Product Management is the co-ordinated approach to innovation, implementation and lifecycle of your products (*). A Product Manager co-ordinates the efforts of all functions in a company (Engineering, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Sales, Marketing, Finance, Purchasing, Service/Support, Distribution, Legal) and is ultimately responsible for the financial success, schedule adherence and quality standards of one or more products. He is the main point of contact across the company for the whole lifecycle of the products he manages.

* Products can either be Goods or Services.

A Product Manager can be used for short-term project as well as for long-term ones. In both cases he works with representatives of every department of the company. He leads teams and meetings focusing on different deliverables: marketing launch, testing, product readiness, forecast & revenue, training, …

Depending on the need, he is in charge of one or all of the following: launching a product, re-organizing the strategy behind a family of products, analyzing market demand or defining product requirements.

Usually reporting to the Marketing department, he can also report to Engineering or directly to the Head of the company. Since one of his roles is to increase efficiency he is strategic in distributing information to the right stakeholders.