In designing a software product, it’s fundamentally important to be clear on your answers to the following questions:
- What is the software’s primary purpose – what need does it meet?
- Who is the software designed for – what is the target market?
- What other systems will your software need to interact with?
- Who are your competitors – how will you differentiate?
- Who are your partners?
We say we are “staying in our lane” when we ensure that all design decisions for the product remain true to the answers to the above questions.
In the case of Datagate, our answers to the above are;
- Primary purpose – Telecom billing and distribution of those bills to customers and other software systems used by customers in our target market.
- Target market – Managed Service Providers who resell telecom and related services.
- Other Systems – Professional Service Automation packages, such as ConnectWise Manage; and Accounting Systems, such as QuickBooks, Xero and others.
- Competitors – other companies that provide telecom billing systems. These are different in each country we operate in. We differentiate by being true to our target market and integrations to systems that are important and used by our target customers.
- Partners – include white-label wholesale telecom providers, telecom tax engines, telecom tax & compliance partners and vendors of products that align with Datagate and appeal to our target market.
The best way to ensure we stay in our lane is to closely monitor feedback from our target customers, provide integrations to other systems they commonly use and avoid replicating functionality that those other systems and partners already provide. It’s important to ensure the software serves its primary purpose and works well as a component of the total software solution.
Prime examples of how this approach works for Datagate clients are given in our extensive set of case studies, and in particular our two most recent case studies for In-Telecom and DS Tech.
Software product development is always a race to stay ahead of competitors, by bringing new features and functionality to market faster, and providing the best customer experience. Staying in your lane means that you only invest precious development resources into what is relevant and beneficial to your product and customers.
So in closing; for any kind of race, it’s always more efficient to stay in your lane.
Mark Loveys 