See how Productboard helps Prospecta teams:

• Produce 25% more features per 4-6 week development cycle
• Save at least 25% on costs per 4-6 week development cycle on average

Helping businesses ensure data quality, integrity, and compliance is far from the easiest customer problem to solve. Yet, Prospecta braves the challenge; its enterprise platform empowers teams to set data strategies, remediate data concerns, and automate processes.

Prospecta prides itself on ease of use, and product manager Alex Yehorov — praised recently for “doing now, what customers need next” — is playing a key role.

Determined to improve efficiency, collaboration, and customer relationships, Alex decided it would be best to leverage Jira for engineering ticket management and find a new, purpose-built platform to visualize how everything connects across the product lifecycle.

Here’s why Alex decided Jira and Productboard would be better together — and how teams across Prospecta now collaborate more effectively with both systems to build what users need most.

How it started: the challenges before Productboard

Alex describes Jira as “an excellent tool for developers — because it works so well for their sprints.” However, he says Prospecta struggled using a task-oriented system to manage the scope of what they were building across the product lifecycle. Consequently, two internal dynamics developed, affecting organizational efficiency and user satisfaction:

1. Visibility and communication difficulties between Product & Engineering

Without a single source of truth linking users’ needs to a real-time roadmap highlighting the status of features in development, Prospecta’s Product and Engineering teams struggled to share information, set expectations, and communicate about roadblocks. Ultimately, these challenges affected the speed of product development, straining business efficiency.

• Product lost time solving new user problems while responding to roadmap questions and asking Engineering for updates about the status of features in development
• Prospecta saw delays in shipping product, as engineers based remotely often lacked the context they needed per feature to stay on deadline

Alex says time zone differences made collaboration even more difficult — without a comprehensive system to bridge gaps asynchronously. “We have huge gaps in distance and timing with our developers based in a different country, which can create difficulties in communication that we had to overcome,” Alex says.

2. Customer-facing teams were unable to close user feedback loops

Without a holistic product management process (including real-time roadmap access) customer-facing teams faced communication issues of their own — in their case, straining user satisfaction directly:

• Sales missed opportunities to close long-term deals, as account execs lacked access to a real-time roadmap that would reveal if promises they made were being fulfilled
• Customer churn risks developed in cases where users took time to share feedback but never heard back about how their ideas were shaping the roadmap

The answer Alex hoped for? A comprehensive product management platform designed to complement engineers’ work in Jira.

How it changed: the path to Productboard

Alex and his colleagues reviewed multiple product management platforms, but often the UI was too difficult to navigate.

Then, a breakthrough — Alex found the platform he felt sure could help.

Alex was confident that having a clear product structure in place would pave the way for better visibility and collaboration across teams — changes that would be sure to improve customer satisfaction. He was right.

How it’s going: the results from a comprehensive platform

Once Prospecta’s teams were able to easily access user feedback, feature progress, and roadmaps in one comprehensive system, the organization was able to more efficiently solve customers’ problems — and share the results with users seamlessly.

Productboard has helped teams across Prospecta:

• Secure stakeholder buy-in faster, with cross-functional teams easily accessing and aligning around the company’s product vision and direction in a central place; Product no longer needs to hold roadmap walk-through sessions, as cross-functional teams can quickly find information themselves
• Reduce feature delays by improving collaboration from discovery to development
• Improve organizational efficiency with visibility into the product lifecycle through enhanced’ reporting for leaders
• Strengthen customer loyalty by incorporating users’ suggestions into the product lifecycle, responding to their feedback directly through Insights notes, and empowering them to feel invested in Prospecta’s direction through access to Productboard’s Portal

Alex was thrilled to drive these outcomes, and he’s eager to help others in industry do the same.

Try it yourself: how to drive the same results in 5 steps

How do you sell a better way to manage the product lifecycle to a company already wary of its current approach?

Alex says the key is showing cross-functional teams why access to the same source of truth will help them do their jobs more effectively. From there, you can build trust in changing your product management process — one that strengthens collaboration between Product and Engineering.

Then, you can signal to cross-functional teams: a platform that prizes visibility will allow management to help if resourcing becomes an issue, and ensure customer-facing teams can transparently communicate back to users exactly what the company is doing to help them.

Here’s the 5-step approach Alex recommends:

1. Accessibility is the first step to change.

Alex says the ability to represent Prospecta’s product strategy in Productboard’s inviting, accessible interface was essential to secure stakeholder buy-in before he changed workflows.

“The visibility and ease of use Productboard offers have been so helpful for our cross-functional teams to quickly find information they need without having any technical background. This is where the platform works brilliantly, because we have a clear roadmap story that’s easy to grasp for anyone looking at it.”

Once teams at Prospecta realized how Productboard could help them genuinely feel part of product decision-making, they were receptive to a streamlined product management approach.

2. Help everyone do their job faster.

Across tech companies, it’s common for customer-facing teams to ask Product: “what’s next?” As Alex prizes efficiency, he made sure internal stakeholders could find out for themselves.

“If Sales, for example, says, ‘I need a collaboration feature ready by Q2 because I promised it,’ they don’t even need to talk to us; they just log in to Productboard and see where it is on the roadmap. And, if they want to drill down, they can easily click and drill to a feature, and see when it’s been delivered. They didn’t even need training beyond what I quickly showed them.”

Customer-facing teams weren’t the only ones saving time. Product managers and engineers moved from user discovery to feature delivery much faster with technical context and customer feedback living in the same place.

3. Empower engineers to be problem-solvers: offer context & creative freedom.

Productboard has helped Prospecta’s Product team offer Engineering something developers wanted all along: enough information — and space — to thrive.

Now, when Alex and others in Product await development work from Engineering, they don’t have to navigate multiple systems to find answers. The good news arrives in Productboard directly: as a Jira status change.

4. Help leaders report quickly and accurately with improved visibility

Centralizing all things Product has helped leaders at Prospecta save time, too. But their big wins center on accountability and reporting.

As Productboard allows lead developers to provide estimations directly in the platform, Engineering no longer needs to run estimation meetings with the entire Dev. team. This helps developers focus on what matters most — user story delivery — and saves Prospecta money, easily 5% in Engineering costs per year.

5. Keep your customers happy: boost loyalty with responsiveness and transparency.

After making significant improvements to Product’s relationships with Sales and Engineering, Alex was ready to look outward. He redesigned the way Prospecta gathered and leveraged customer feedback and ensured users could appreciate the difference.

Alex set up Insights integrations, including with Zendesk, to ensure customer feedback always pushed to Productboard. That process paved the way for more active engagement with users across the product lifecycle. Here again, Productboard and Jira worked together seamlessly.

These days, Prospecta’s subject matter experts meet weekly to review and reply to customer feedback in Insights. Plus, every new Prospecta customer gets credentials to access the company’s Productboard Portal.

“Now, Prospecta customers can expect that when they share their concerns and write with ideas, we’ll reply. Productboard has helped us increase the involvement of our customers, which is very valuable because it shows people that we do care about their opinions — and that makes them more loyal in the end.”

Boost customer loyalty with a single source of truth. Try Productboard!