What’s inside:

An examination of today's
product landscape

Playbook: A new way to 


tackle product operations

In action: How Airtable AI

accelerates product operations

Guide:

Unlock
world-class Ebook Playbook

product

operations
 Introduction
Start with an airtight

supply chain
Today’s product Product leaders are locked in a tug of war.
They’re responding to pressing customer
development landscape
needs, while pursuing top-line business
is infinitely more complex objectives, and striving for differentiation in a
and competitive than
field of increasingly rapid innovation.

ever before. They’re facing mounting pressure to

demonstrate how product efforts impact
revenue, yet they have limited visibility into
key ROI metrics—for example, feature
adoption, customer churn, and customer
retention. In addition, product leaders are
frequently forced to defend the spend on
designers and developers who cost more to

25%
Only

hire—especially in an ever-tightening
economic climate

of CTOs say the return on their

company’s software development To succeed in such an intense environment,
investments meets expectations product leaders must be able to balance
competing priorities with a values-led
understanding of goals and an unflinching
focus on initiatives with the greatest impact.
How? By intelligently connecting data, teams,
and workflows across the entire
development cycle.

1 • Unlock world-class product operations

 (Continued)

How does this

Stages of a product
connection happen?

supply chain:
Product creation is an ongoing, multi-part Discovery – Make sense of multiple
process that requires immense coordination inputs, for example customer feedback,
and communication. As budgets and UX research, and financial analysis.
resources get tighter, organizations must find Planning – Prioritize the work that will
resourceful ways to aggregate insights have the most impact, and align your
across tools, align teams to shared priorities, team to shared goals.
and manage workflows more efficiently.

Execution – Execute rapidly using AI and

cross-functional workflows.
A Herculean task at best, but visionary Measurement – Gain a deeper
leaders are finding a solution in a time- understanding of customer outcomes
honored concept that streamlines processes and ROI to strengthen your next
and enhances efficiency: Supply chain Discovery phase.

management.


By unifying your product supply chain, your
organization is empowered to drive greater
Applying supply chain consistency, velocity, and agility in delivering
principles:

and iterating on product experiences. The

result? A product that customers want, that
Successful physical supply chain sets you apart from the competition, and
management is characterized by operational drives outsized business impact.
excellence. It ensures that the flow of goods
from raw materials to final product is efficient Build strong connections across supply
and error-free.

chains to accelerate and augment impact

Your product team can take advantage of the
same principles by connecting end-to-end
processes across the entire product DATA TEAMS
development cycle—from analyzing customer
feedback, to prioritizing high-impact work,
executing rapidly, and measuring success.

WORKFLOWS

2 • Unlock world-class product operations

What needs solving?

Here are signs you could benefit

from a supply chain approach

Misaligned prioritization Slow speed to market Poor visibility into
and strategy due to due to inefficient impact due to
disconnected data?

processes?

disparate tools?

Missed insights 
 Unclear reviews and approvals
 Inability to self-serve


Your teams can’t access useful insight There’s a lack of clarity about how and Without a single source of truth,
because feedback is siloed and slowed when reviews are conducted and teams can’t access critical
by manual processes.

whose approval is needed.

information and provide feedback

accordingly.

Risk of misdirection
 Poor dependency management


Planned work is not connected to The roadmap doesn’t connect Unclear status of work

company objectives, which processes across a timeline, meaning Leadership doesn’t have visibility
compromises clarity and alignment.

 teams can’t proactively identify into how teams are tracking against
bottlenecks.

goals and unable to get clarity on

Murky visibility 
 product progress.

There’s no unified strategy, and Duplication of work


processes are siloed, creating churn Teams aren’t connected and Struggle to demonstrate
and an incohesive vision.

communicating, leading to work measurable impact


duplication and content waste.

Stakeholders can’t collect the right

Lack of transparency
 data to demonstrate the impact of
Stakeholders and customers are left product initiatives.
out of the communication loop so they
can’t contribute and don’t understand
product prioritization.

3 • Unlock world-class product operations

 Playbook

Product

supply chain

playbook
Unlock a new way to perfect

product operations

4 • Unlock world-class product operations

 Playbook

Discover

When applying supply chain principles to discovery and

research, start with your customer. Begin by distilling user
trends from multiple sources so that you understand your
opportunities. Then, connect specific feedback themes to
consumer behavior and revenue opportunities.

Strategies to implement
Centralize feedback across Automate notifications to share
sources with pre-built integrations insights to the right product teams’
and custom forms.

backlog for review.

Use AI to triage large datasets to Link planned initiatives to OKRs by

summarize insights, discover trends aggregating customer feedback,
over time, and aggregate feedback ROI metrics, and company-level KPIs
into themes.

in a single platform.

Gain a clear understanding of your customer and the market landscape to

Goal make smarter decisions in prioritization.

How can 

Airtable help?

Airtable can help you

surface actionable 

insights by centralizing
customer feedback at 

scale. Using Airtable AI, you
will discover and synthesize
trends that would have
previously stayed hidden.

5 • Unlock world-class product operations

 Playbook

Plan

With solid insights, your organization can make smarter

decisions in the planning phase of development—balancing

customer needs, product vision, and company objectives to

prioritize the work that will have the greatest impact.

Strategies to implement

Connect data across tools to Establish effective communications

increase visibility into customer value, and transparency around prioritization

revenue impact, and the technical efforts by offering custom views of

feasibility of each opportunity.

shared, real-time data.

Use AI to streamline planning by Enable flexible prioritization of

helping you manage dependencies, projects at the team level, while still

allocate resources, and create aligning all goals to company OKRs.

product briefs in sections.

Clearly define data-driven priorities and establish a deep, org-wide

Goal
understanding of “why” your roadmap looks the way it does.

How can 


Airtable help?

Airtable can help you align

product releases with

company objectives, and

connect critical data to aid in

prioritization. Ultimately,

helping you make plans that

will deliver greater value for

customers and the business.

6 • Unlock world-class product operations

 Playbook

Execute

Start building using a shared roadmap built upon an aligned

vision in a single source of truth.Promote stronger

collaboration and reduce strategy drift when your entire

organization has visibility into when and why.

Strategies to implement

Create a real-time source of truth Keep stakeholders in the loop

for your roadmap plans and delivery when plans change or initiatives

milestones, syncing critical data move across release stages.

across systems of record like Jira

or Github.

Automate notifications for reviews

and approvals when status or 


Track product execution at every needs change.

altitude from objectives to tickets,

and across teams and product areas.

Empower your team to move quickly, in unison, so you can deliver


Goal
the best product to market faster.

How can 


Airtable help?

Airtable can help you manage

efforts across your entire

portfolio by tracking progress

at every level, identifying

blockers and dependencies,

and automating updates

between departments to keep

work moving quickly.

7 • Unlock world-class product operations

 Playbook

Measure

By connecting data on adoption, revenue, and experimentation

in a single platform, teams can identify new areas to iterate.

Continuously find new ways to drive results when you monitor

performance and operations in the same platform.

Strategies to implement

Track workflow efficiency for a Use AI to summarize trends to

deeper understanding of launch quickly understand how your

velocity and to identify areas for product releases resonate with

improvement.

customers over time.

Create executive dashboards with Integrate tools to establish real-time

visibility into goal progress, strategic visibility into results and enable quick

initiatives, and overall operational iteration of the product roadmap.

health of the team.

Continuously learn and iterate by aggregating data and using AI to identify

Goal
trends, shaping your future product roadmap.

How can 


Airtable help?

Airtable can help you

continuously improve

product outcomes by giving

you a platform to measure

the impact of new releases

and analyze operational

efficiencies in real time.

8 • Unlock world-class product operations

AI

Use Airtable AI to strengthen and

accelerate your product supply chain
AI offers advanced processing of vast amounts of unstructured data which can be a major differentiator for
product teams. Here’s how teams use Airtable AI across the phases of product development:

Discover Plan Execute Deliver

Summarize customer Match priorities to business Summarize engineering Track the velocity of
feedback and suggest objectives and OKRs.

status updates from tools product launches.

usable insights.

like Jira.

Assist in prioritization 
 Summarize post-release

Categorize and tag and resourcing.

Automatically generate feedback from customers

feedback according to compliance and tasks and target audiences.

theme, product feature, etc.

Manage dependencies checklists.

and timelines.

Group feedback
Aggregate summaries Aggregate information in a according to trends,
across different types of Generate product global launch calendar. feature, sentiment, etc.

feedback and information. requirements and briefing

documents in seconds. Suggest post-release
feature prioritization,
according to different
datasets.

9 • Unlock world-class product operations

 Conclusion

AI-powered apps fuel

tomorrow's best products

Product development in Product leaders looking to transform

their organizations will find inspiration in

the future will be marked
physical supply chain principles to help
by even more rapid them prioritize for greatest impact, drive

innovation, customer- operational excellence, and achieve their

biggest goals.

centric strategies, and

an increased integration In Airtable, you can align teams around

of data analytics and AI. shared and trusted data, consolidate

rigid martech, and connect flexible

workflows. You can empower everyone

in your marketing team to harness AI to

move more quickly and augment

workflows. And you’re able to build

intuitive, AI-powered apps without losing

connection or sacrificing the unique way

34%
potential profit
your team collaborates and innovates.

increase
Learn more about the AI-powered

product supply chain →

A fully optimized product

manager could increase

company profits by 34%

10 • Unlock world-class product operations

About Airtable

Airtable enables teams to work the 


way they want while also staying 

aligned, allowing them to do their 

best work, together.
With the Airtable Connected Apps PlatformTM, teams can build custom apps on top of shared data
to best support their unique workflows—from managing campaigns to launching products to
tracking applicants. This helps strengthen alignment across teams, boost employee productivity
and efficiency at scale, and reduce costs and risks through tool consolidation.

Learn More Contact sales