Optimizing Your Product Using Customer Data - Ayal Cohen, MicroFocus

Product Innovation Series with Aram Melkoumov

We all want to maintain high application quality, but without automation and customer involvement, it would be impossible to reach these goals.
Automation plus customer data make your apps scalable, usable, and more efficient for your customers. Create a product and a solution that your customers will love and engage with, not just use.
- Ayal Cohen, Senior Director of Product @ MicroFocus.

About Ayal
Ayal is a Senior Director of Products at MicroFocus. He spent more than two decades in the world of automation and is leading the next evolution for automated functional testing. Ayal has helped hundreds of customers build their test automation switches and improve their automation. Experienced with translating customer pains and market needs into working and profitable products based on data analysis and market research. He provides a strong R&D and quality assurance background with proven capabilities in managing large-scale products, projects, and organizations.

SHOW NOTES:
0:00 | Introduction to Ayal
1:07 | What is functional automation testing, and why his focus is in this area
3:15 | How automated testing works for different products
4:29 | The best customer meeting that Ayal has ever had
7:03 | How to ensure you’re adding maximum value in a customer meeting
8:34 | How frequently to hold your customer meetings
11:02| When to consolidate data from customer meetings and do sense-making
12:11 | How the world of products has changed over the years
16:12 | Ayal's biggest product challenge working with big enterprises
18:00 | What Ayal has seen to work in solving customer expectations and requests
20:33 | The definition of enterprise-ready in the product realm
23:21 | The biggest cause of concern and mandate for enterprises today
26:33 | Creating product customers will love and engage with, not just use
27:20 | How Ayal determines the success criteria for a product that is going to be loved
28:33 | How to change your product to approach and achieve growth
31:48 | Initial foundation levels of success to look at when changing your product
33:40 | The last customer engagement syndrome. What it’s and how it works
35:37 | Q/A session
38:08 | Key takeaways for the listeners from Ayal
39:07 | Wrap-up
QUOTES:
“If you want to learn how customers are using your solution and their challenges, it’s very important to be patient, don’t be afraid of awkward silence, give your customers time to answer the question, don’t put words in their mouth.” [7:06]
“You need to hear more opinions to make sure you are more educated with different varieties of personas to make the right conclusion from the feedback that you have.” [11:31]
“Data is very important and you need to understand how your customers are using your product to understand what is missing and how you can engage more solution.” [31:46]

Resources Mentioned
The Mom Test: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01H4G2J1U/
Connect with Ayal Cohen
Company’s Website: https://www.microfocus.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ayalc/