100% work on your own product

How is the high level of two overarching indicators achieved on the current market of modern IT companies: team satisfaction and customer loyalty (NPS)?

If you ask this question in Metapack, you will hear that one of the main impulses that make it possible is the design, development, implementation and support of our own products shared via the cloud environment in the SaaS (Software as a Service) model to significant in the e-commerce world sales platforms and to the largest top brands offering online sales.

Years of work and, above all, years of active listening have allowed Metapack to achieve this high level of satisfaction. Undoubtedly, it gives us all great joy knowing how much our current and new customers appreciate the value that the products provided by Metapack give to their businesses. Something that motivates us even more is the natural need to keep these two indicators at a very high level 🙂

Why does the e-commerce world need Metapack products and what is their role in fulfilling our mission?

Our mission as a technology company is to connect the world of online sellers with buyers by integrating them with the services of logistics operators delivering orders to buyers around the world. Metapack software and services that are based on it integrate online stores, couriers and buyers so that the entire process of placing and completing orders or their return is as comfortable, trouble-free and fast as possible.

The dynamic development of online sales in recent years has completely transformed the model of pre- and after-sales order process management. Online stores have also begun to compete in the market in terms of order processing, ie available shipping options in terms of time and place of delivery, after-sales support for buyers (WISMO), or a quick and simple return process. This evolution in the online shopping culture has opened up new opportunities for Metapack products in terms of technology, functionality and sales. We successfully translate these opportunities into the further development of our eco-system of products and offer it to e-commerce retailers around the world.

What does it mean to work on our own product?

Cross-functional (i.e. interdisciplinary) development teams consisting of several types of specialists (developers) who are able to collectively carry out tasks related to requirements analysis, programming, quality assurance and other activities necessary in the process of product development and maintenance work on the development of Metapack products. Such autonomous teams take responsibility for building and further development of the product, its delivery, availability and maintenance in production.

What makes this process more attractive are, of course, the technologies (89 used today), including those, for example NewRelic, PagerDuty, which are also used by the largest software vendors in the world. They are largely about the innovation of both how our products are built and how the automation of their availability for customers takes place, taking into account the need for their quick scalability.

Teams have an appropriate degree of autonomy and with this autonomy comes greater responsibility. They have an impact on the way of implementing product changes, while maintaining consistency with the strategy defined by the adopted goals and priorities. This is not an easy task. Product Owners, who work directly with development teams, provide them with enormous support. The product approach and autonomy inspire our creativity and commitment, and make the teams trust each other. Teams plan and implement changes in line with business goals and priorities without unnecessary project micromanagement.

Product development is not just about building itself. For us, product culture means the need to focus on products in every area of ​​our company’s day-to-day operations. Sales, analysis, solution architecture, customer implementation and post-implementation support teams also place products in the center of their attention.

Focusing on product in all areas allows for greater consistency in prioritization and their easier definement, faster identification of dependencies between products and more consistent planning of the implementation of interdependent changes. We limit to a minimum the introduction of changes dedicated only to a narrow group or even to individual customers. This model of product development makes them more universal and better suited to market expectations.

How are Metapack products offered to customers?

The current, proven model of customer acquisition, based on classic sales and marketing, is adjusted to the current market reality of product and technology companies. We implement an approach that allows very simple and quick access of customers to some of the identified and named product functionalities in their basic scope (Essentials).

Why so? Very often, access to advanced product functionalities is not necessary for customer to quickly learn the value that Metapack products bring to their business. This first stage of cooperation allows our clients to convince themselves to our products in their basic scope and to prepare for integration at a more advanced level (Professionals); of course, if the client identifies such needs.

Further functional changes and the introduction of, for example, new courier integrations in our products are carried out with a large share of customers’ voices. This allows us to take into account their value in the model of access to Metapack products (selling points) and offer them to customers along with their changing needs (upselling).

This philosophy of product focus, image building and customer acquisition is successfully used by many companies, including giants such as Facebook and Netflix.

When developing ‘our own product’, we approach our work and challenges very consciously. Everyone at Metapack, being focused on the development of our products, knows what our vision, goals and priorities are. Why we do what we do and what we want to achieve in the coming months. Awareness and the possibility of having a real impact on the development of products allows us to derive greater satisfaction from work – building ‘The worlds most trusted E-commerce Delivery Platform’.

Author:

Dariusz,
Director, Carrier Platform Product Ownership