Product Platforms: Unique Development Advantages

Salesforce Health Cloud Product VP on Product Platforms (Part 3)

Given where I work, this next statement will seem a little biased. However, it’s not too much of an exaggeration to say that product platforms enable teams to innovate at a much faster rate. Furthermore, they are increasingly more important in today’s rapidly-changing tech world. Simply put, platforms are driving the future of product success for more businesses than ever.

Now, you’re probably asking – why are product platforms so important? Similarly, it’s important to ask – why do we need to rely on them more than ever? The answer is all about resources – or in this case, a lack of resources. In other words, the demand for engineering solutions is rapidly outpacing the supply of available talent.

For example, there are approximately 400,000 students who are currently studying computer science. On the other hand, there are more than 1.4 million jobs available for developers. Using quick calculation, you’ll see that the demand for engineering talent is three times greater than the current supply. Simply put, engineers do not have the necessary resources or bandwidth to deliver on the market’s expectations.

Thankfully, this is where platforms come into play and help to mitigate the effects of this gap. Product teams can leverage the power of platforms to make up for a lack of resources and ultimately deliver products more efficiently to match your market demand.

Speed To Market

Normally, it can take more than 18 months to develop a new product from scratch. As evidenced by our development of Salesforce Health Cloud, we brought this to market in 11 months. Simply put, there’s no substitute for how fast you can operate when building on platform architecture.

Interoperability

Unlike traditional development environments, product platforms enable your team to access information in a single location. For example, you don’t have to leave the platform environment to gain access to relevant data or products. Instead, it’s all under one roof.

Rationalization Across The Code Base

One of the biggest challenges with developing new products is building a nomenclature for your product architecture. However, platform environments give you a baseline to use that can be customized to match the needs of your users. For example, Salesforce Health Cloud uses the tags/naming conventions as the standard product – which is modified to align with common health care language.

Ecosystem Explosion

As we’ve seen with Apple’s App Store, product platforms enable a huge boom in developer opportunities. Ultimately, you’re able to create a unique ecosystem with revenue opportunities for platform providers and developers alike.

Lower Cost Delivery

Simply put, you won’t find a better way to bring a product to market if budgets and development time are tight.

Click here for Part 1

Click here for Part 2