Often have I carried the  ‘product management hat’ and at the same time the ‘project management  hat’ during a new product development project. Was this difficult to do?  No, not really, as the responsibility of both roles was very clear and I  had a lot of experience in both roles. Was there ever a friction in  time management between both roles? Did one role sometimes get priority  over the other? Yes, definitely. That’s why I want to share the 3 daily hacks to combine the role of product manager and project manager.

Tune in to this episode to learn more or visit my blog at bureauflo.com to read the full blog article.

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Do you feel overwhelmed by all the small administrative tasks you need  to do for your business and your personal life? Declutter your business  and personal administration is the way to feeling in control again.

These administrative tasks vary from paying taxes, updating  business or personal insurances, paying dentist bills and business subscriptions and keeping your business and personal administration up  to date. Often the mail keeps piling up on your desk and you totally  forget to take action.

You also need to manage your business calendar with  appointments with team members, customers, suppliers, travel and plan  out chunks in your day to get some work done. In addition to your  business calendar, your personal calendar also needs to  be managed with medical appointments, dinners with friends and your  work-out schedule. If you have kids, you get a lot of extra sport and  school activities on your plate as well.

When all these tasks and announcements pop in your email or mail box, you can feel overwhelmed and don’t see when you have time to take care of all these small tasks.

I found a quick way to declutter my business and personal administration and feel in control again and want you to benefit from my strategy as well. It will help  you eliminate the feeling of overwhelm and you’ll feel completely in  control.

You can implement the steps I'm going to talk about in this episode immediately in your business and personal life. Let’s get started!

It can be so exiting when a very important package arrives at your  desk containing your first prototype! When you open the box and take out  ‘your baby’, you’re thrilled, happy and proud of the result of hard work and putting all your energy in this new product.

But it can also be a big disappointment…….

Your prototype looks far from your amazing product concept drawing.  The plastic or metal parts don’t have the right dimensions, the  construction is weak and the graphics on your product are not positioned  correctly. The electronics do not function properly, and the colors are  totally off the color scheme.

If you’re in the cosmetic industry you may have experienced that your  product smells bad and the composition doesn’t feel nice. The cream  feels too solid or too light, the products look weird, and the sample is  not even a little bit close to what you had in mind.

It’s a flop.

Now, there are ways to avoid this unclarity and disappointment around prototyping.

I have 5 proven steps you can take to move successfully from product concept to prototype.

Tune into this podcast episode to learn more, or read all about it on my blog by clicking here.

Whether you’ve been developing products for some time or start your  business from scratch, there are some actions you can take at the start  of your new product development that bring efficiency and speed in your  process.

You probably experienced it yourself or heard stories from others  about new product development projects that costed a lot of money but  were put on hold or completely stopped because the new product was going  to be unsaleable or not profitable.

There are many factors that can cause projects to be put on hold.  From specifications that cannot be met, product costs that are too high,  difficulties in transferring the product concept into a working  prototype, successfully moving into mass production, to end customers  not buying your product.

By implementing some practical process steps, the above  hurdles can be overcome, and your new product can be successfully  developed, manufactured, and launched into the market.

If you feel you can make some improvements in your new product  development or this topic is new to you, please continue reading this  article. I hope you can benefit from the tips I share with you the same  way I do. Before pouring tons of money in your new product idea, check  out the tips below.

Tip 1: Product Idea Evaluation With Your Team

Tip 2: Perform Customer Research on Your Product Concept

Tip 3: Request for a Product Cost Price and a quote for Development Costs

Tip 4: Appoint A Project Manager To manage Your New Product Development Project

Tip 5: Create A Clear Project Briefing Right From The Start

Tip 6: Implement A Weekly Core Project Team Meeting Structure Including Project Checklist And Action Plan.

Tip 7: Implement a supplier selection process in your business

With the above 7 tips, you’ll be well prepared when developing new products for your business.

If you like to read more about this topic, head to my blog article by clicking here.

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It’s quite a challenge to keep the review process of these materials smooth and efficient.

When reviewing marketing materials for your new product, usually  there are a lot of opinions involved…..because who doesn’t have an  opinion on a commercial or ad?

Team members from different disciplines review and give comments in  multiple review rounds. And often new comments pop-up all the time,  because of new insights, changes in the technical specifications of the  product during development or because team members did not really review  thoroughly enough during the first review round.

It is wise to start involving your marketing communication expert early in the development of your new products. Parallel  with the development of your new product, you’re also working on your  product launch to make sure that all deliverables for your product  launch are ready when your final product is on stock and ready to be  sold.

One aspect of a product launch are the marketing materials like brochures, leaflets, movies, teasers, social media campaigns.

There are usually lots of moving parts here and a lot of opinions involved. Because anyone has an opinion on marketing, right? There a so many elements that are combined in the marketing strategy.  For example, the branding, the colors used in the materials, the images,  the copy, the look and feel. And mostly anyone has a slightly different  opinion.

Even in the same team, people tend to express their personal taste,  even when it comes to professionally created materials. And their  opinion might change during the review process. Resulting in going back  and forth in adjusting copy and imagery.

Lessons learned the hard way; I can now share a review strategy with  you that worked for me and hopefully you can benefit from it too.

If you like to receive weekly updates on product development directly  in your inbox, click the link below to sign-up for my free weekly tips.

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If you like to read the article with this episode, click here and head over to my blog for the full article.

Do you regularly think that you’re going crazy with all the things that need to be organized around your business and your personal life?

You probably have a family to take care of or you have other obligations to loved ones and need to help them out.

Sometimes you wish you could wave your magical wand and fly smoothly through your day, while being super-efficient at work and get all the things done in your personal life.

That would be amazing! Unfortunately, the magical wand is a fairy tale, but there are certainly actions your can take to make a smooth day become a reality for you.

I hear you; I tried my best to juggle all the things I needed to do as well. After many years of experience, a demanding job and a family that grew bigger and bigger, I adopted a structure that integrates my business and personal life and that works very well for me.

I’ll share my tips below, hopefully you can benefit from it as well.

Tip 1 Close your day and set Priorities for the next day.

Always close your workday, with a list of actions that you need to do the next day. This is your priority list. Whatever happens, the actions that are on this list are important, therefore they need your attention.

Tip 2 Prepare everything for your Morning Routine the evening in advance

With everything, I mean everything!

Before going to bed you can do several small tasks that save you time in the morning. You want to start your day without stress and keep in a relaxed mood as long as possible.

Tip 3 Use as much as handy tools in your business as possible

If you want to work efficient and accomplish a lot in your business, you have a lot of handy tools that can help you with your tasks.

For planning tasks, you might like Asana, Trello or Monday. These are web applications that allow you to plan and schedule all your activities in a simple and visual tool. The user interface is very intuitive and help you organize your projects with ease.

There are many more tools available that do the same. They also have an app so you can check-in and follow-up on your phone.

Tip 4 After business-day activities

When your business day is over, check with your family members if there are any new topics or activities. Sometimes your kid’s school want to unexpectedly launch new activities. These new activities need to be planned in your calendar.

Tip 5 The Five-minute Tidy-up Challenge

You can do a lot in 5 minutes. If you have 5 minutes left here and there, try to do some activities that don’t need you to concentrate a lot. For example, fold the laundry, empty the dishwasher, put clean laundry in the closet, start your washing machine, do some quick toilet cleaning, tidy up the living room or your bedroom. There are so many small tasks that can be done quickly instead of piling up at the end of the week.

Tip 6 Weekend Meal Cooking

If you have a busy schedule ahead of you, you might feel a lot more relaxed if you know you don’t have to cook that day because you prepared your meals in the weekend. It will only take you a few minutes to warm up your meals in the oven or microwave. This saves so much stress at the end of your day.

Tip 7 Meal planning for 7 days

When you have time once a week, to sit down and plan your meals for seven days ahead, you have a huge win!

Deciding on what you are going to eat in the next seven days, making a list of the ingredients you need and driving to the supermarket to buy everything you need, will save you at least 45 minutes each day compared to doing grocery shopping every day after work.

Check my website bureauflo.com for more tips.

When you start up for the day it is so tempting to quickly check your email. Before you know it, you are drawn by all the urgent topics waiting in your inbox. Your focus is away from the priorities you have set yourself and the day flies by…..

Do you recognize this?

To break with this bad habit, I’ve created a morning routine that works for me. Perhaps you’ll love it as well!

Tune in to this episode and follow the 5 steps I'm teaching your to stay productive during the day and work efficiently on your projects.

I created a blog article with a free guide on this topic as well for you.

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Are you also looking to optimize your work processes and to work more efficient?

When you are active in a technology-oriented, tangible product-based business, there are a lot of moving parts in new product development.

No matter what stage you’re at in your business, the right tools can:

The trick is knowing the right ones to use.

When managing multi-disciplinary, international product development projects, I love to automate as much as possible in my daily activities.

These kinds of projects often take a lot of time and there are a lot of moving parts that complicate things and need to be managed well.

Do you want to read about this topic as well? I've also written a blog article.

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Are you an entrepreneur and do you have a great new product idea? Of course, you have a vivid picture of it in your head. And it does look amazing, right?  But a picture can say more than a thousand words. That’s exactly why you need to show your great idea in the form of a picture as well. Lots of people have a visual focus and grab the content better when they can see what you mean instead of only hearing you explain it.

That’s why it is so important to put pen to paper and create a drawing of your product concept. There are agencies who have specialized in this and can help you create astonishing product concept drawings. But when you are tight on your budget, I have a few tips for you to get started. Even when you’re planning to hire and agency to do this for you, you can benefit from these tips as well, as you can use the concept drawing, which you have created yourself, to brief your agency.

Tune in my podcast episode to learn more!

If you like to read about this topic, you can also find it on my blog.

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As it is quite a challenge to brief marketing communications on a project that is still in the first phase of the development process, and a lot of aspects are still unknown or unclear, some guidance might be helpful.

When you are developing a new product, your focus is first on the technical, financial and commercial feasibility of the project. When all those boxes are ticked, and product development is taking of, it is time to involve the marketing communication responsible as well.

The three main benefits are:

1.  Marcom people tend to look very critical at your product proposition, which is a good thing!

2.  You are challenged by them on the features and benefits compared to your competition, which is also a good thing!

3.  They help you identify when product samples and communication materials are needed in the project planning.

I teach you 12 tips that helped me doing this job. Hopefully they will come in handy for you as well.

Listen in!

If you would like to read about this topic, check my blog article.

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Product development doesn't need to be complicated.

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