How World-Class Product Teams Are Winning in the AI Era by Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia

“How World-Class Product Teams Are Winning in the AI Era” is one of the talks at this year’s Product Drive Summit.

Delivered by Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia, it tackles the challenges and opportunities AI-revolution poses for product teams.

Let’s look at a quick overview of the key ideas from the talk.

TL;DR

• Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia is an author, speaker, coach, and the founder of Product School. He spearheads various initiatives to promote innovation and excellence in product management.
• Carlos’s session explores how leading product teams navigate digital transformations and harness AI for success.
• Digital transformations often fail due to unclear vision and outdated methods, not team adoption or tech implementation issues.
• Product teams thriving in the AI era focus on revenue growth, not just customer experience, shape product initiatives at the C-level, and leverage AI to boost productivity.
• AI enables product teams to achieve more with fewer resources. Successful product teams use it to make better-informed decisions, turn customer feedback into actionable ideas, and create better resources to support and engage customers effectively.
• Want to learn more? Sign up for the session!

Who is Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia

Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia is a sought-after speaker and product coach. He’s founded the Product School, a global leader in product management education with over two million community members.

Beyond education, Carlos is the author of The Product Book and the guy behind multiple industry events and initiatives.

He hosts Proddys, an annual awards ceremony recognizing outstanding software products, and The Product Podcast. He also organizes ProductCon, a conference that takes place in San Francisco, New York, and London and attracts thousands of product professionals every year.

How World-Class Product Teams Are Winning in the AI Era

In his eye-opening session, Carlos explores how top-tier product teams from various industries are mastering digital transformations and leveraging AI for success.

You will gain valuable insights into:

• The complexities of digital transformations.
• Importance of clear product strategy in the age of AI.
• The evolving role of product teams.
• The power of AI to secure a competitive advantage.

Why do digital transformations fail?

Did you know?

70% of digital transformations fail. That’s crazy!

The main reason?

It isn’t the lack of team adoption or poor implementation of new tech. The key culprit is the lack of clear vision and strategy.

There’s more.

Companies use obsolete transformation methods. Hiring expensive consultants or setting up innovation labs doesn’t fly anymore. Whatever they come up with doesn’t translate into any tangible benefits.

Let’s face it: we aren’t great at managing transformations.

Think about Agile. The idea was simple: use empirical evidence to develop products iteratively in small increments. Build, test, improve. And we’ve overcomplicated to the point where it’s just the opposite.

Then came product-led growth with its freemium and free trials, and the customers are still getting spammed with sales emails or requests for sales calls.

Now, it’s time for AI. And the transformation is much more than just slapping AI on your product and hoping someone somewhere buys it.

How to prosper in the AI era.

Let’s face it: The rise of AI poses serious challenges for digital companies.

But also offers opportunities.

The barriers to entry are low, so this is your chance to set your company up for success. If you move fast, you can get the first-mover advantage.

Companies acing the AI transformation include Cisco, Disney, Microsoft, Visa, and Astra Zeneca. These aren’t software companies, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t digital companies. Every company is a digital company these days.

What do they have in common?

We’ve noticed three trends that set them apart from others.

1. World-class product teams contribute to revenue growth, not just add value.

In the past, creating an excellent customer experience was enough to succeed. It isn’t anymore. To succeed in the AI era, you need to build products that users not only love but also are ready to pay for.

That’s why the best product teams work closely with their sales, marketing, and customer success colleagues to contribute more to company revenue.

Consider these 3 points.:

1) Leveraging the product as a distribution channel isn’t mutually exclusive with other marketing channels. They can work together to attract customers, convert free users into paid ones, and drive account expansion through upsells.

2) A bottom-up product motion isn’t mutually exclusive with a top-down sales motion. By analyzing user interactions with the product, you can better understand the user – their context, needs, and expectations. Sales can leverage the insights to engage more effectively at the right time.

3) Proactively flagging customers who need attention isn’t mutually exclusive with other renewal initiatives leveraged by customer success.

Traditionally, you’d hear from the customer success manager when your subscription is about to expire.

This is fine, but you can merge it with a more proactive approach.

Use product analytics to identify users who haven’t adopted the product and help them achieve it earlier on. To increase your retention and renewal rates.

2. World-class product teams have a seat at the C-table.

Traditionally, the product function fell under Technology. That’s not the case anymore.

Product is now at the C-level: More than 50% of Fortune 100 have a Chief Product Officer (CPO) who no longer reports to the CTO but directly to the CEO.

There are two implications of that:

First, the career ladder for product leaders is getting flatter, and roles like the Director of Product act as coaches. This allows them to be more in touch with what’s going on and get their hands dirty.

Second, product management is becoming more strategic. They’re now better equipped not just for product development but also for discovery and delivery.

They work closely with the user research teams to avoid disruptions during the hand-offs. More product professionals have the business skills necessary for successful GTM initiatives, such as pricing and positioning.

3. World-class product teams use fewer people and more AI

Successful product teams leverage AI to enhance productivity and achieve more with fewer resources.

Roles like Agile coach, scrum master, and product owner are becoming less essential because AI takes on more project management functions.

Product managers who effectively use AI can outperform and replace many of their counterparts who don’t do it.

Main AI use cases

As a product manager, how can you leverage AI to get the edge over your competitors?

Let’s look at five key ways.

Turning session replays into learnings

Session replays aren’t new.

However, AI tools like LogRocket make it easier to identify high-impact issues. Its Galileo AI helps you find the exact sections of the recordings where users experience technical or usability issues.

Turning user feedback into feature ideas

AI tools are great at summarizing qualitative customer feedback.

Tools like ProductBoard take it one step further. Their AIs shape product roadmaps by automatically turning feedback into feature ideas.

Adoption

Product adoption depends on the quality of support.

AI tools can replace the need for traditional FAQ sections or knowledge bases and allow users to find the information they need via a chat interface.

Turning data into insights

AI enables product teams to democratize data and improve decision-making.

Mixpanel, a product analytics platform, enables non-technical team members to get the insights they need and create custom dashboards by simply typing their questions. No need for SQL queries.

Create better documents

AI is also invaluable when it comes to creating surveys, documents, and communications.

Userpilot’s AI assistant allows you to craft messages, notifications, survey questions, and resource center modules from scratch or rewrite existing ones in no time. To make them more concise and impactful.

Want to learn more about how teams are winning in the AI era?

Like it or not, AI is here to stay.

As a product leader, you don’t have much choice: If you want to set your company up for success, you need to embrace it. And do it quickly, before your competitors race off.

To learn more about how to lead a winning team in the age of AI, sign up for “How World-Class Product Teams Are Winning in the AI Era.”