fbtechreview.comDECEMBER - JANUARY8MANAGING STAKEHOLDER DEMANDS IN THE RESTAURANT TECH SPACEBy Jason Suarez, VP - Data Services, Digital and CRM Engineering, Platforms, Dine Brands Global· "I need this done tomorrow."· "We committed to an end of day deliverable, is that possible?"· "This is business critical, so it needs to be delivered ASAP."For most in product management roles today, hearing these types of comments from your stakeholders is likely a daily occurrence. As a product manager with almost 15 years of experience, it is a common challenge for most: striking the right balance between what will drive business value, stakeholder satisfaction and enterprise profitability. The root cause driving these comments within organizations today is something many struggle with - prioritization. Though we generally try to focus on delivering what generates the highest business value, the reality of what eventually gets worked on is a complex web of stakeholder influence, executive intervention, and sound business case with a high level of return on investment. Through my experience at Dine Brands I understand how important it is to lead and prioritize within a complex cross functional and multi-brand environment and everyone within the team and across the organization plays a role in the success of getting this right.For product managers, there is a myriad of frameworks that can be used to prioritize: RICE, SWAG, value vs. effort, or any combination of these or other frameworks. Assuming you manage products in a for-profit organization, the more practical approach is to prioritize product features across three simple dimensions: revenue potential, cost reduction, and improvements to the guest or user experience. Each industry is different. For example, based on my experience in the restaurant space I've found prioritization can be complex given our asset-light, highly franchised business model. Managing a broad portfolio of tech solutions across numerous stakeholders and multiple brand concepts is certainly not easy. Dine­ IHOP and Applebee ­ are truly unique in their business needs and strategies for executing their business and evolving their tech stacks. Any company that operates and supports a multi-brand, multi-concept business model understands these dynamics and likely leverages a very similar prioritization framework, such as we do, that is based on the following guiding principles, that are:1) everything we do has to be simple to understand for all those involved 2) and, stakeholders must feel included, engaged and have a voice in the process. It's this simple approach that has proven successful in prioritizing a multitude of new product rollouts and features for my team. The benefits have also proven to be significant in ensuring cross functional alignment, and driving the in myviewJason Suarez
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