Know-How Exchange : Strategy

Hi, Yegor

Thank you for posting your question. Your USP messaging is not as clear is it could be. I reread a few times in an attempt to decipher the gist of your communication.

Another idea:
Full-Scale Project Management for Smaller Projects

Let me ask you this first though before trying to develop a more targeted USP. What is the advantage offered by the full-scale project management to the smaller-scale agile project? Do users tend NOT to use a project management tool/toolkit for smaller projects?

Another Idea:
New, Easy to Use Project Management Toolkit for Small Projects

Let's try to pull out the tangible benefits of your custom software and then develop a more targeted USP :)

Look forward to additional info/post to better help you.

Marketing-Riot

Its a good tagline or descriptor, but its not a USP. The USP might be the "innovative full-scale project management" if it is unique to your firm and not something a competitor can say. Remember you probably will have many USP's. You are selling solutions and not "one size fits all". So the USP that might jazz one client might not jazz another.

Your success is under your control... - This is vague

...in agile projects... - I would capitalize Agile, since it's a product owned by Oracle. I might even ™ Agile to make it clearer what you're talking about.

...with our innovative... - Too vague

...full-scale project management - Full-scale? Does that mean you're the only company providing such feature/benefit?

Like others have mentioned, I'd encourage you to focus more on the benefit of using your software, not the mechanics.

Thanks for the responses, they really help. Could you please tell me how shall I evaluate the USP? What are the criteria? How can I understand that USP is good or it is bad? And for whom? For me, for my customers?

I do appreciate your responses, but I would like to be able to align them with some "main concept" behind the USP. Maybe some link?

Thanks!

I googled what is a "unique selling proposition" (also called point) and got thousands of hits. Here is one that explains it simply. https://www.profitadvisors.com/usp.shtml

A USP is a differentiator. Its why someone would choose you vs a competitor. Its something your competitor would not be able to say "me too".

When I run meetings to find USP's, I have the group just call things out and start writing on a board or use large post its. You can brainstorm on your own. Why do people choose you vs your competitor?

Typically they tell me "great service" or prices. Those are not differentiators in most industries-- people expect good prices and great service. But don't discard any right now. Just keep drilling -- then start eliminating.

If a competitor can say "me too", its not a differentiator.

Just a note: If you want to know if your USP is effective, you should ask your customers, not a bunch of marketing people. Unless we happen to be project managers familiar with large and small scale projects and project management tools, we aren't going to have much to go on to determine if the USP hits home except use of exciting language, perhaps.

Having had experience in past lives as an engineering manager for large and small scale projects, I can try to put myself back into that role and provide you with an example of how you may determine a USP.

First, in small scale projects, the “project manager” is usually a person who has multiple roles. As a project manager, management has task him/her with the role of leading the other team members in keeping the project on track. In addition, management wants regular updates on how things are going. On top of that, he/she probably is a resource and has tasks to perform for the project. So the project manager has to run around checking on everyone, having team meetings to make sure everyone is communicating with each other, attend management meetings to tell management everything is OK, update the project plan, formulate and send out reports in several different forms and degrees of detail, AND actually get something done. Most times, a project manager feels he’s working for the project management tool versus the tool working for him/her.

The next thing is that project resources don’t think in terms of percentages of tasks being complete and don’t work on one task at a time or even one small project. They find it hard (and wasteful) to break down a task the way the tool wants them to. To complicate this, some tasks don’t have a finite outcome. In development, an engineer might run several experiments and the results will determine which way to go for the future of the project. Project tool doesn’t capture this and thus the project plan becomes incomplete or has to be reformulated later – more administrative burden!

Further, as a project manager, the ISO9001 guys bother me for process reporting detail. A good tool would help me with this as well.

From this experience, when I hear your tool ”applies professional and full-scale project management principles and methods to small and compact projects”, I begin to think that I’m going to have a NASA-like tool to feed and my first task for the project will be to create days with more than 24hrs! Scary!

So, if you are going to satisfy my pain uniquely, the USP may take the following form:

”A project management tool that provides for control and reporting without bureaucracy and burden”

This USP gets the emotional attention of your customers. After you have their attention, you should be able to point to features in your tool that support this:

o SimpleUpdate ™ - SImpleUpdate works in the background of a resource’s workstation with other tools to capture a real-time status. By monitoring the use of tools and results, SimpleUpdate will sense task endpoints automatically. Additionally, the resource and hit hot keys and bring up SimpleUpdate and report progress through simple check sheets.

o FlexiReport ™ - With FlexiReport, project status is available in real time. Project, functional, and corporate managers and team members can acquire reports as needed or on regular intervals. Report details can vary from Gantt charts, PERT charts, action item lists, or memo status reports. Formats are available in plain text, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or HTML.

o FuzzyTasks ™ - FuzzyTasks allows for multiple paths for the project to be created based on results of a task. When the FuzzyTask completion is reported, SimpleUpdate asks for the result and then automatically reformulates the project. Optional inputs for a FuzzyTask allow for input of probabilities for outcomes to allow for “most likely,” best case, and worst case estimates of project duration and critical paths.

o ProjComm ™ - ProjComm allows for setup of bulletin boards and capturing of instant messages between project members. Project managers can monitor these communications. Items can be selected to go to FlexiReport for reporting purposes.

o ProjectSemantics ™ - ProjectSemantics allows for standardization of task names and process flow for ease of continuous improvement and demonstration of compliance to ISO9001 standards. Additionally, ProjectSemantics speeds project plan formulation through use of dropdown text selection for task names.

Obviously, I don’t know if your tool has any of these features or that your target customers even want or need them. But, what you can see is that by understanding the pain and needs of your customers, you can formulate a succinct USP to address their pain. The USP gets their attention. Then, you can match the supporting features around that to show how you resolve that pain and meet their needs.

I hope this helps.

Wayde