Product development has always been a risky operation. If a specific item doesn't resonate with its intended audience, businesses can suffer in multiple ways. Not only will they fail to yield projected profits, their reputations could be irreparably damaged.
However, technology has evolved to a point where companies can improve their product development operations by acquiring and processing real-time feedback almost instantly. This is a tremendously valuable addition to the development process because it allows workers to adjust their strategies before it's too late.
For example, software developers may want to get a sense of how their audience feels about a new app before it is released. By sharing components, typically through social media channels, companies can process their responses and utilize it to benefit their own practices.
An article in the online publication Hypebot lists a handful of trends that will dictate the future of product development. Social media and big data are both listed and, in this scenario, they go hand-in-hand.
However, Max Engal, article's author, says that while companies can collect more information, they must shift their concentration towards how to better process it.
"Users now exist in a world where their feedback is constantly collected in real-time, and the challenge is not how the sites get the data, but instead how to best analyze it in a meaningful way to gain actionable insights," Engal writes.
Implementing a database software system designed to give workers better access to pertinent data can prove to be beneficial to any product development initiative. The sooner the data is processed, the sooner it can be used to assist product management. Moreover, these applications can be used to give decision makers deeper insight as to the meaning of their information, in addition to expediting analytics. FileMaker can serve as the ideal tool for developing this sort of software.