Business Context

Back in 2015, Monotype's 'Creative Professional' customers could license fonts in two ways - either via one of its eCommerce sites or via a direct sales deal with someone in the Enterprise sales team. The team knew from talking to customers that the old days of downloading a font to the desktop and using it in an offline campaign were now only part of the picture. With digital and new technologies, font licensing needs were much more complex than ever before. The current offering just wasn't up to scratch. The product management team were asked to partner with enterprise sales to come up with a new licensing model and potentially a digital product that sales teams could sell. I was asked to work directly with Product Management and Sales to co-ordinate the research component.

Stakeholders

• Product Management team

• Corporate Development

• Product Committee

• Sales and Marketing teams

• Finance

Goals

• Understand the size and shape of the market

• Understand the behaviours, needs and wants of current and prospective customers.

• Work with the Product Management team to define the key personas 

•  Work with the Product Management team to define the key customer needs for an MVP

• Gather initial feedback on a low fidelity prototype of the MVP

Approach

Over a period of 6 months I worked collaboratively with the Product Management team to conduct and project manage several phases of research. We worked in two 3 month phases and reported our progress to the internal Product Committee (stage gate process):

Phase 1:

• Analysis of existing customer data - partnering with finance

• Market sizing - partnering with data analysis and engineering, sales and finance

• Stakeholder interviews 

• Customer interviews - partnering with sales

During phase one, we collaborated with colleagues across the business to ensure we made best use of our existing data and proactively carried out new analysis. Building on previous customer meetings we had carried out in the previous year, we collaboratively interviewed further customers across our key markets - USA, UK and Germany.

Phase 2:

• Non customer interviews - partnering with external supplier for recruitment

• MVP concept testing

During phase two we sought to interview creative professionals working within large enterprises who weren't currently our customers. I commissioned and managed an external recruitment agency to recruit non customers across two phases of interviews. In order to understand both the buyers and users of our new concept, we recruited a range of people. I conducted interviews and collaborated with the product team on the analysis and synthesis of findings. 

Outcomes

We launched the MVP of Monotype Enterprise License in 2016. Initially a licensing offer, followed subsequently by a desktop app for font discovery, sharing and management. In 2018, this successful product was rebranded to Mosaic.