IQ-Magazine-Issue-15
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<strong>IQ</strong> business innovation<br />
What<br />
version<br />
James Pinchbeck,<br />
Marketing Partner at<br />
Streets Chartered<br />
Accountants, asks you to<br />
consider your businesses<br />
position in the market<br />
place. Is it state of the art,<br />
or out with the ark?<br />
is your<br />
business?<br />
Whether you have bought or received the latest technology<br />
for Christmas, be it a phone, gaming platform, tablet, TV<br />
or similar, part of the decision to buy it, or want it, will be<br />
because it is the latest or most up to date version. Whether or<br />
not upgrades and new versions really do offer the consumer<br />
more is open to debate, but the technique of introducing a<br />
new version of a product does help many businesses in the<br />
quest for an uplift in sales.<br />
If you are a technology-led business, you will be fully familiar<br />
with the product life cycle and the process for developing and<br />
introducing new products to market. Those in other sectors<br />
however, may be less conversant with such an approach. It<br />
does beg the question of a more traditional business, be they<br />
service or product led, as to how relevant, up to date and<br />
attractive their offering is to customers. Perhaps the simplest<br />
way to tell is to look at whether sales, repeat business and new<br />
enquiries are in decline, and whether you seem to be losing<br />
sales to competitors who are offering something new.<br />
It could be suggested that given the benign nature of many<br />
business markets, there are a significant number of businesses<br />
issue <strong>15</strong> | page 20
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