BANGALORE, INDIA: IT services are still some distance away from occupying a lead role in product companies, says Keshav Prakash, Country Manager, Serena Software. Speaking about the current trends in product management in an interaction with B.V.Shiva Shankar, Associate Editor, CIOL, Cybermedia, he said though product management is the point of convergence of IT and engineering services, IT has still a long way to go. But it was not before he hoped the meeting point was not far off.

CIOL: Tell us about the latest trends and advancements in product management?

Keshav Prakash: Product management is an organizational function within a company dealing with the product planning of a product/s at all stages of the product lifecycle and it is also a collective term used to describe the broad sum of diverse activities performed in the interest of delivering a the right product at the right time to the market place.

Product management is an occupational domain which holds two professional disciplines:- Product Planning and Product Marketing and yet retain the required synergy between the two disciplines. The technology advancements in the internet world certainly helping companies in promoting the product externally with Press, customers and Partners and reducing the time to market without having to compromise on the quality of the product. One of the significant trends in the industry is that the product companies are becoming more and more customer centric and that is reflecting in the way they conduct product planning, product marketing, program management and project management activities.

CIOL: Turning marketing information into product requirements is the key to the successful business. What are the technological requirements to achieve this?

KP: As I said, earlier, every product company is customer centric in today's world, ideally would want to convert the business requirements into profit, by incorporating the customer requirements in there products.

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