72: Product Managing Internal Tools

In this episode of the How to Succeed in Product Management Podcast, marketing professor Jeff Shulman and The Product Management Center advisory board members Red Russak and  Soumeya Benghanem welcome Charles Stewart (Autodesk) and Dimple Singhania (Walmart) as they discuss product managing internal tools. PMs should know about the internal tools that companies use to help automate workflows, store data information for security, and connect the different organizations in a company like marketing or finance.    Disclaimer: All opinions of the speakers are their own.   Support for How to Succeed in Product Management is brought to you by Apptentive, which enables product managers to measure shifts in customer emotion and gather actionable feedback across the mobile customer journey. To learn more, go to Apptentive.com/UW.   What to Listen For: 00:00 Intro 09:42 Measuring success when building an internal tool 11:25 Associate satisfaction 12:38 Building a common language for people to use 14:05 Think about the employee experience 16:18 Take into account the consistency of human behavior 18:28 Communication channels for PMs 22:03 Creating a tool that works for the entire enterprise 24:19 Taking a product market mindset to internal tools 26:08 Build vs. buy 32:09 Competitive advantage in terms of build vs. buy 34:15 Compatibility with your own already built or bought tools 38:45 Product shift 42:23 Pushing forward with the modernization approach 45:52 The friction unique to internal tools 48:37 Final thoughts