Top 5 Project Management Strategies To Innovate And Mitigate Risk with Loren West

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Hey there product launchers. Got another great office hours for you. This one's with Lauren west and if you remember, Lauren is our product development expert in all things consumer packaged goods that are a little bit more complex, anything that requires compliance, FDA approval, all of those things. Lauren is your person to talk about the process flow and project management and process management and anything related to those systems and tools. So let's hear it from Lauren.

Hi, welcome everybody. I'm so glad you can join us today for today's topic. My name is Lauren west and I'm with CPG Beauty and Beyond, which is an LA based consulting agency supporting entrepreneurs and established beauty brands to launch their products faster, better and more efficiently. And today's topic we're going to talk all about innovation and mitigating risk to those areas, some top strategies your company can use or as you're starting off building a new brand that you can keep in mind or as you go to launch your new product. So let me just pop up my presentation here shortly. So today's topic is about strategies that you guys utilize to create better innovation and mitigate risk on your projects with specifically keeping in mind to beauty brands. But this could also be applied elsewhere if you're a product based company. And the reason why these two things are so important as it's really key as a company to really stay on top of how are you going to innovate, whether that will be through some new technology and your product, or bringing something, a new product first to market, being first to market, as well as just expanding as a company and bringing more innovation to your process flow and how you do things. And alongside innovation, the other element is to kind of mitigate risk that you're taking on, whether that might be financial liability as you launch a new product or also just the operational risks as you move forward. Launching a new brand, there's always things that are pretty typical that companies encounter and should always try to take in mind to kind of recap what risks you have and how to mitigate those from the start. To start off, one of the first strategies I really recommend when I go into different clientele and once I've been able to really establish and understand a Little better. How companies function is to implement what's called a project steering committee. And what this really allows teams to do, especially from an executive management level and department leadership level, is to really get a big picture scope of what are we working on as a company, what is coming up next, what are some key issues, some critical concerns with our current projects, as well as for new product concepts that are coming up in the pipeline. What are some key dates we need to hit, what are some key liabilities we have issues with? And really allows a platform of open communication. That's one of the things that will tie back into on strategy number five along with teams and communication. But really having a designated committee or even a meeting, whatever it might be for your company as you see fit, is to really implement a platform for that project communication to basically solidify it as important, but nonetheless allow it as ongoing in your company. And what this allows team members to do, especially at lower levels, say within an operational team or a product development team, creative team or packaging for example, is to really highlight some professionals that may be working for you as well as from a marketing team to have that opportunity to present ideas and share about their projects to an executive team. So sometimes there isn't always that top down communication. So this not only serves as an option of servicing your project management needs as a company overall from a big picture, but also allows team members to shine in a different way and present some new product ideas and marketing strategies directly to upper management within companies. So that there is that exchange of ideas and interaction and highlighting team members as they grow within your organization. So I think that's also a great opportunity to highlight and appreciate the team members that you do have. And also as a side note, looking to retain top talent, presenting new opportunities for people at your company from an innovation standpoint, as well as mitigating risk. Usually this type of committee would have a variety of product launches that are reviewed for upcoming potential launches in the pipeline. And so in a launch or review, essentially you'd be outlining key timing, key liabilities that are needed, looking at no go dates. When does a project need to be approved by in order to actually hit that launch date? So for example, there could be a lot of initial concept design and formulation design, say four to six months initially and then as it gets closer, closer to understanding when your need to order by dates are for different components and packaging, whether it's primary packaging with bottles and jars or tubes, as well as secondary. That way you know key dates and the other element which is strategy number Two, which will tie in is the project P and L statement. But that also can be presented and reviewed in a steering committee or secondary. It can be, you know, reviewed just one on one with upper management or whoever is designated to get those P and L approvals. So something I find that not a lot of companies have, especially as they start out, but even more so even as they're established, even if they're million dollar brands, is they don't always have that profit and loss statement for their projects in place for an overall review and approval. So sometimes companies are really looking at small pieces of the puzzle as they go as they're building projects. And what I find is without having all of kind of a screenshot initially of having all this information reviewed, sometimes things get missed through the cracks or not everybody is aware of really what the margin's at or what's needed to be able to actually make what kind of profit you want to make on a particular product launch. And so having all this information together in one spot for like a final overall approval is really needed. And sometimes I think the challenges companies face is really kind of getting all this information together rather quickly. But being able to build in better project planning initially is really strategic and key to setting up to getting a profit and loss statement established. And really what that entails is cost of goods. So understanding the desired packaging options you might have and running down different scenarios with your teams, or whether if you're just starting out and you're reaching out to a cosmetic manufacturer, really looking at all the different avenues of how could you produce this product and what is your end target if you want it to be a prestige beauty brand product or a mass market brand level, those both have two different price point ranges typically. And looking at where your cost of goods needs to be in order to have it be profitable for your company to consider, the other thing is to really have your initial launch forecast and especially a six month projected sales plan. So, so that way your operations team has a flow and a better understanding of what's going to be coming next, what are the component needs in the next three to six months after you initially launch it, and also getting, as I mentioned before, getting really clear on desired packaging options. And that can come both in play from a PD department that your company may have as well as a creative department, and bringing in that branding element too as well. So from product, from the design itself to color to how exactly do you want to communicate your message about this product, how do you want consumers to feel? So all this kind of ties into all those desired packaging options and really looking at what makes sense for your company as a business. One thing I didn't note here is I'll be beefing up these slides before I upload this to the resource area for everybody later on to use is to really also consider your project volume overall. A lot of companies that are established especially in the beauty business, you know you're running first to market and you're trying to get launched as quickly as possible is what is the true capacity of your teams. Whether that's your company is set up to produce everything in house or you're relying on outside vendors to do all that production. So really looking at what can your teams really take on and capacity wise over a given month. So the other thing I also like to do for clientele or I recommend on setting up is some type of basically launch calendar and timing so that it's understood from an executive level how many projects are currently being worked on what's coming next so you can plan ahead and understand hey, quarter four of next year is going to be really really busy. Maybe we want to give our teams a break in Q3 or we might want to revisit and then remap out to make it a little bit better flow so one quarter isn't too heavy over another. So there's always multiple reasons of doing that as well. But keeping that in mind even in a profit loss statement of understanding launch timing and when best to get that out for everybody involved is really key as well from a strategy standpoint. For our strategy number three is really looking at product concept documentation and initial market research. So a lot of times, especially at smaller beauty brands that may not have as formal of structure and may not really be designed with a corporate background as some other beauty brands such as Murad and coding other organizations have a lot more formal structure to them is really having enough documentation to not only understand what exactly am I working on, but to retain a history of what your teams have been working on towards innovation. So that way say if you're doing project planning, product planning for your next year and you want to map out what exactly do you want to launch for 2019 or 2020, you can have a resource of here's some initial concept requests that we worked on, say we didn't move them to the go stage and approve them yet, but we still have all this information, here's what we can go back and rely on. Here's some initial research that we did before. So what that entails is usually I'LL set up two separate forms is an initial concept request form usually going from a marketing sales department or a visionary department that works with your executive team. Or say an entrepreneurial type company is basically a concept request form that goes into a PD department. Or you can send this out to a contract manufacturer to do some initial research for you as well on this. And then that form essentially will have all the key initial information to do some initial research. And usually that will include a few product benchmarks. The marketing team is looking to identify whether that might be a competitor beauty brands product that you want to emulate or have be somewhat similar to. Or for example, there might be a new ingredient that is very popular or something that hasn't really been tried in a beauty product before. It might be interesting. So there might be some additional research that is desired to be done to see if that's even feasible or wanted. And not only looking at product benchmarks from like a packaging standpoint, but also as I mentioned with ingredients looking at more from the actual product itself and what's the story behind it that way. So from doing this documentation it just gives you additional research. So when your innovation team and when your marketing team is trying to think of what are we going to create next? Or say for example, if you have your own research and development team for larger companies, they usually they might have an R and D department specifically set up for this is to really look at new innovations that way. Just keeping history of what have you looked at before so you can revisit it and go back to it and does it make sense for me now the other thing is people also look at innovation in terms of what kind of skin issue do they want to accomplish. Do you want to get rid of redness? Do you want to help with hydration? Do you want to help with clarity of the skin and evening balancing out skin tone. So just looking at the benefit of the product as well. So that also really comes into key information as well providing on these types of documentation. But what you don't document you can't track. And so I really recommend to take a look at your documentation in general of what are you keeping track of what exactly are you analyzing to establish as innovation for your company? And then having that market research of understanding what other companies may already be working on something similar to this. Maybe a company might have teased in their consumer marketing that they might be launching something soon. So just kind of understanding what other key competitors might you be looking at competing with for your own launch coming up and understanding what you might be competing with. So that's really key is to really do enough initial market research and really relying on there's different companies out there that will cater to offer research as well. I haven't found a whole lot of them to be one super concrete and great that I would recommend over another. But there's always another source out there. And in part of this research also leads to my strategy number four, which is really staying in connection with your industry and vendors. So really leveraging the relationships you do have in the industry, whatever that might be. And for those companies that really utilize outside manufacturing, really relying on them to tell you kind of what's coming next and what's a really innovative thing to bring to market. So a lot of manufacturers, they'll work on custom formulas for you based on what you kind of desire to do, but they also have a pulse of on the beauty industry as well. If that's what they cater to, they'll have some directional expertise to rely on as well. So besides just keeping that kind of relationship going with your current and new suppliers is also utilizing a lot of different resources that are out there and that can be both in person and online and in print. So for example, beauty trade shows are really great to meet new people, create new connections, see what other brands are doing, see what's out there and what's coming next. I just recently went up to Las Vegas and attended the cosmoprof North America show which happens in July in Vegas every year. And I think it's cosmoprofnorthamerica. Com. I'll add that to the slide as well as reference. That show basically encompasses everything beauty from like a professional side as well as a contract manufacturer side and brand side as well. So there's a lot of things to see, especially if you're an entrepreneur considering getting into the beauty business. It would be a great thing to try to connect with and go. And if Vegas is a little too far for you, they have the ice show which is typically hosted in Long beach every January at the end of January. I believe it stands for the International Salon Exhibition. Forget what the second S stands for, but that also really caters to brands. It's a smaller show than CosmoProf, but it does do a lot of product, cash and carry. So you can get better deals there and actually carry out product from that show. And then they have a couple consumer based shows that might be interested to see how these other outfits are serving consumers so you can start to see some additional trends that are coming out. So they have beautycon that was just recently hosted in LA in the middle of July, believe they hold it every July. They also have a show in New York as well. So I believe that particular show is only held in the two locations. But there are heavy markets for beauty both LA and New York, but it's consumer based as well, so you can see kind of what's actually being marketed at the very end to consumers. And then Sephora has a new show that I might be attending myself called Sephora and I believe it's going to be a consumer based show as well as providing a marketplace for various different beauty entrepreneurs to speak at. So it'll be interesting to see what that is all about. And that's scheduled for fall in October later this year. Another resource I know a lot of companies you know tend to utilize it's great to connect with is what's currently kind of coming out in magazines and beauty blogs as trends. One of which I follow the global cosmetic magazine. They do a free digital online subscription newsletter which really comes out with great things coming up. Just having a pulse on beauty of what might be happening from larger conglomerates to what kind of trends are coming up, what beauty companies might have been acquired recently as well as products and packaging. Any kind of new innovation with that, there's always a lot of articles and resources there and then as I mentioned earlier is really keeping a pulse on the relationships you do have with your current suppliers as well as when you get new suppliers and really nourishing those relationships. So setting up regular meetings and really kind of doing typical audits and as you obtain a new supplier, what exactly do you expect of them? So having that kind of established and set up with how do you want that relationship to be like can also really nourish your brand and your business back when you are looking to rely on them to mitigate risk and go back in and be able to shrink timelines for you and you turn things around quicker is to the relationships with vendors are two way street, so is there an opportunity for you to refer them to somebody else? Is there options or cross partnership and different collaborations? You just never know what might be coming next in that way. So I definitely think it's valuable to nurse those relationships as much as possible because they really help you especially as you're connecting additional trade shows. They might know of additional vendors that can help you with your next product launch. As most companies are using multiple vendors to get something done, whether it's from like on the decoration side for components or just the component manufacturing to actual filling to then with some companies needing other outside resources to fulfill the distribution and warehousing for them. So everyone's so connected in the industry that it's really good to nourish the relationships you do have. And my fifth strategy is really that I wanted to connect on today and just remind people of is really to leverage team brainstorming. I feel it's so easy to think of, oh, what can we do next? And there's a lot of pressure on management to understand, okay, where exactly should we innovate or how are we going to solve this problem? And from an operational standpoint and get something launched out the door and to really leverage the team you do have. And brainstorming is great for that of having regular, ongoing scheduled meetings where you can obtain frequent feedback from your team on how can you improve in different areas. Whether it's a process of how you guys are obtaining innovation and approaching that, or also mitigating risk and understanding of okay, as a problem arrives, how can we solve this quickly and most efficiently and being open minded to new ideas. You know, I find a lot of executives at very higher end, larger conglomerates, a lot of people tend to be stuck in ways that they know and what they're doing and just being open minded. Especially as companies obtain new talent, just leveraging the resource and experiences that people have had throughout their professional career careers, it's really important to give your team members the space to really share and being able to openly and transparently share with what has worked in the past for them or what they found helpful or what even didn't work at other companies so that you know, as you're approaching new innovation and learning how better to get your projects launched and out the door, to really be open minded to what might be presented to you and to also have that open communication between team at the work level, at the very basis level of the A to Z parts and pieces and your leadership to have recommendations flow both ways. This also kind of by having all this brainstorming, it really will help to kind of create that open communication that's really needed to ensure that you're having the most effective launch experience for everybody all the way around. And with the open communication that kind of sidelines even into a sixth strategy, even really having that ongoing project communication, I find a lot of companies tend to be very siloed. So whether they're larger or smaller, is a lot of departments, whether it's operations or PD or finance or even an executive team, a lot of different teams are holding onto information without really having it openly shared. So I've found a lot more when teams are able to set their egos aside and set their opinions of each other's side in the respective what do I do versus what you do? A lot of magic can happen really when you're able to really lay out here's all the challenges on the table because you don't know where your next idea is to help fix that problem may come from. And so really as you're getting on the same page with project and having ongoing project meetings to really have that in place, where all the liabilities are listed or here's all the open concerns I have from an operational standpoint of how we could produce this better or could we change the design and do this. So having a lot of that open communication as new innovation is being decided upon in initial stages is really key because as I keep saying and reiterating is that really looking at your team as a whole and everybody trying to help to get the product out the door faster, better, more efficiently is really having that open communication and that's really key as well. So I kind of wanted to review just kind of a recap of the different strategies I mentioned prior is really looking at establishing a project steering committee if you don't already have that. And ideally that would be quarterly or at the very least biannually as most companies are planning six months to a year at a time and relatively can even be two years out from that. To really consider implementing some type of project P and L statement, I'll put a quick sample of one into the resource library for people. But really the other key thing I forgot to mention here is really looking at the financial aspect of it and how it sells on the back end. So you can do an initial pna, but did it really sell how you expected it to sell? Did everything come in cost wise that way or was there any changes? Was there a forecast change later on so that was different than at the initial approved stage versus what actually happened. So looking at those two comparisons very important as well. And strategy three really looking at documenting the type of concept request and initial market research that you do just so you have it as a reference for later on and having a clear picture of what did you work on for this project and what's coming next so you have a whole paper trail and just remembering to stay connected to your industry and vendors and to rely on them as a resource as much as they rely on you for continued business is to really develop that relationship into a partnership and how can you help them as much as they can help you. The other resource I will mention I'll add on here is the pba, the Professional Beauty Association. I belong to them for gosh, maybe around four or five years now and they're great, both from a brand side as well as individual working in the beauty industry as well. I just have a lot of resources, additional things that are on their website as well as they do a monthly newsletter as well. So I found that to be helpful too. And again, just leveraging your team because you don't know who you have on your team unless you really give people the open key to share. So I really have found that to be most helpful even when walking into different circles and understanding where they're at, where their backgrounds are, you know, what they can bring to the table and having those open type of discussions of how can we improve this? Or what do you see as an issue for improving innovation at our company? And you never know what some people might bring to the table or an idea of how to switch a process or a new product idea they might have that you would have never known if you hadn't asked. So I definitely think it's key on having these kind of brainstorming feedback sessions as it really allows you to find hidden gems within your company, whether it might be a product idea or you just hired great talent that you not only confirmed on, but you definitely want to retain for the future. So I know today's presentation is a little short today, but I will provide some additional resources on here before I upload this to the resource library for everybody to utilize. And I wanted to move on next in case there might be any questions. So I'm going to stop sharing this and switch back to our video. So Tracy, I'm not sure if you're on right now at the moment.

I am. We don't have any questions that were submitted in advance today, so they missed out on asking you something really valuable. I was really. I did not know that Sephora exists. That like fabulous.

Like I cannot wait to attend.

I think I just want to come with you just for fun.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. I'm actually with Sephora. When I was up in Cosmopolf recently, there were some people up there that had no idea about it either. So it's.

So this is an important thing for you listeners and leaders and watchers out there that this is the benefit of being in the know. That would have been a great question for Lauren. What trade shows are coming up where should I be? So, yeah, that insight is so valuable. Thank you for sharing that with us.

Oh, no problem. And if people want to find that, it's actually on sephora.com Fora made their own website for it and the tickets, I am trying to confirm more details about it because the website's a little unclear to me of what exactly I get at different ticket offerings. So right now their price ranges from like 100 to 500 and it's only for like a one day admittance to their two day event. So you can only go one day with your ticket. So you would have to buy like two $99 ones if you want to go both days, I imagine. So I'm trying to get some further information of exactly what that is. I know they just opened I think this last week on the 27th or something for ticket sales and I don't know how many they have. So I don't know exactly how it's being structured. I do know it's their first event.

Like doing this, so they may not totally know yet.

Yeah, I think they're cut. Yeah, I think they're just kind of pre launching this and seeing how many people kind of initially sign up. So I know that they're going to have some brands represented there, I'm assuming.

So maybe what we should do is we'll have you do a follow up. If you ping me like message on Facebook or do something like that. We could do a little follow up, maybe just like a quick little Facebook Live. If you've got an update for anyone. We could just do that together.

That sounds like a plan. And then as I said, I'll mention I'll add some additional resources to the library as well based on the information I presented in today's session. Wonderful, wonderful basic stuff.

Well, thank you so much, Lauren. We really appreciate it. And until your next episode here on Product Launch Hazards.

Yeah. Thank you so much for having me today, Tracy. I appreciate it.

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