Enterprise Product Management 101

Used to bean bag chairs, ping pong tables, and flexible working schedules? Startups and enterprises don’t really mix. As these early seed companies are agile and spontaneous, the word “enterprise” itself might have you cringing or recoiling at the thought of an enterprise product development process.

It’s no secret that large, established corporations might pace themselves a lot differently than their early-stage counterparts. They’re much more leisurely and steady in their approach rather than fast-paced and overly active.

We’ll be looking at:

• Enterprise product development 101
• What the day-to-day roles and responsibilities of a PM in the big leagues look like
• A couple of handpicked case studies to illustrate enterprise product development in action

What is Enterprise Product Management?

Enterprise product management is really just product management on a larger, grander scale. It still involves all the typical stages of product management, such as planning, developing, launching, marketing, and making changes to a product, but with the added responsibilities of overseeing multiple product lineups in multiple markets and choreographing all these parts.

Rather than be laser-focused on just one product, enterprise product managers manage a few that span much longer periods of time. They deal with extensive budgets, a taller hierarchy of stakeholders, and a huge pool of resources and teams.

Some might classify an enterprise PM as a PM working in a large organization, while others might say it’s a PM that helps a company develop products for enterprises.

What Does an Enterprise Product Manager Do? 

If you come along with us on a day in the life of an enterprise product manager, you’ll see that it’s teeming with tasks, full of decisions to make, and dotted with moments of collaboration and solo work. Enterprise product management might sound like it’s on the other end of the spectrum from single product-focused roles for PMs in smaller companies, but the essence of it is still there.

Enterprise PMs usually juggle a couple of tasks daily, with their main goal to formulate a good product that has an entire organization at the top of their minds rather than the individual, like regular product management would. There’s also a deeper level of cross-functional team collaboration involved, making sure everyone knows what they’re meant to be doing and tying them to their specific involvement in the product. These PMs foster the harmony needed to bridge everyone together and bring products to completion.

On the daily, these enterprise product managers have to:

• Stay two steps ahead – Enterprise PMs need to be on the ball at all times. Slack just a little, and they’ll need plenty of time to play catch up. It’s not just about the here and now with these types of PMs; it’s about looking way ahead to see what’s coming up.
• Coordinate products and product lines – With so many projects on the go, enterprise PMs need to be on the pulse of all their products. Does anything need to be changed or improved? Are there any hiccups that need to be solved? Is everything going as planned?
• Listen to stakeholders and keep them in the loop – Investors, executives, board members, and other big stakeholders need to be kept in the know. And that means, in turn, also addressing any concerns and dealing with both valuable and potentially unwarranted advice about ongoing projects.
• Crunch numbers – On top of all their existing responsibility, they also have to deal with a lot of data. That includes customer feedback, market research, sales data, and other sets of performance data that will help gauge product performance and inform future actions.
• Tackle the unexpected – To say the day-to-day work of a product manager isn’t always smooth sailing would be an understatement. Take the word “enterprise” in front of that job title and you’ve got a whole new level of chaos. When surprises come up, enterprise product managers need to thrive in them rather than panic.

A Few Examples of Enterprise Product Management 

If we take a look at Zendesk Sell as an example, we can see that it has all the makings of an enterprise product. Zendesk Sell was developed as a CRM system that helps businesses centralize all their sales and marketing tools. Instead of having separate apps for email automation and analytics, this platform provides an intuitive way to handle calls, emails, meetings, and closing deals. 

We could also spotlight Slack, the hot modern app transforming company communication from old school to new school. Email threads are out and simple direct messages and group chats are in with this nifty platform. The product was designed to consolidate all workplace communication in one place, complete with file uploads, a voice and video chat feature, and plenty of integrations so companies can merge their data and workflows. 

And what about Zoom? Rising to fame during the pandemic in 2020, it became the ultimate remote workplace tool for teams to connect and collaborate. With everyone working from all around the world, it provided an effortless way to conduct high-quality webinars and large meetings. Zoom eventually expanded their product to include other connection features for the workplace, such as customer care tools and productivity solutions.

The PM’s Hot Take 

Being an enterprise product manager is a lot like running one of those busy diners that have been around for 50 years. There’s so much going on in their daily operations – the cooks cook, the servers take orders, and the patrons come in and out like clockwork. Each part plays a massive role in the overall system, and the manager is responsible for making it stay successful. It’s sort of like a controlled chaos that is equally as demanding as it is rewarding. While agile startups might not find this approach appealing, there’s definitely a reason why enterprises stick to this tried-and-true methodology.

Conclusion 

Exploring the world of enterprise product management can certainly feel foreign, especially if you’re not used to the inner workers of a large corporation. Fibery is one of those useful tools that can accommodate just about any aspect of product management for any size business, thanks to its flexibility and versatility. With a 14-day free trial, you can discover the plethora of incredible workflows, visualizations, databases, and more that come with Fibery.

FAQ

Q: What is enterprise product management?

What makes enterprise product management different from just “product management” is scale and depth. While typical PMs often handle just one product at a time and focus on consolidating everyone and all their tasks stage-by-stage, enterprise PMs need to juggle several products at once. It involves a deep understanding of the audience, a much wider net of stakeholders, and many more responsibilities within the product life cycle.

Q: What is the role of a product manager in an enterprise?

Enterprise product managers are like the hub or centralized control tower for the entire product management or development team. They bring together the development, sales, customer service, marketing, and tech teams so all their efforts contribute to getting the product to market. These PMs manage a full suite of products, make key decisions based on market research, and hone in on strategies for product growth.

Q: What do enterprise products do?

Enterprise products essentially work to solve the problems of large corporations. Maybe they need a system to handle their overwhelming amount of data or need custom software to deal with all the operational processes they’ve got going on. These products could be robust CRM systems or large-scale analytics platforms, for example, that keep these companies running like well-oiled machines.

Q: What are examples of enterprise products?

Some strong examples of enterprise products might include Salesforce’s customer-relationship management system or even Microsoft’s Power BI – a way for companies to visualize their business data. These products have a dual target – entire organizations and the goals of stakeholders developing the product itself.