Accept Software Resource Library

3 Reasons Why Requirements Tools are Growing

Tom Grant at Forrester writes an excellent blog on product management, in which he recently graced us by mentioning Accept in his post on "The Unrecognized Success of the Requirements Tool Market." To be sure, awareness for solutions like ours is growing fast. In fact in our latest earnings announcement we highlighted record financial results and aggressive expansion plans.

Tom asks his readers why there's a sudden interest in requirements tools and the business problem they're tied to. You'll have to read Tom's blog to get his own answer to the question in an upcoming post, but we also thought we'd let you know what we think here.

Innovation has been the lifeblood of high-tech companies, so why is interest on the rise just now?

The Customer Voice is Louder
Listening to customers is more important now than ever. Our culture is more tech savvy, more demanding and more eager for the latest and greatest than ever before. Cultural, psychological and emotional responses from customers demand instant gratification. Consumers themselves are also competing and boasting amongst friends, family and coworkers on having the latest technology. This makes being on the cutting edge one of the most important influences on buying decisions and staying at the cutting edge all the time is a full-time, high-pressure job.

Time-to-Market Demands are more Intense
It's said that Motorola invented the world's first truly portable cell phone — the DynaTAC 8000x – in 1983. It took 15 years to develop and 100 million dollars. They were first to market. Today anything that took 15 years to develop surely would not be first-to-market. In fact, being a single year behind could devastate market-share for most cell-phone companies. Better requirements management helps companies win the race to the market by unifying execution around a single, unified, concrete plan for product development. Also, by improving collaboration between executives, marketing and product development through collaboration tools, less time is spent on missteps, miscommunications, and talking instead of working.

More Products are Failing
This is really the culmination of what's new — the results of it all put together. More products are being built that weren't the right one, didn't meet rapidly fluctuating customer expectations, didn't have the right features, or were late to market.

When your product fails, it's a devastating experience. One that has a real sense of urgency to correct. Requirements tools and integrated innovation management facilitate the process to make sure companies create winning products with the fastest time to profit.