Software product obsolescence and market reconnection at Lewis Lee Corporation

¶ … Company have been working for several months as an intern at the Lewis Lee Corporation. This organization has been concentrating its activities on a certain niche in the software products industry. Indeed, it creates software products that are used in training by different financial institutions. The product portfolio is formed from three different products (Bank President, Managing Consumer Credit, and Retail Bank Builder), each of course applying to a certain category of bank employees and a certain area of bank operations. The company has been quite successful and could boast most of the important players in the banking industry, companies like Citibank, Bank of America or MasterCard.

Problem Identification and Definition

The first problem that can be identified and from which all others seem to derive is the fact that the company has not produced any updates for its software products in the last years. Such an act has had several different consequences for the company's activities.

The first consequence is that, while the financial and banking activities have clearly been diversifying in the last several years, with new things, such as online banking and online payments, the training software that Lewis Lee is commercializing is the same, which means that it is somewhat obsolete.

The second consequence deriving from this is the fact that the company has lost its connection with the customers. Indeed, the product is tailored to fit the exact needs of the consumers, however, if in a period of several years, no changes are made to the product, it is quite certain that the customer is no longer using a product that best fits its needs. There is the danger that the clients will turn to other companies for alternative solutions.

Both of these consequences can be solved by developing and implementing a new software solution. This is where the more direct questions and problems appear. The first one I have already briefly discussed in the paragraph here above: the company has lost its basic contact with the market and does not know where this stands, what the trends are and what the clients actually want. There two aspects that need to be discussed here. First of all, the company must create a new product that best fills the customers' needs. Second of all, an update means that they have to improve technologically, so a market analysis to see what has been going on the market during the last years and what the competitors have been producing is also necessary.

Another issue that needs to be reached, besides the product's design and technology, is its commercialization and target customers. Indeed, Lewis Lee needs to ask itself whether the initial category of consumers it targeted, that is banks and their training departments, are still the ones that will be beneficial in the future. An alternative to this solution is to try and sell to individuals, bank employees that is. The effect of such a thing is two fold. First of all, it brings forward a new potential target market, with practically unlimited possibilities for the future (it is agreeable that new individuals will keep being hired by financial institutions). The second impact is that the company will be forced to become more dynamic. Indeed, if we may assume that a bank may use the same product for a longer period of time (several years as is the case here), we are deemed to assert that the products made for individuals will have a shorter life span.

However, this new target category can also produce several problems. One of the most important ones is the fact that the pre- development research will probably have to be more ample and will cost more. In order to create the perfect tailored product, having agreed that this is a must for an individual, a research should be conducted before development to decide on different preferences. In the case of a company, this is much simpler: a discussion with the CFO and the CTO will probably be enough. Less time, less costs.

Another problem that the company needs to work out is the product's presentation. In the past, this was delivered on CDs and this worked fine at that point of the product's development. However, modern technology has allowed a much easier implementation of the program, by using a website, wherefrom the clients can operate online the training program.

The main advantages I see in this approach is the fact that Lewis Lee is able to save extra costs imposed by the technical personnel that had to install the program and provide constant troubleshooting, not to mention the fact CD distribution meant that a CD supplier had to exist. As such, a website means that everybody in the company can access the site (and this is an extra plus in terms of collaboration and working together, which more and more institutions and organizations find it a must), work online and Lewis Lee saves money on distribution services.

However, a website would provide additional problems, one of the most important being the security issues. Besides the website and the program, the company must use a powerful firewall and must ensure that only the employees of the respective financial institutions will be able to use the training program.

Data Analysis

The interviews and research that the company has conducted provided several interesting results and allowed the top management get the essential conclusions and decide on a way of action for the future.

The first research, as I have mentioned, was aimed towards determining where the individuals in a bank, who constantly seek self- improvement and could use the product, would prove a potential target market. The interviews showed that less than 33% of those interviewed were interested in acquiring the product on an individual basis and that 66% relied on the training provided within the institution. The result of the research was somewhat a surprise, because we assumed each individual should attempt to learn a little more than the company provided for all employees and be thus able to make a difference. However, it seems that the work schedule corroborated with the training hours left little time for individual endeavors.

The second research, thought to determine whether it is best to continue the CD distribution or move on technologically to the website, showed that the financial institutions and banks were more interested in using a website rather than the classical CD distribution. The reasons for this were rather simple and were not necessarily related to technology, but to the fact that work groups could be used to facilitate the training process and lower overall training related costs.

The third research was conclusive in showing that the competitors had used several years to improve their training products and that Lewis Lee had some serious catching up to do.

Recommended Solution

The research and interviews conducted allowed the company to make some important decisions regarding the update it had to perform on its training software, as well as on the steps to take in the future.

The first conclusion was that the product that had been successful a few years ago needed to go through a serious updating operation on its product in order to remain competitive on the market. The company's competitors had been much more active on the market and one could consider that Lewis Lee had lost its position on the training products market due to its period of inactivity.

The second conclusion was that the new product would have to be using a new technology that would allow it to be used over the Internet or the Intranet and that the customers were nowadays preferring a website because it eased communication and working in small teams. Additionally, the company discovered no new channels, because it seemed that the individuals were not interested in using the program on their own. This meant that the banks and financial institutions would remain as the main category of customers.

As such, the company should be pursuing the development of a technological advanced program, with capabilities of being used simultaneously by several users on a website. The appropriate security level should be established (no other users should be able to access the training program, the program should only be run from within the company, etc.), because, as I have mentioned, a security breach could have negative consequences. The company should insist on its older clients with a campaign that will emphasize the fact that it sis bringing a new and improved product.