Product Strategy, Research & Coaching
Unblocking Product Discovery at Q4 Inc.
Challenge
Q4 is a leading capital markets communication platform provider for publicly traded companies, investors and investment banks.
I partnered with Q4 to provide product discovery coaching and user research training over a two month period. Product squads were repeatedly running into frustrating roadblocks when trying to follow the one-size-fits-all Discovery process. A high dependency on overstretched Customer Success Managers to source participants was leaving the Product squads high and dry for research studies and leaning heavily on internal subject matter experts.
Approach
I carried out a combined approach of experience mapping, stakeholder interviews and personal coaching sessions to identify common challenges and people, process and tool gaps.
The need to build stronger, mutually beneficial relationships between Product and customer-facing teams emerged through my research in order to solve Q4’s chronic research recruitment challenges.
A robust Insights presentation with key themes, supporting evidence and strategic opportunity areas was used to re-evaluate assumptions and spark discussion. Next, I led Q4 Product leadership through a remote whiteboarding exercise to prioritize the opportunities with the greatest human and business value. Launching a full-throttle relationship building mission with Sales and CX was identified as a top priority.
To continue the momentum post engagement, I created detailed execution plans for the 3 highest opportunity areas in collaboration with the UX and Product Ops teams.
Results
The clear and concise problem definitions in the Insights Report galvanized the Q4 leadership team, enabling them to zero in solving the highest impact problems affecting the Discovery practice.
One of the selected opportunities was to build a self-serve research panel with an integration to the customer Salesforce database. Martha developed a step-by-step plan for the UX team to make this a reality which will massively accelerate access to customer insights.
Outcomes
I truly appreciate that she thoughtfully observed multiple perspectives of our discovery process to help her form insights and recommendations based on our team's needs. Martha's wealth of experience across many organizations gave us proven actionable items we could build upon. She is a true thought partner, and I highly recommend her to anyone looking to evolve their product discovery process.
Sya Briones
Director of User Experience
Q4 Inc.
Martha's ability to listen, understand, and drive straight to the heart of a challenge helped my team and I craft an effective new approach to product discovery and research. In a very short timeframe Martha was able to uncover challenges that the team had been facing for months, and propose new approaches that make us more efficient and effective.
She also provided me with direct, actionable coaching to improve my leadership skills in the immediate project but also longer term in my career.
Simone Pereira
Sr. Product Manager
Q4 Inc.
Martha was able to quickly dive in, onboard and simplify a complex problem space. She's improved collaboration within multiple squads by standardizing and templating artifacts and communication materials. She is also highly knowledgeable in research methods and personally helped me gather user feedback in a structured way, setting me up for success in translating them into insights that can be easily shared across the org for alignment.
Victoria Whang
Product Designer
Q4 Inc.