Product Description

Microsoft Teams in one of the unified communications platforms which enable users with
workplace chat, file storage (including collaboration of files), vide meetings and application
integration. It is an upgrade rather evolution from existing Microsoft Skype for Business. It
was launched at an event in New York in 2017. The platform integrates with the Office 365
subscription office productivity suite and feature add-ons that can be integrated with non-
Microsoft products as well.

Product Features
Teams
It enables people to interact as a team in groups. Groups, communities or teams can join
through a specific URL or link or way of an invite sent by an administrator or owner of the
meeting. Teams for Education enable teachers and admin to set up teams for professional
learning, classes etc
Messaging
Within a team, members can set up channels. Channels are topic for conversation that
enables users to communicate without using email or group SMS. Users can reply to posts
with images, memes and GIFs
User can also send private messages/note to a specific person rather than an entire group

 Calling
 Instant messaging
 Voice over IP
 Video Conferencing

Meeting
Meetings can be scheduled in advance or can be set up ad-hoc and other users visiting the
channel will be able to see whether that meeting is in progress or not. There is also a plugin
option available for Microsoft Outlook to invite other for the team meeting.
Why did we choose this product?
We chose Microsoft Teams because this is a new product/ idea that Microsoft came up with
to integrate Microsoft Teams with office 365 and Microsoft Team planner to make it easier
to assign tasks to individual employees. With integration, tasks can be initiated and assigned
within Microsoft Teams platform, avoiding the need to switch to and fro between platforms.
All the members in our group had extensively used Microsoft Teams during our internship
for internal communications and meetings across country. Even the startup in which one of
our batchmates worked, had completely moved to Microsoft Teams and never looked back.
It’s such a user friendly tool bringing so many day-to-day tasks into a single portal.
MS itself does not hold much content. It brings content from multiple places into a single
view. Files come from Sharepoint, chat messaging is enabled from Skype, and tasks come
from Planner. It also has powerful uses with artificial intelligence, bots and really complex
things.

Some exciting features/ options that drive us towards Team are:

1. Tabs integrate all work into one place

Files are there in library, complete with folders

Team’s reviews of documents are centralized
Use of planner to keep track of tasks
Notes are centralized in OneNote by channel
Connect to Dynamics 365 for customer relationship management

2. Like button for notification

 The like button enables the sender to assess whether or not the receiver has
received the message or communication. The author receives a notification that the
other person has liked it and there’s no email that he has to sort into a folder,
delete, etc.
*
3. Seamless switching across devices

One can easily switch between Surface Laptop, MacBook Air, and IPhone.
Conversations are also always updated real time in chronological order and the
interface for the user is intuitive.
Even the marketing graphics are really relevant and exciting.

4. Organized conversations with use of subject lines

One can add subject lines which are bold, larger font text in new conversations.
These are parallel to immediate subject lines.
 5. Integration of multiple communication methods into one

It enables users to experience multiple communication platforms like email, chat,

phone and text messages apps with your colleagues. MS Meets the needs of all the
communication platforms. Further, it keeps all the interactions in one place.

6. Free with office 360 license

MS Teams is included with most of the education and enterprise Office 365 licenses.

Product Development Stages

Idea Generation
The new product development process starts with idea generation. It refers to the
systematic search for new ideas starting with thousands of ideas and ultimately narrowing
down to a few good ones. The idea sources can be both internal and external.

Idea Screening
The next step in the new product development is idea screening. It essentially refers to
filtering good ideas and eliminating bad ones. The main reason to eliminate is that the cost
of elimination would rise at every subsequent stage.
Concept Development and Testing
At this stage, the good ideas are shaped into a product concept. A product concept is a
detailed version of the new product idea stated in meaningful way.

Marketing Strategy Development

The next step is the marketing strategy development. It is the time when an initial
marketing strategy is designed and tested. The stage consists of the 3 essential steps:
description of the target market, outline of the product’s planned price, and planned long
term sales, profit goals and marketing mix strategy.

Business Analysis
Management now has to evaluate the business attractiveness of the product new product.
It involves a review of the sales, profitability, costs and projections of the new product to
assess whether they meet the company’s objectives.

Product Development
At this stage, the actual product is developed. Fr new product concepts, there may be just a
word description, drawing or rough prototype. If the product concept passes a business test,
it is then developed into a physical product to project that idea can be turned into a
workable offering.

Test Marketing
The last stage before commercialization is test marketing. In this stage, the product and the
marketing program are tested in a realistic market settings. The marketing gives the
company the experience before going to the actual market and launching at a commercial
level involving high level of advertisement expenditure.

Commercialization
Test marketing gives the management the information needed to make the final decision.
Commercialization means introducing or launching the product at a commercial level. Large
amounts are spent on advertising, sales promotion and other marketing efforts in the initial
year.

Literature Review on Concept testing

Concept Testing in FMCG Context:
Testing FMCG innovations: experimental real store versus virtual
Etienne Bressoud - Journal of Product & Brand Management – 2013
The Fast-Moving consumer goods is a challenging sector in terms of new product
innovations. The rate of failure of an innovation in FMCG is as high as 80% as traditional
market research techniques fail to predict the likelihood of success or failure as “customer’s
intent” is not reliable- shopping is a largely unconscious activity in this sector.
Ideation is a result of qualitative study to identify ideas for product innovation which are
then screened by quantitative study to filter the ideas with less potential. After this physical
or a visual prototype is constructed to allow individual testing of marketing mix which
involves price, packaging, branding etc . In FMCG, most purchase decisions are made in
store (Inman et al., 2009) hence the way a product is displayed is important in the concept
testing phase. Once the testing of marketing mix is done on the store shelf vis a vis
competitor product, the concept is clearly defined after necessary changes to finally develop
the product and tested on consumers.
There are mainly four ways in which FMCG innovation concepts are described or presented
to shoppers:
(1) Online shelf
(2) Wall screen shelf
(3) Virtual store
(4) Experimental real store
Out of these, online shelf is the least immersive as it does not allow shopping trip in a store
whereas a wall screen has life size shelves and products. One disadvantage is that the
shopper is provided with several shelves one after the other but actually does not move
through the shop. The virtual store is an immersive experience as it gives a full 3-
dimensional experience which allows the shopper to move through the different aisles. In
case of experimental real store, products are life size and can be touched in a mock set up.
Concept testing in Automobile sector:
A preliminary mechanical design evaluation of the Wikispeed car: for light-weighting
implications
Siddharth Kulkarni-David Edwards-Craig Chapman-M. Hosseini-De-Graft Owusu-Manu -
Journal of Engineering, Design and Technology – 2019
Organizing new product development
Markus Becker-Francesco Zirpoli - International Journal of Operations & Production
Management – 2003

New Product development in an automotive industry is an important factor in achieving a

competitive position and avoid the incidence of cars becoming mere commodities.
In the concept development stage, the company assesses the competitor vehicles, target
market, re-iterate with engineers after expanding the USPs of the initial concept. Once the
concept is ready, the engineers and styling team collaborate to make clay models or digital
models of the sketches done in the concept development stages. The engineering team
then prepares the CAD models with detailing to check for interference and issues discovered
are resolved. A recent innovation is use of 3 D modelling data to simulate and test
everything from ergonomics, aerodynamics, mechanical durability and reflection angles.
Leaps in technology now has rendered physical crash tests as a simple confirmation means
of digital tests. The potential customers, industry experts, vehicle reviewers are given a
demo of the prototype and their feedback is collected. After the feedback, a series of testing
and prototyping finalises the final concept which then moves towards manufacturing to be
shown of as concept cars in Motor Shows.
Concept Development in Electronics Industry:
Certainty For Your Product
https://www.cms-electronics.com/en/services/test-concepts-testing/
Key Stages Of Electronics Development
https://promwad.com/company/product-development-stages

In the first stage of electronic design services, ideas are screened for their feasibility and
viability. To analyse the competitiveness of the product being thought over, electronic firms
refer to a comparison table called Technical Level Map (TLM). This table defines a unique
combination of technical and functional characteristics of a future product. Then, specialists
choose a business model to maximize the selling effectiveness of electronic device being
designed.

Post that, experts develop a detailed specification of the ideated product and its concept
design. The specification involves a complete list of all requirements to the product while
the concept design includes a complete description of the functional features and benefits.

Parallelly, business analysts develop a business plan basis the selected business model and
expert reviews. The stage also includes a variety of product research done, such as
marketing or investment research.

This stage results in a complete package of documents that describes the product concept.

The second part involves creation of preliminary (draft) project, development of the
requirements/specifications, and analysis of a variety of possible uses of a potential product.

Next thing that specialists perform is specify the prices with the company’s manufacturing
the required components to check for the financial feasibility of the design. After selecting
the manufacturers, they agree on a nondisclosure agreement (NDA) and receive, as
necessary, additional technical data. Then, they select basic components and calculate
preliminary self-cost of a product (so-called Bill of Materials or BOM). When deriving
preliminary calculations, they take into consideration the cost of manufacturing batches of
different volume.

After that, the device implementation is verified by specialists. Eventually towards the end
of electronics design services, a device prototype is assembled and tested with the
customers. Customers feedback is taken into consideration on various aspects of
commercial viability, financial feasibility, etc to develop and assemble, they buy an
evaluation kit for the chosen target platform. The engineers evaluate the selected hardware
and software technical solutions. They also assess potential weaknesses in the context of
technical feasibility, the platform’s performance and other essential characteristics.

As the result of the stage, they can understand whether they chose the right platform and
best engineering solutions. Also, they develop a limited functionality, ‘desk-type’ prototype
of the device to be further validated by the customers.
Metrics of success in concept development stage
The metrics of concept testing depend entirely on the goal of the product. But most
commonly, the following metrics are used to measure the performance of the concept with
the target group:
1) Appeal- Microsoft’s presence in the workplace in the form of Microsoft Office suite
and Windows as operating system has made it more appealing to the consumers. It
beats its competitors by combining strong collaboration features owing to the
integration with Microsoft software portfolios.
 2) Believability- People do not buy a product unless they are sure that it will deliver
exactly what it promised. Microsoft stands strong in this aspect as it is a trusted tool
in millions of households. This believability was extended to Teams and also the fact
that it has been offered free by Microsoft with its office suite has increased the
believability of the product.

3) Ease of use as perceived by customer- Microsoft is a promising organisation which

delivers revolutionary products and has been active globally to provide products
which optimize ease of access. It has a feature in which the voice mail transcribed to
provide ease of use and also efficiency.

4) Innovativeness- Microsoft Teams uses very powerful, integrated search capabilities

with built in access to applications such as Share Point, OneNote and Planner. The
team members can thus find what they are looking for in short span as the
documents that have been shared in Teams are now saved to cloud thus enabling
the members to access and work from the latest version of the document with
almost no searching. Teams offers users file sharing, creation of meetings and so
many more functions in a single chat console.

5) Quality- Being a Microsoft product, Teams has the inherent promise of being a
quality product. Quality in a product like Teams refers to service metrics such as

(i) Poor Stream Rate i.e, the organisation’s overall percentage of poor quality
streams.
(ii) Setup Failure Rate i.e, number of streams where path was not established
between the end points at the start of call
(iii) Drop failure rate i.e, percentage of successfully established streams
terminated abnormally.

6) Relevance-The wide array of collaboration tools offered ensures increased

productivity by making all collaboration available in a single app and interference.
The third-party apps that are integrated in teams ensure users do not have to leave
the teams platform to get their work done.

Recommendations
[1] The features offered by Teams are not inimitable, Slack caught up to the idea of
collaborative platform and did it better.
[2] The developers are now facing problems as the platform is not very friendly to roll out
new features. To the contrary Slack allows seamless development and integration of third
party applications. As a software, the company should take user experience into priority
during the design and launch of new features.
[3] Team lacks the ability to add a SharePoint list as a tab because it enhances efficiency of
customer operations. For example, a central SharePoint calendar displayed in a tab would
be very useful.
[4] A stumbling block for Microsoft teams is the plethora of Microsoft tools available which
have confused people and they find it cumbersome to decide which tool to use in which
situation. Post launch Microsoft should have looked into giving an instructional video or
platform to educate customers of their tools.

References:
[1] The New Product Development Process (npd) - 8 Steps
Jenny Callan-Jenny Callan - https://marketing-insider.eu/new-product-development-
process/
[2] 8 Surprisingly Great Things About Microsoft Teams
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/8-surprisingly-great-things-microsoft-teams-matt-wade
[3] A preliminary mechanical design evaluation of the Wikispeed car: for light-weighting
implications
Siddharth Kulkarni-David Edwards-Craig Chapman-M. Hosseini-De-Graft Owusu-Manu -
Journal of Engineering, Design and Technology – 2019
[4] Organizing new product development
Markus Becker-Francesco Zirpoli - International Journal of Operations & Production
Management – 2003
[5] Certainty For Your Product
https://www.cms-electronics.com/en/services/test-concepts-testing/
[6] Key Stages Of Electronics Development
https://promwad.com/company/product-development-stages