New site provides free messaging software for Product Management and Product Marketing Professionals
Montreal, Quebec - April 25, 2007 - FeaturePlan, requirements management software for Product Management, today announced that it has become a Charter Member of the Value Mapping Consortium, a network of over a dozen thought-leading companies in the product management, marketing and sales effectiveness space.
The Consortium's mission is to provide a knowledge-sharing forum that helps companies accelerate the transition from product marketing to solutions marketing. It also provides free messaging software for product managers and marketer that helps them define and communicate the value and differentiation of their products and services from the customer's perspective.
The Consortium is the brainchild of Bob Schmonsees, author of the definitive book on marketing and sales alignment and effectiveness, `Escaping the Black Hole' (Thomson/AMA 2005). He is also the inventor of the Value Mapping process, one of the only marketing and sales processes ever to have been granted a US patent.
`If you're serious about selling solutions, then you need to define your company's value and differentiation in terms of the customer problems you solve, not just the products you sell,' says Schmonsees.. `I know this sounds like Marketing 101, but most companies struggle in this regard. As a result, they fail to reflect the customer's perspective in their marketing messages and selling conversations.'
Rene Bellei, CEO of Ryma Technology Solutions Inc., creator of FeaturePlan, agrees: `Product managers and marketers can play a leadership role in their company's transition from products to solutions. The software industry alone spends billions each year on solutions selling training and most of it doesn't stick because we fail to combine it with effective solutions marketing.'
The Consortium provides a free, self-directed learning system called ValueMapper Basic, which teaches product managers and marketers the best practices of solution-centric positioning and messaging while they build their first Value Map.
To learn more about FeaturePlan, visit www.rymatech.com.
About the Value Mapping Consortium
The Value Mapping Consortium is a community of market and thought leaders who are committed to helping companies of all sizes institutionalize the principles of solutions selling through the implementation of systematic and customer-centric positioning, messaging, and knowledge sharing processes
About FeaturePlan and Ryma Technology Solutions
Ryma Technology Solutions delivers requirements management solutions for the Product Management community through its flagship product, FeaturePlan. FeaturePlan is based on the industry-standard product management framework from Pragmatic Marketing and uses a best practice approach for collecting and organizing market inputs for product management and strategic innovation. FeaturePlan is used by leading organizations worldwide - such as Reuters, Autodesk and Trend Micro - for gathering and analyzing market requirements, instantly generating fact-based documents and roadmaps, and as a support solution for strategic business-critical decisions throughout the enterprise. For more information, please visit www.rymatech.com.
