July 2011

Solutions Marketing –
Defining the Solutions Creation Process

Presented by:
Sumit Sood
MBA Student - 2011
Hult International Business School
Boston, MA

Table of Contents 1. Objective

2. Scope

3. Methodology

4. Differentiating Products, Services and Solutions Marketing
4.1. Solutions
4.2. Products
4.3. Services

5. Identifying the differences
5.1. Solutions Marketing is significantly more complex
5.2. Solutions Marketing requires different skill sets
5.3. Solutions Marketing requires different go-to-market strategies
5.4. Solutions Marketing is highly customized

6. Product Development Process
6.1. Stage Gate Process
6.2. Agile Process
6.3. Waterfall
6.4. Differences
5. IDENTIFYING THE DIFFERENCES

5.1. SOLUTIONS MARKETING IS SIGNIFICANTLY MORE COMPLEX THAN PRODUCT AND SERVICES MARKETING
Solutions marketing, almost by definition requires that marketing start with the customer instead of the services or products that a company has already developed and is prepared to offer. By starting with true customer needs, marketing often discovers that the customer actually needs a blended set of the company’s offerings since the customer’s business problems are broad and deep enough that a single offering won’t be sufficient to deliver real value. Marketing is then required to create new offerings, which requires the blended assets, resources and processes that are already embedded in the products and services. The integration of these existing products and services can be relatively straightforward – a single product with the addition of an analytical or support service – or highly complex – e.g., the integration of 10-20 separate products with pre-installation analytical services followed by outsourced managed services and/or continuous operational and support services.
The final major complicating factor is that the true customer solution requires that other partnering companies contribute their products and services in order to create the new solutions offering that will deliver the value and benefits that the customer expects and needs.

Given the additional layers of