How do large organizations (Adobe, Apple, PayPal, etc…) present and share their product roadmaps to the public? For example, I know Apple conducts keynotes a few times a year where they announce upcoming products soon to be launched. They do not dive into the details of their roadmap, but are strategically successful in what they do share, so as not to over promise. What do other big companies do?
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Publicly traded companies have quarterly earnings calls with analysts at banks where they announce their results, and discuss the business risks and opportunities that they face.
Some companies will voluntarily announce upcoming products or features via press releases, interviews, or self-published media, as part of their marketing efforts. That is, gauging overall market or prospective customer reaction in advance to see what kind of enthusiasm or lack thereof they find in the wild, so they can validate or make changes or cancel in advance of release.
For the most part, your average large businesses won’t share their roadmap publicly at all, and keep their plans secretive for strategic and competitive reasons (lest someone else do it faster or cheaper). Only business partners under NDA, executives, and directly-involved working level personnel will know the roadmap.
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That’s the thing. They don’t. It’s just all announcements right before launches instead. And many times the announcements are tied into the company vision or objectives that have been communicated to shareholders. Think crazy high level “do good” fluff.
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We typically have an internal and external version by quarter.
The external version is not published anywhere, just screenshared in webinars and roadshows with signed customers.
The internal one is strictly internal but we use it to align internal teams and also Pricktease sales (who leak parts of it, helpfully giving us customer feedback without any official product commitment.
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It’s not public as such, think you might have to be a customer (or maybe free account?) but SAP has a roadmap explorer with quarterly releases / backlog for different products.
Example from a public presentation
We use it in our team frequently to keep an eye on potentially upcoming feature releases and fixes that might impact us.
Also use it to keep an eye on when the “customer insights” items (suggestions) get marked for the backlog, how many quarters/years I’ll have to wait lol
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For B2B, my experience is everything is confidential under NDA until such time that there’s enough customer traction with your lead revenue-generating customers. At that time, a press release or launch at an industry event is used to expand to more customers. In most cases, the low-level product details aren’t shared publicly and an NDA is needed to learn more and actually buy the product. I’m in semiconductor industry though and our products are so complex that it would be impossible for someone to just buy our product without significant support.
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Would you say the large B2B companies typically handle in the same way you described?
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I’d say it depends on the product and customers, but perhaps one question will help with the decision…
What’s the sales channel / support for the product?
If any business can purchase it through a disti or online with little to no direct support aside from sales team, then you want farther reach and don’t need to worry (as much) about how to support these customers. In which case, wide outbound marketing and public roadmap disclosure may be better because you can get more opps in the pipeline without being worried on how to support it.
If customers need heavy support from the BU/product team, then you are better off with targeted customer disclosures under NDA to focus your efforts on targeted design-wins without risking a competitor knowing your roadmap.
My first thought on disclosing something publicly is to consider what I gain on new opps vs what I lose on competitive risk. If I’m just disclosing roadmap and can’t support the customers that would be excited about the roadmap, then why disclose it publicly and give the competitors more info?
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Thanks a lot for taking the time to reply to my post,