Blog

This week I'm talking about lifecycle management and how it can be used to run your business. The headache of managing product lifecycles, ensuring ongoing risk and regulatory compliance, and driving continuous innovation isn't just a "nice to have" operational challenge anymore. It's become the defining factor between organisations that execute efficiently and those that burn through resources chasing their own tails.

The Real Pain: Manual Processes and Constant Meetings

Here's what I'm seeing across our customers: interconnected manual processes requiring constant meetings and coordination. We're talking about 5 core steps for in-market products, 25+ failure points, with an average of 15-20 handoffs across siloed teams.

A product getting out to customers requires much more than delivery of roadmap and features.

What I Call the 'Ripple Effect' - And It's Getting Worse with AI

One change to a product (and this will get exponentially worse with AI) ripples across key areas that need to line up:

• Customer communications
• Terms and conditions
• Online information
• Internal processes
• Controls and compliance frameworks
• Sales processes and decks
• Training materials
• Support documentation

Each of these touchpoints involves different teams, different approval processes, different timelines. And here's the kicker - most organisations are still managing this entire cascade on spreadsheets and across email chains.

The Reality Check: Where We Are vs Where We Need to Be

Every time you think you have your compliance framework sorted, another regulation update comes out and you're back to square one.

I'm still talking to executives who are managing their entire product compliance on spreadsheets and across email. They're spending hours every week just trying to figure out which products are at what stage of approval and constantly chasing people for updates.

The manual interconnect between processes means constant meetings, constant coordination, constant fire-fighting instead of strategic thinking.

The Strategic Shift: Product Lifecycle as Operating System

With Skyjed, we've created a way to remove this headache with an end-to-end platform and governance guardrails built in. You can do your evaluations in minutes and report to executives with real-time data.

Product lifecycle management of the future is about aligning the product to customer outcomes and doing real-time evaluations and risk management in a single tool.

It makes your effort strategic. Most importantly, all the approval controls are automated so you don't spend hours every week just trying to figure out which products are at what stage of approval and constantly chasing people.

What This Actually Looks Like in Practice

Our customers at Skyjed have saved up to 50% of the time in product monitoring. They now have:

• Real-time reporting dashboards on key metrics
• Product health checks built into the process
• Streamlined processes across their product portfolios
• Timely review cadences that actually happen
• Complete history of their entire product portfolios with version control
• Record keeping that meets audit requirements
• Automated product review triggers

No more chasing. No more spreadsheet chaos. No more wondering where things stand.

The Executive Reality: Strategic vs Operational

Think about where you're spending your time right now. Are you:

Strategic - focusing on market opportunities, innovation pipelines, customer outcomes, competitive positioning?

Or Operational - chasing approval status, coordinating between teams, managing compliance spreadsheets, fire-fighting process breakdowns?

Skyjed's product lifecycle platform with end-to-end guardrails built in is an operating system for CEOs and C-suite to be strategic with continuous innovation. You deliver commercial outcomes and stay on top of product trust without getting buried in operational quicksand.

About Skyjed: Built for Strategic Leaders

Skyjed's AI-powered end-to-end lifecycle and governance platform is mission control for product management. We bring together every data point across your entire product portfolio and lifecycle into a single source of product truth, giving our clients a new perspective to make more strategic lifecycle decisions to launch, monitor, optimize, and win with brilliant products.

We've worked with organizations across financial services, energy, and healthcare who were drowning in manual processes and compliance chaos. Our platform transforms the entire product lifecycle - from initial concept through to retirement - with governance guardrails built in at every step.

What sets us apart is that we understand the executive reality. You shouldn't be spending your strategic time on operational coordination. That's exactly what our platform eliminates.

The Bottom Line for Leadership

Continuous innovation and compliance isn't just a product team challenge - it's a strategic business challenge that requires an executive-level solution.

The organizations that will win aren't those with the best individual products. They're the ones with the most sophisticated product lifecycle orchestration - turning what used to be operational chaos into strategic advantage.

Your product lifecycle management should be accelerating your strategic decision-making, not consuming it.

Ready to see where your organisation stands?

Reach out to me or the Skyjed team for a free lifecycle maturity assessment. We'll show you exactly where the handoffs are breaking down, what the real cost is to your strategic time, and how other executives in your industry have solved this challenge.

Cheers and until next edition

Leica

Contact Skyjed today for a personalised demonstration.

About Skyjed

Watch our 30 second Skyjed Overview video here