Our product development starts with market research, where we engage with customers to get an understanding of their requirements and the scale or size of each opportunity. Then generally the marketing team will meet with the product development managers to come up with an initial version of the specification - which changes over time.
Then we move on to the prototype phase, where we do a lot of testing and finetuning, followed by market testing where we'll install the system in a real-life environment to continue finetuning. Then we'll re-engage with the customer to get an idea of any more requirements or changes they may have. And once the product is market ready we generally do a product demonstration to our global distributors and start the marketing process.
Do you work with third parties or collaborate with others in any way during the process?
Yes, we contract outside specialists who we have longstanding relationships with - people like radio frequency engineers, additional software programmers and testing laboratories for compliance and certifications that allow us to sell our products in Europe and the US.
We also work with our agents and distributors during the product testing phase, getting them involved and getting feedback from the market. We want to get them excited and to feel they're part of the design process, which gives them a greater depth of knowledge and ownership of the product. That all means much better marketing.
Have you accessed any help with funding for any of your developments?
Heavy investment in product development has been really critical to maintaining our market position and we have to be able get our ideas developed and onto the market ahead of our competitors. Funding support can be critical to that.
We've traditionally worked lean in this area, but recently sought some funding assistance to speed development of a wireless guidance system. Thanks to a Callaghan Innovation grant we were able to get the system to market in just 14 months; without that funding, it would have taken us four times as long, and by then a competitor could well have slipped in ahead of us.
But in terms of funding support, we traditionally haven't sought help. It's really only in the past few years that we've reached out to government to help speed our product development so we can get our innovations to market faster.
What's your view more generally on the support available to companies developing new products?
We're very much of the view that New Zealand has to reduce its reliance on primary produce as its main export earner and we've got a huge platform for innovation growth among our startups and established businesses. So government innovation grants are essential to their success, especially for our startups delivering huge bang for those bucks.
The quality of support we got from Callaghan was fantastic and I think the return on investment for New Zealand is significant. We immediately ploughed the grant into creating jobs building up our team, so we put that money straight into salaries, which go immediately back into the local economy.
I do think there's a lot of focus on Wellington, Auckland, Christchurch and Hamilton as the hubs of innovation while many of the smaller, provincial areas are seen by some economic commentators as 'zombie towns'. But we're based in the Manawatu and I think we've shown world-leading innovation can come from anywhere - and it often comes from the regions.
So would you say funding product development is the biggest challenge of the process?
Yes. Developing products fast enough to meet market opportunities and - therefore get sales to fund further development - is the most challenging part. One of the ways we've overcome that is by getting a key customer interested and excited very early in the design stage and committed to buying. With that level of forward selling, they'll then buy the product, which allows us to further fine tune it.
Coming up in Your Business: How do you outsource offshore? What are the options, how does it work on a practical level, and what are some of the pitfalls? If you've got a story to share, drop me a note: nzhsmallbusiness@gmail.com
