What is Time to Market? Time to Market Definition and More

Almost every year, Apple releases a new iteration of their iPhone. Full of new features, camera lenses, and more, Apple’s newest iPhone always sparks discourse and enthusiasm around the world. Funnily enough, the newest iPhone is nearly almost released in September- what seems like a typical occurrence for prospects is actually a strict innovation deadline for those involved. This strict time to market sets development expectations, allowing for revenue forecasting, and so much more.

Time to market (TTM) refers to the time it takes for a product or solution to be brought from ideation to reality. In Apple’s case, the time to market for the latest iPhone can be well over a year.

Also referred to as speed to market, TTM is important for organizations looking to take advantage of being the “first mover”, or the first to the market with a specific innovation. With tech being as competitive as it is, being the first mover gives organizations stronger brand recognition and customer loyalty, giving competitors in the space a huge disadvantage. Some household names that started off as first movers include Apple, Amazon, and Coca-Cola.

Outside of asserting market dominance, time to market is great for setting project deadlines and expectations. These deadlines and expectations are extremely important towards the success and profitability of that new product. In a study conducted by McKinsey & Co, it was revealed that product launches delayed by 6 months earned 33% less profit over five years. If the same product were released on time by 50% over budget, the profit loss over five years would only be 4%. 

Creating a strategy that revolves around time to market can set an organization up for long-time success, speeding up that time to market can generate further benefits. 

Why a Faster Time to Market Matters

With the speed and scale of innovation drastically rising with every new tech release, your brand new idea could suddenly become yesterday’s news in the blink of an eye. Similar to Apple’s expected yearly iPhone and other product releases, consumers expect the speed of innovation to meet their need for the newest thing. Organizations that are able to capitalize on this need or even present a solution that consumers didn’t even know they needed are able to become dominant within their industry. 

A faster time to market turns organizations into pioneers in their space, with the first mover advantage significantly increasing their market share. The first organization to bring a new product into the market quickly becomes the go-to option for that specific innovation. Customers adopt that new product in droves, competitor products only look like alternatives to the original. This dominant market share isn’t something insignificant either, it was found that first movers can claim almost 70% of market share for new products, but 20% if that product already exists.

Outside of market dominance, speeding up your TTM also has financial benefits for your organization. 

The average cost to develop a new product, ranging from research and design to testing and launch, comes out to be around $20,000 to $100,000+, with the huge range only expanding after taking into account salary and outsourcing costs. Speeding up your development time and reducing your TTM can drastically lower your development costs, giving you more time to innovate in other facets of your business. A faster TTM also encourages higher revenue; faster market entry allows your product to be on the market for longer, with the first mover advantage making your product the go-to choice.

How to Reduce Time to Market

Depending on your product expectations and the required speed of your next product launch, the aggressiveness of your quickening methods will vary. Typically, in order to achieve reduced time to market, organizations will engage in the following practices:

Product Validation through MVPs

Getting a new product out quickly is one thing, ensuring that the same product is functional and easy to use is another. 

A crucial step of the product development process is product design. From mapping out the user journey to developing intuitive UI, product designers play an important role in the grand scope of the product. The problem is that a perfect product in the eyes of the developer might not land with customers.

In order to quickly validate upcoming products, many organizations have turned towards minimum viable products (MVPs)- products that only contain core functionalities. MVPs are a great way to test whether your product aligns with the interests of your target consumer market, creating the opportunity to collect pivotal customer feedback to be integrated for later product iterations. Impactful feedback leads to faster product maturity, enabling organizations to reduce time to market by leaps without sacrificing product quality. 

Utilizing Automation

It’s said that the average developer spends 19% and 12% of their time maintaining code and testing, respectively. While 39% of developer effort is spent on writing new code, this doesn’t account for any human errors that may result in longer bug fixing, thus slowing down development processes.

In a bid to free up more development time, development teams have been integrating automated solutions into their workflows. From AI to different software automation tools, automation within a development environment has encouraged faster and more accurate development by reducing the risk of human error. Automation significantly reduces unnecessary developer workload too, allowing developers to focus on their core development tasks by automating repeatable tasks.

Automated integrations also provide a different take towards bug fixing and task efficiency that developers might not have noticed, keeping development in the product process fresh and optimized.

Integrating No/Low Code Building Solutions

Traditional software tools often require some technical knowhow, creating a learning curve that can severely stunt development progress if bottlenecks occur. No/low code software solutions are able to increase development accessibility by allowing individuals without technical knowhow to aid in the development process. In fact, it’s been shown that using no/low code solutions during prototyping and iteration stages can increase development speed by 50%. 

Not only do no/low code solutions have the ability to accelerate time to market, but also reduce the costs of development by removing the need for a full development team.

Outsourcing Development

On the topic of removing the need for a full development team, outsourcing development can be a great option for small teams looking to reduce their time to market but are resource-restrained.

Outsourcing non-critical development tasks to software development houses can free up in-house development time while adding new perspectives to your code. Depending on your business needs, outsourcing presents an extremely budget-friendly solution for companies looking to speed up their development. Outsourced development teams also work according to your project deadlines, ensuring that no single aspect of your new product falls behind. 

Caveats for outsourcing do exist, however. The practice can pose a risk to your code quality and security, though with background checks and contracts many organizations are able to approach outsourcing with a peace of mind.

To learn more about outsourcing to software dev houses, check out our blog! 

Taking an Agile Approach to Development

We always hear about agility in tech, but what does that mean?

An agile approach refers to a project management and software development style that prioritizes flexibility and collaboration by splitting a huge product launch into deliverable chunks. This approach to software development is based on the Agile Manifesto, a document outlining the four core values and priorities of agile development:

• Individual and actions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan

In essence, an agile development approach prioritizes the teams that work on creating software quickly, encouraging frequent collaboration with customers while creating space to adapt. 

But how does this approach result in faster market entry? 

Agile development pushes for faster iterations of projects. Though not a huge launch, these small updates are pushed to customers for testing and feedback, gauging whether expectations are met. Because agile development teams are primed to adapt and revise quickly, these crucial pieces of feedback are implemented into the next product iteration, pushing for faster product maturity while reducing the length of time between updates.

The result of agile development is a collaborative effort between developers and customers that only evolves the product with each iteration until a perfect product is released. Through this approach, development teams become more flexible and are able to use new technologies while business and leadership teams are able to set more appropriate deadlines and provide faster value. 

Accelerate Time to Market with Lyrid

Whether you’re looking to become a first mover in your field or simply progress the launch of a product you’re extremely excited about, accelerating your time to market presents a handful of benefits. From the potential to generate revenues faster and lower costs, to a boost in market share, bringing your product to market before your competitors is a strategy as old as time.

At Lyrid, we’re dedicated to streamlining your development and deployment processes, at a fraction of the cost. Reach the market faster through our infrastructure automation platform, hosting different automated solutions such as Managed Kubernetes and Managed Database that work right out of the box. No matter your solution or business size, we’re focused on making your cloud experience as smooth as possible while providing a competitive advantage.

To learn more about how to improve time to market with Lyrid, book a call with one of our product specialists!