipated the need it was there and then all of a sudden the word change transformed yeah yeah the great thing was that during the pandemic we create we build a sort of new product just for one of our enterprise clients and we we work with with our with our users because every feedback that we received we started to think okay this is something that makes sense so we have to develop it it was something continuous let me say release because of the code but we it was really exciting to think something that let me say grow with the users okay so how do you get the feedback from the from the consumer from the customers uh it depends uh mainly directly from our client because uh we unleaded the access to the stores it was a supermarket and so we directly see which was the experience uh during the queue and for the entrance and when people go out from the from the store but also um adding to the to to to our consumer application a sort of a a powerful tools of tracking to understand how does it working uh uh in this best uh let me say traffic period uh mainly directly seeing what happened okay okay so was really like on the field uh testing uh as a real user of what we read all the all the all the reviews okay this it seems that this is not working okay let's let us check okay that's nice so i guess you guys then iterate with agile then to to adjust absolutely yes absolutely in agile way all the team was committed to to release and roll out this uh this kind of product working close to the to the to the client uh to provide the best solution as possible also because uh the period was really strange let me say so uh it was something something similar to a mission that we felt uh in ourselves got it no no and definitely i can tell you like in the supermarket especially in milan like during last year q was really a big thing unfortunately but yeah yeah yeah uh okay so now this is super super cool now my question around digital transformation here is like uh you are like transforming how we make the queue or even inventing a category if you wish because like uh before booking online to make a queue to go supermarket i think no one probably have fought we would have thought about it in 10 years or so so what are the challenges when you when you face this making you industry the challenges uh uh was uh start from from the first moment to think to the next transformation that we have to handle because uh because the cue is the the way to understand which are the needs that live around uh all the user experience of the co of the final consumer uh the queue is just apart is the waiting part of a of a a big issue uh i have i need something and uh some some other entity have to erogate some services to me okay so our first approach is to think okay how we can solve more more issues both for our uh let me say actor actors the the the consumer and the and the company so we started to think okay what we have to do to facilitate uh the access to services and we started to work to a new roadmap to put in place something that allowed us after the covet situation to optimize the irrigation of the services so we are going to expand the markets we are uh where we are present obviously and to introduce new kind of functionalities that can help both the the staff the the the the store to optimize and digitalize the user experience of the consumers this is the objective and the vision and the and also the challenge for this last month of uh 2021 and uh for the 2022 obviously okay so if i if i see what you if i hear what you're saying you're you're saying like it's not just about making the queue that's just like a part of the experience but it's like okay if i look at my consumer the queue is a min to get to something like absolutely it's a price i need to pay to uh reach about location reach an object with something which is in demand and of course uh requires uh pulling of people to kill yeah okay okay so like okay how do we look broader and end to end of actually what needs to to get there is really the the the question and the challenge is that is more with the let's say it's more with the final user is with your customers or the stores that need to provide a service or some goods or like what are they the major challenges you're facing the challenge is to um is to is to switch from uh just a b2b business model uh because currently our target is obviously the the companies not because the final consumer is not important but because uh uh in one way people must to uh be in queue let me say in this period uh so the challenge is to switch from b to b to a b to b to c b where we consider both consumer and customers as a a part of our business in a more consistent way working to let me say get closer the consumers with our customers because our consumers are the client of our customers so the way we get in touch these two kind of of users is our critical success factor let me say because we can sell to our our products to our customers but if they don't have to if they don't have if with this solution has not uh that did not intercept their clients obviously they don't want them they don't want to pay to our pro to our solution claire you need to have like a scarcity which is in this case is the location a lot of people that need to access to it at the same time and that is where you create the need that you go and solve actually with your product but but no not only given that the chance to have more access to the source but also maybe to digitalize the the delegation of the service maybe uh not everything uh have have to be irrigated directly a lot of things should be uh provided uh in a digital way and why not why not to to to to try to provide them change the world changing uh let me say the feel loss of our daily life uh providing something different now that's that's super interesting and let me ask you one thing if you can share how many how many people are cueing with your product i'm from sicily i can i can i can let me say tell you this story that transformed this work for me in your first as a sort of mission every time from rome when i was at university i i take a flight to to come back in sicily i saw all sicilian people that for their mind can't stay lying when they are waiting for the for board to the to the plate and i i didn't understand why this is a line it's simple no people one people are in the right one people one person in the left so it was really strange how many people is in queue a lot of people we have uh something like uh one million of active uh one million of active users uh so there are a lot of people that feel this need uh we have to provide that the best solution as possible so to to give them the chance to have something more that a simple way to stay in queue to stay in line okay this is uh this is a factor that we have to consider but this is a need that people have also because we are we are speaking uh in uh not not in presence we are we are doing a podcast so maybe you can have a lot of people to to have an interview in life maybe i don't know so okay so now the thing this is really also i think really funny because uh being italian we can say we italians we are not stronger making cues as marco was also calling out i think is notoriously known but the good part is that there are some italians who are actually working on an application on a service to make italians even stay in we are changing the world guys this is the real challenge to change italian people yellow no that that that's super cool and uh so go into your uh let's say your your journey your career for the through the digital i i saw you you work in uh multiple startups multiple scale up uh so what's the difference working in a startup versus working in a scale up pros and cons good and bad yeah uh i think the the good thing is uh that the pros the best pros that i that i have learned is the the trust to see really much different things and live much different situation because in my professional journey my first need was to accelerate how my responsibilities grow and uh change context uh uh three four times in the first eight to ten ten years of of my career helped me to face uh a lot of different situations to handle in terms of uh uh managing things in terms of uh things of the uh oh oh oh oh of of new functionality of new things that i have discovered and in terms of also of structure of the of the company because uh uh obviously uh the approach that you have handling product team and working with uh different stakeholders like developers but also all the business side and external stakeholders have to change uh in according with the with the with uh with the context uh so uh and in according with the priority of the business so somewhere uh one of my first focus was to intercept the needs of the different local markets and this was a really hard work and put them in line let me say in terms of priority and the importance of the of the market in other places the market request wasn't really important because uh the the need was to develop the product to uh to to to reach the standard of the markets and after this phase you have to start to put in place processes to handle the request and the needs of the of the different local markets let me say uh so learned me i i've learned from this from all these changes that one of the best skill that as product manager had the product you have to to have is the empathy try to understand which is the person that you have in front um and try to understand which are the needs of your stakeholders and work to translate the needs in something concrete that can put value in your product and in your business okay so what you're saying is like it doesn't matter like ultimately which challenges you're facing if to be like a good product person what you really need to look into is like as you say like empathy like really try to empathize with your user put yourself in different perspective to understand and say okay what the my user that will keep on changing and actually can change also during the business like b to b b to c b to b to c what he's looking for what can i give to him absolutely and if i can add a thing everyone is is a user what what changes so my my stakeholders are my users so i have my approach is that they have i have to provide them solution as they are the user of my application uh the logic is the same what changes the context the technologies the the the the characteristics of the end skills of the people of the teams but every one of us is a user i agree can uh can just agree with that but one question so if we if we say let's say being a product person do you see difference if you are in a startup so you really need to take care about everything or if you're on a scale up where you're more maybe verticalized on one topic do you see differences or not really it depends on how the team is structured first of all and it depends by the objective it depends from a lot of different variables that you can have um for sure uh a good product person have to uh have context on the product that's home so have to understand everything about your product have to have a vision uh independently from the let me say that the role that you have you can be just uh here let me say or the end of product but every person of the team has to have a clear vision what the product should be okay this is a factor that must be present uh in every side of company because this is the that is the base of the of the of the evolution of something second thing is you have to to use the product you have to use your product and you have you have to use all the products that we have so you have to download new application you have to use them you have to understand how to log on it you have to understand the different user journey for sure if you have a different kind of needs so a more structured company like a scale-up should have the need to have different uh let me say uh teams that work as a scrum team vertically in a specific kind of bandwidth okay so this could be something that could be useful but all the team the entire team should be must be aligned on the high level strategies online level vision because if from one end parallelizing you obviously have the chance to go faster but this is not 13 let me say uh from another and you could have a bottleneck in terms of alignment in terms of stay everything in the same table in the same place okay no no thanks a lot for that so like ultimately we go back like if you need to if you know your consumer you know your customer your end user and you know what your what is what are the needs that you're trying to solve that's what's important that you are in a small startup or in a huge uh corporation this is ultimately what's the the key part absolutely yes so to go to our like closing question to talking about product i know that like uh you didn't start out from from product actually you you got this you discovered during your journey so uh suggestion for the person that maybe want to start in the project man in the product management field what are your suggestions first of all don't be scared because uh this is a strange work and at the same time i think this is the added value of this work because you have the chance to be in the middle between the business side and the product technology side of a company and this is something really great because you have the the ownership to translate two different languages that came from two different kind of people because if you are starting now to work you will understand that developers are really strange sometimes but at the same time also the business side that business people sometimes is really strange so you have you are in charge to to translate words that are really understandable for both of the parts to the other one so be patient don't be scared about all the difficulties and work on your soft skills for sure because your empathy how you understand people is really really important and don't lose time to don't try your product use your product because all the operative things i i don't want to give you feedbacks about overall thing operative things because this is a word on how to write a user stories on how to handle a backlog and there is not a unique way to do this in the right way uh obviously there are rules there are ways to to work but work on yourself work to understand the needs and uh consider everything as a user okay no no thanks a lot for that so every every being user sentry can consider everyone as a user i think are two things really powerful together and so what you're saying like work on your hard skills but ultimately if you really think to i need to serve provide a service to someone being the technology side being the business side and ultimately put it together to get it to my final user that's the value added of being a product person doesn't matter in which level you are of uh cool uh no thanks a lot marco for uh follow your experience and all your sharing been uh really like a pleasure to to speak with you look looking forward to know also how the uh the product also is going to evolve now that you guys are working on the hopefully fingers crossed post pandemic world and uh yeah so we love to to hear more about you in the maybe in some coming months for the time being i think thanks a lot for being here and uh thanks everyone thanks to you marco and thanks to everyone it was a pleasure to to share my my my experience with you so thank you yeah thanks a lot everyone and stay tuned for the next episode thank you for listening i hope you enjoy the show if you're keen to leave a review or subscribe it helps more than you know i hope to see you soon in the next episode stay tuned
2022-05-22