5 Ways Product Leaders Can Increase Productivity and Outcomes Org-wide with Productboard: Lessons from CMC Markets
![5 Ways Product Leaders Can Increase Productivity and Outcomes Org-wide with Productboard: Lessons from CMC Markets](https://www.productboard.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/cmc-markets-feature-photo-for-wp.png)
Executing tens of millions of trades annually, CMC Markets uses Productboard to build what its 80,000+ active global clients need most (hereâs the case study). Sharing a single source of product truth, the financial services company has already cut 9 hours of team meetings monthly and can even solve specific customer needs during Build in a Day events.
Now, Productboardâs new collaboration capabilities are helping teams create even more customer value in less time.
Alister Sneddon, Head of Product, shares 5 ways these new capabilities have helped CMC Markets increase org-wide productivity and outcomes by providing not only the product org, but all stakeholders throughout the business with better access to the right product information. Now, teams can more effectively move work forward â up, down, and across the organization.
“My goal is always to remove any restrictions or frictions that just come with working in large teams, working in large orgs, with regulation. Everything we can do to streamline a process with Productboard, to help people understand where they should be spending time, effort, energy â thatâs key for me as a director to help us achieve absolute focus on the customerâs problem.”
Learn how to make CMC Marketsâ wins yours:Â
- Help EPD solve the right problems faster
- Give Go-to-Market teams direct access
- Maximize the value of group meetings
- Balance short-term execution with long-term strategy
- Strengthen Customer Support conversations
![](https://www.productboard.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/teamspaces-view-for-wp.png)
1. Help EPD solve the right problems fasterÂ
Above all, Alister wanted to spare CMC Markets what so many face in product management: missing opportunities when teams store feedback in siloed Excel sheets or have no central place to capture and share information from one-off meetings.
“Itâs the iceberg effect: the data your Product team thinks it has vs. this whole world of data thatâs invisible to them because itâs held in one-time meetings and video calls since it just wasnât easy enough to get that transparency across the whole department. Youâre not segmenting data and youâre not understanding it to the maximum capacity.”
Having a centralized system for all product information was already helping CMC Markets more effectively identify customers’ biggest challenges. But, Alister saw immediate potential in Productboard’s new teamspaces and folders functionality to provide teams even better focus and access â the chance to use product data in a way that works best for their needs. With their own “shortcut to success,” CMC Markets teams now move even faster solving the right problems.
“Productboard reduces the cognitive load. The beauty of having all these structures and folders in the platform is the data set is fundamentally the same, but weâre giving each individual, each team, their slice to work the way they work best. It maximizes the benefit when you can say: âHereâs your shortcut to success. This is what you need to know, when you need to know it.”
Hereâs how CMC Markets creates value faster for customers while ensuring compliance â a play-by-play of the way Alister set up teamspaces and folders:
![](https://www.productboard.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/tree-chart-view-for-wp.png)
- Execute faster with standardized processes and customizable views. Alister created a standardized process for each stage of EPD work to drive efficiencies while allowing for customization at a squad level â helping teams set up views that play to their strengths.
- Boost Productâs productivity and reduce delays with one place to view the full lifecycle. Product now turns to one real-time source of truth for evaluation, priority planning, objective sessions, and compliance â increasing team focus and preventing risk.
- Save PMs time providing updates now that other teams access a General teamspace. Product managers have more focus time now that other teams can answer their own questions by viewing a complete feature board and a curated collection of roadmaps showing whatâs in the backlog, whatâs just been released, and whatâs Now, Next, Later.
- Ensure compliance with a clear checklist and tasks embedded into Productâs process. Alister created a dedicated Compliance folder (also in Productâs teamspace) that helps PMs and leaders easily check regulatory status for every feature. Clear instructions explain tasks to be done; each one is embedded into Productâs Productboard workflow and nothing can be released without compliance task completion.
“The more time we can spend dedicating ourselves to truly solving problems, the better the customer experience and the outcomes will always be. The product managers with strong technical skills, the product designers with an in-depth ability to engage with customers â they can collaborate more effectively while working in a way that functions best for them and tailor their views within Productboard to their needs, which leads to better focus on the customer problem.”
2. Give Go-to-Market teams direct access
![](https://www.productboard.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/now-next-later-roadmap-view-for-wp.png)
Naturally, Alister didnât leave the rest of the business out of the equation. First, he set up CMCâs General teamspace where every division can grasp long-term product strategy and the details of roadmap progress.Â
“We have cut multiple hour-long weekly and fortnightly meetings focused on the alignment of multiple teams by encouraging everyone to join this general teamspace and providing them with a live view,” Alister says.Â
Then, he created a teamspace for every department, including Go-to-Market.
This way, CMC Markets increases product transparency business-wide while cutting down meetings, manual updates, and the overall time it might otherwise take to keep everyone informed and aligned. Now, customer-facing teams have only the essential product data they need to more effectively message, promote, and support releases.
Hereâs how Alister made this possible in Productboard:
- Help teams save time finding the product data they need with a bespoke teamspace. Alister created a dedicated teamspace for Project Management, Design, Marketing, etc, so that each department can collaborate around product data tailored for their needs.
- Give Go-to-Market a teamspace that provides only actionable data:Â
-A view of all features in the test stage
-The designs, how the solution interacts, the benefit(s) of the new featureÂ
-Confirmation that the feature has passed compliance
-The projected release date and the milestones required to get there
“With a 100% bespoke view in Productboard, weâve cut down the noise and wastage of people having to ask, âwhat do I need to know?â Now, Go-to-Market understands exactly whatâs being delivered when and whatâs expected of them. Theyâre not bothered by whatâs in early discovery or prioritization. Theyâre interacting, asking questions about the roadmap, and leaving comments to bring everything more to life for our customers.”
3. Maximize the value of group meetings
With Productboardâs new features, Alister says CMC Markets has also been spared the cost of unproductive cross-functional meetings â the kind âwhere every team sits around the table and half of them have nothing to contribute, usually because their involvement just hasnât begun.â
With teamspaces, CMC Markets ensures group meetings always matter. Hereâs how:Â
- Ahead of cross-functional meetings, every team member now has a link to the exact teamspace they need to consult for context and any prep work needed
- If their focus requires a specific view within a teamspace, theyâll get directions right to it
âItâs about removal of doubt,â Alister explains. âItâs very explicit, and thatâs how weâre increasing focus and decreasing risk.â
![](https://www.productboard.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/folder-view-for-wp.png)
Now that CMC teams understand the what and why behind every cross-functional initiative, theyâre more strategic about deciding when to collaborate â ensuring meetings are not only more efficient, but also more focused on customersâ core problems.
“Iâm excited to see the context of our meetings shifting, where weâre starting to say, âwe know the problem, letâs talk more about the customers who are having it. Why do they want this now? How do we solve this to the 10th degree? And, how can we really sell this?”
4. Balance short-term execution with long-term strategy
Every Director of Product knows the struggle of monitoring everyday roadmap risks while trying to steer the strategic ship in the right direction.Â
With Productboardâs new navigation capabilities, Alister says heâs able to create the right views to zoom in and out quickly from feature-level issues to strategic opportunities.
![](https://www.productboard.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/gant-chart-view-for-wp.png)
âYou can plan your business, your objectives, your outcomes way in advance with Productboard while also seeing new opportunities emerge much, much sooner so that you donât have to feel erratic as a director, changing things all the time,â Alister explains.
When Alister gets an extra hour in his day, he can easily check the following, among other items:
- Overall roadmap progress and feature-level delaysÂ
- Regulatory compliance status of everything on the roadmap
- The balance of workloads and key areas of focus across EPD
“Now, I have an overview in Productboard across all the teams at the level of complexity Iâm comfortable with. My team can operate with more confidence and autonomy, without fear that theyâll miss something knowing that I can sense-check what theyâre doing. For new hires, that means I can really speed up the time it takes to get people to a level where theyâre productive.”
What should leaders consider when creating their own teamspaces? Alister offers some tips:
- Start your first view at a high-level, with your business objectives and overall strategy
- Represent what you want to achieve, what youâve finished, your next step time framesÂ
- Filter down from the strategic level, and ask for each initiative or work area: who needs to have oversight daily? i.e: âDo I need this view or does someone else on my team?â
- Think about jobs to be done by function to make the right person accountable i.e.: âIs this a product managerâs responsibility or a project managerâs?â
5. Strengthen every customer interaction
Lastly, in a difficult economy where customer retention is essential, Alister shares how Productboardâs new collaboration and flexible navigation capabilities have helped CMCâs customer-facing teams, particularly Customer Support, strengthen every customer interaction.Â
Hereâs the process CMC Markets established to strengthen customer calls:
- Standardized intake: when teams receive feedback on customer call, they log it as an Insight in Productboard to ensure Product can review and appropriately prioritizeÂ
- Guaranteed review: because product managers consistently review Insights, Support can âsay with confidence: âsomeone will be looking into this!ââ â boosting user loyalty
- Easy search to close the loop: whether customers share a new idea or ask for an update on a request made, Support or CS can quickly turn to the Customer teamspace that CMC created and quickly identify anything relevant to share, with context and statusÂ
Whereas Support teams in financial services and beyond often have to âgo into 50 different systems,â reps at CMC can offer answers of this caliber easily with Productboard. âI can see you mentioned this idea two weeks ago, and Product is now in discovery,â Alister shares. âI see they also wrote to you about it. If you havenât seen the email, have a look since theyâd love to talk to you!â
Thatâs where Alister says CMC Markets stands out not only for quality of service, but also speed.Â
âSupport is able to enrich their conversations without having to explicitly train for it,â Alister explains. âTheyâre getting this nice benefit with teamspaces and that adds to the experience our customers are getting. Theyâre being listened to and can tangibly see that and feel that whenever they engage with us.â Â
By empowering teams across the business with the right âsliceâ of data in Productboard, Alister has helped CMC Markets offer customers a level of attention thatâs second to none.
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