Six briefs, four sample rounds and a fridge full of pots
The development kitchen is working on a retailer's seasonal range, a foodservice customer's new sauce, and two of your own ideas. Each has had samples sent out. One customer came back with feedback in a phone call. Another replied to an email thread that has since split into three. The fridge has labelled pots from round two of something, and nobody is completely sure which version the customer liked.
Meanwhile the commercial team is asking for a cost, and operations wants to know when the factory trial is.
Why NPD is hard to keep on track
NPD involves many small steps across development, technical, commercial, purchasing and operations, and a lot of it depends on the customer. Each project moves at a different pace, and the information about where it stands is scattered.
- Briefs arrive in different formats, from a slide deck to a phone call.
- Sample versions are labelled by hand and recorded in a notebook.
- Customer feedback comes by email, phone or at a tasting meeting.
- Costings are done in separate spreadsheets for each round.
- Launch steps such as specs, artwork and trials are tracked by whoever remembers.
What it costs when projects drift
Launch dates slip because a step was waiting and nobody noticed. The wrong sample version is scaled up for a trial. Costings are out of step with the recipe the customer approved. Development time goes on projects that stalled weeks ago. And when the development chef leaves, their notebook leaves with them.
The NPD tracker we build
- Each project is created from the customer's brief, with target price, launch date, pack format and any requirements the brief states, and the original documents attached.
- Every sample round gets a version number, its recipe and a short description, and printed labels for the pots come straight from the tracker.
- Feedback is recorded against the version it refers to, whether it arrived by email, phone or at a tasting, so the history reads in order.
- Each recipe version is costed through your costing model, so commercial sees the cost of what is actually being tasted.
- Once a version is approved, the tracker opens the launch steps you define: specification, artwork, supplier approval for new ingredients, factory trial and first production, each with an owner and a due date.
- A board shows every project by stage, with what is waiting on your team and what is waiting on the customer.
| Stage | Recorded in the tracker |
|---|---|
| Brief | Requirements, targets, documents |
| Sample rounds | Version, recipe, cost, feedback |
| Approval | Approved version and who approved it |
| Launch steps | Owner, due date, status |
| Launch | First production and customer confirmation |
What the development team gets
The development chef no longer has to keep the whole programme in their head, and time in the kitchen goes to the projects that are actually moving. The notebook can stay for ideas.
A clear history of each project, so the next sample round starts from the right version. Commercial can see costs as recipes change, rather than asking. Operations can see trials coming up. When a customer asks where their product is, anyone can answer. And stalled projects are visible, so you can decide whether to chase them or stop spending kitchen time on them.
Is your NPD run like this?
- Project status lives in email and one person's notebook.
- Sample pots are labelled by hand with version numbers.
- Costings lag behind the recipe being tasted.
- Launch steps have been forgotten until late.
- You cannot easily see which projects have stalled.