Guide to Digital Product Engineering

How Digital Product Engineering Can Help Your Business Accelerate Digital Transformation

People expect more from digital products than ever before. They want speed, ease, and something that feels built just for them. And they want it now. In a world where change happens fast, waiting too long to deliver can cost you more than just time! It can cost trust, loyalty, and market share. That’s why forward-thinking companies are moving beyond just building software. They’re creating digital experiences that grow and adjust as the world evolves.

By 2031, digital product engineering is expected to fuel a $1610.6 billion global market. This isn’t just a trend. It’s a transformation and it’s already happening. From AI-driven apps to cloud-native platforms and IoT-powered solutions, companies are turning bold ideas into flawless, scalable products quickly to stay ahead of the curve.

At Rishabh Software, we help businesses do just that. When built right, these products launch faster, win over users quicker, and respond better to what’s happening in the market, on time. That’s what digital product engineering is – practical, responsive and always ready for what’s next.

Table of Contents

6 Key Phases of Digital Product Engineering

Each phase helps to facilitate communication and collaboration to ensure the digital product is being developed in line with the overall goal. These processes can be categorized into six overarching phases:

6 Significant Phases of Digital Product Engineering

1. Ideation

At the core of every product engineering project, ideation involves the innovator sharing the core concept, including the purpose, target audience and features with an IT consulting firm. During initial meetings, ideas and requirements are exchanged, and IT consulting experts conduct domain research. This phase focuses on conceptualization, documentation, and requirement finalization, ensuring all functional and non-functional needs are met.

2. Formulation

This critical phase involves analyzing similar products or those within the same spectrum to establish a foundational design. It’s where the product begins to take shape, exploring innovative problem-solving approaches. In-depth analysis of existing products and competitors is crucial to identifying areas needing innovation.

3. Product Assembly & Software Development

This phase takes center stage as the product is assembled on a larger scale, and dedicated functionalities are developed and integrated into the hardware. The outcome is a robust firmware ready for the business market. Quality standards, development life-cycle models, and comprehensive testing planning are pivotal during this phase.

4. Quality Assurance

A critical aspect of any product engineering project, this phase involves rigorously testing the finished product against a test suite to ensure it is compliant and meets all functional and non-functional requirements. It involves functionality testing, scalability evaluation, interoperability testing, and resilience assessment to strike the right balance between manual and automated testing.

5. Launch

The product’s launch to the market involves creating a comprehensive launch plan with extensive marketing, demonstrations, and media involvement to reach a larger audience. It’s crucial for building awareness, reaching a broader audience, and fostering better business prospects. It’s time for impact analysis, optimization, and feature enhancements to ensure the project goals are met.

6. Continuous Updating & Maintenance

Efficient product engineering ensures consistent product performance through regular updates and progressive innovation. This ongoing engagement is essential for maintaining stability, especially in high-demand business environments. It improves reliability, enhances performance, ensures security, and allows you to modify the digital product to adapt to the changes in the environment.

Businesses are facing disruption from digital-ready firms, prompting the adoption of digital product strategies. We have extensive experience to guide you through every stage of the process, from the initial idea to the final delivery and ongoing maintenance.

How Digital Product Engineering Accelerates Business Innovation

Modern customers seek products with the latest features and quick turnaround, while product owners prioritize quality, compliance, and cost-effectiveness in product engineering. Let’s explore how digital product engineering can propel innovation with real-world examples.

Agile Development for Swift Adaptation

Digital product development relies on agile methodologies, enabling businesses to respond quickly to evolving market conditions. A relatable example of this is Netflix, which consistently updates its streaming platform based on user data and preferences, ensuring customer satisfaction and engagement.

Customer-Centric Design

Successful digital product design involves placing the customer at the centre of the product development process. An understanding of the needs and pain points of your customers helps your business prioritize the right problems to solve and create innovative products. Apple is a practical example of this approach, known for its user-friendly interfaces and sleek designs, consistently delighting customers and spurring innovation in the consumer tech industry.

Data-Driven Decision-Making

Leveraging data-driven insights can change your game. Analyzing data on customer behavior and market trends helps identify new product opportunities or areas where product performance can be optimized. For instance, Amazon’s recommendation system triggers personalized product suggestions to individual customers based on data, enhances their shopping experience and drives increased sales.

Collaborative Work Environments

Innovative ideas thrive in collaborative spaces. Slack, the team communication platform, has transformed the way businesses collaborate, fostering real-time communication and innovation regardless of location.

Continuous Improvement

Iterative development is the key to sustainable success. Google continuously refines its search algorithms and introduces new features, cementing its position as the world’s leading search engine through a commitment to ongoing improvement.

Common Digital Product Engineering Challenges and Their Solutions

As products get more complex, the way we build them also gets complicated. Here are some common challenges we’ve identified and actionable solutions to overcome them.

Outdated Legacy Systems

Legacy systems create challenges with document-based processes, leading to a lack of a single source of truth and limited collaboration.

Solution: Upgrade or replace legacy systems with modern, cloud-based solutions to improve efficiency and data management.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

Collaboration is vital in fast-paced business environments, but siloed teams may struggle to adapt.

Solution: Invest in collaboration tools like project management software, communication platforms, and document-sharing systems to foster cross-functional teamwork.

Product Quality and Traceability

Manual workflows make it challenging to maintain product quality and traceability.

Solution: Implement automated testing processes to ensure product quality, reducing the reliance on manual workflows and using traceability software to track every step of the product development process – from design to production to delivery.

Testing & Quality Assurance

Testing often occurs late in the development process, resulting in costly rework.

Solution: Adopt shift-left testing by conducting tests early and promoting constant collaboration among teams.

Version Control

Legacy systems complicate version control, impacting change management and documentation updates.

Solution: Implement a cloud-based requirement management system with effective version control to reduce inconsistencies and discrepancies.

Technological Advancements

Keeping up with evolving technology is crucial but requires continuous learning and adaptation.

Solution: Stay updated with emerging technologies and evaluate their suitability for specific products to avoid becoming outdated.

How Our Digital Product Engineering Expertise Accelerates Success Across Key Industries?

Rishabh Software specializes in digital product engineering services primarily across healthcare, retail, digital manufacturing, logistics, EdTech, FinTech, Media & Entertainment, travel & hospitality, and supply chain management industries.

Our extensive portfolio showcases our expertise across various domains – from product development in the media and entertainment industry and modernizing healthcare appointment scheduling to manufacturing efficiency enhancements and seamless supply chain management integration.

We’ve successfully transformed processes in travel and hospitality, harnessed the cloud for educational technology, and advanced offerings in the FinTech space. To complement these achievements, we’ve also excelled in cloud applications for healthcare. Explore our case studies for real-world insights into our unique tech capabilities

Modernizing Existing Processes

As companies mature, so do their products. However, upgrading your methodologies with a modern technology stack doesn’t always necessitate creating an entirely new product. Sometimes, it’s sufficient to modernize an existing legacy product and regain a competitive edge. This requires a skilled team capable of seamlessly integrating new technology into your current solution.

A while back, a prominent North American healthcare provider needed to modernize its outdated appointment scheduling app. We helped revamp their online booking system, making it easier to manage patients, schedule appointments, organize doctors’ schedules, handle prescriptions, and process payments. The outcome was significant:

  • The application’s performance improved by 40%.
  • Operational efficiency increased by 30%.
  • The system efficiently managed over 5,000 daily bookings.

Advancing Your Offerings

In some cases, your existing solution portfolio can benefit from enhancements or supplementary offerings to reach a broader audience and increase user value. It’s crucial to align the process of converting an idea into a fully manufacturable product with your existing technology stack.

This scenario unfolded in one of our projects where an event ticketing firm wanted to enhance its financial operations and customer experience. They wanted to create a robust platform that simplifies event ticket booking for various events and delivers precise reports to monitor registrants versus attendees. We helped them develop an event ticketing mobile app for end users and event partners, ensuring a seamless and responsive interface while drastically reducing loading times. The results were remarkable:

  • Simultaneous bookings by over 10,000 users across multiple events during peak times.
  • A substantial 60% surge in ticket bookings and confirmations due to an enhanced user interface.
  • Elimination of duplicate bookings and the prevention of ticket overselling.

Integrating Technology Seamlessly

Integration is a critical aspect of optimizing business processes. Companies frequently grapple with multiple systems that need to work in harmony to ensure a smooth workflow. Our team specializes in facilitating seamless integration, helping businesses overcome the challenges of connecting various software applications, platforms, and databases. With our expertise, we ensure that your systems communicate effectively, eliminating data silos and streamlining operations.

Our U.S.-based enterprise client, boasting over 25 years of fleet management expertise, reaped the rewards of real-time report analysis. As their trusted Talend data integration partner, Rishabh Software revolutionized the management of 7 billion weekly data points generated by their fleet.

The main goal of the Talend data integration project was to optimize real-time fleet data management and reduce data redundancy for precise report generation.

Key Advantages:

  • Precision in business reports.
  • Streamlined data handling and report creation.
  • Reduced manual intervention thanks to TAC scheduling.
  • Timely email updates after each job execution.

Leveraging the Power of Cloud Computing

Our skilled team is here to help you make the most of cloud technology – whether you want to migrate your existing systems, create cloud-native applications, or optimize your cloud infrastructure.

A prominent US-based hospitality leader, specializing in F&B, resort management, and rental homes, faced a data challenge. With data scattered across 20+ sources due to multiple acquisitions, they needed a single, comprehensive data solution. Rishabh Software stepped in and crafted a cloud-based data warehouse (DWH) solution by harmonizing data from internal and third-party applications.

The results were transformative:

  • A remarkable 50% improvement in workflow efficiency.
  • A significant 40% reduction in data quality issues.
  • An impressive 99% accuracy in on-the-go business insights.

Build Future-Ready Digital Products With Us to Drive Great ROI

Our seasoned experts are always ahead of the tech curve – whether it’s harnessing the power of AI, cloud computing, IoT, or other new-age technology stacks. We are known for offering end-to-end product engineering consulting and strategy to develop and deploy scalable digital solutions.

Rishabh Software’s Unique Strengths in Product Engineering Include:

  • Proven expertise across diverse industries.
  • User-centric and data-driven design.
  • Rapid product delivery through agile methods.
  • Smooth integration of Cloud, IoT, and AI.
  • End-to-end support through the entire product lifecycle.

Transformative Product Engineering Capabilities

  • Strategic Product Roadmap & Advisory
  • End-to-End Product Lifecycle Orchestration
  • Innovative Product Creation & Engineering
  • Next-Gen Software Evolution
  • Continuous Product Optimization & Assistance

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is Digital Product Engineering?

A: Imagine building a structure from the ground up but instead of using cement, mortar and bricks, you use code, design, and data. That’s what digital product creation entails. You begin with an idea and then shape it into something tangible like an app or a platform that people can use.

The work does not stop once it is up and running. You keep improving it to make sure it works well, meets user needs and stays beneficial over time. To do this, teams use modern tools like AI, cloud tech and IoT to make things smarter, quicker and easier to use. The goal is not just to release a product but to keep it updated by learning from how people use it and adjusting as their preferences change. It is a way of working that blends thinking, building and refining without an end.

Q: What is the Role of Product Engineering in Digital Transformation?

A: Digital product engineering plays a vital role in DT initiatives by enabling companies to innovate faster, deliver better value, and improve customer experiences using the latest software development tools, techniques, and methodologies.

  • Transforming Business Processes and Models: Helps automate manual tasks, streamline workflows, and integrate innovative ways of working, improving efficiency and reducing costs with the strategic use of digital technologies.
  • Leveraging Digital Technologies for a Competitive Edge: Incorporates AI, machine learning, IoT, and cloud computing to create innovative products that give companies a competitive edge.
  • Adapting to Changing Customer Expectations: Helps companies meet evolving customer demands, deliver seamless digital experiences, and personalize interactions with products customized to meet their expectations.
  • Fostering Organizational Culture and Change: Promotes innovation, collaboration, and customer-centricity by creating new or modifying existing business processes, products, and customer experiences.
  • Enhancing Data-Driven Decision Making: Collects and analyzes data to inform strategic decisions and improve product performance.

Q: What are the Future Trends of Digital Product Engineering

A: Some of the tech trends of digital product engineering that are here to stay include:

  • Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning: AI and ML enhance product functionality, improve decision-making, and offer personalized experiences.
  • Internet of Things (IoT) Integration: IoT-enabled products provide real-time data and personalized experiences.
  • Voice and Natural Language Interfaces: Voice assistants and chatbots simplify interactions and enhance user experiences.
  • Augmented and Virtual Reality Experiences: AR and VR transform user interactions and can be used in various industries for immersive experiences.
  • Cloud-native and microservices architecture: These approaches enable products to be scalable, resilient, agile and adaptable to changing business requirements and customer preferences.
  • Data-driven and analytics-based decision-making: These methods enable products to leverage data and analytics to measure performance, gain insights, optimize outcomes and create value.

Q: Why Choose Rishabh Software as your Product Engineering Partner?

A: At Rishabh Software, we bring together top digital engineering, design, and product development talent to build software solutions that transform immersive product experiences. As a trusted firm for ISVs, product startups, and enterprises,  we take care of your project requirements, from ideation to implementation across the various product development stages to help your business keep up with rapidly evolving market demands.

Here’s what differentiates us and makes us a dependable technology partner are:

  • We’re Experts that Care: Our research-driven approach, user-centric development, and design thinking-led strategies keep your products relevant today and tomorrow.
  • Value-driven Approach: Our delivery style with continued feedback loops, a lean operating model, industry best practices and a comprehensive tech stack ensures tangible results across designing, development, testing, and implementation.
  • Cross-functional Teams: With our autonomous teams skilled across emerging tools and technologies, we bring you the best to realize your vision.

Your Benefits   

  • Faster time to market
  • Focused agile delivery model from conceptualization to deployment
  • Increased customer lifetime value backed by extensive market research
  • Swift and seamless delivery with prompt availability for US time zones
  • A dedicated product engineering talent pool that works as your extended team.
  • Accessible engagement models with an emphasis on optimized resources and transparent communication across the board.

Footnotes:

1. https://www.globenewswire.com/en/news-release/2022/10/20/2538487/0/en/Product-Engineering-Services-Market-to-Reach-1610-6-Billion-by-2031-Allied-Market-Research.html

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