Building the Product Vision at Garantme

Introduction

In this article, we will share Garantme’s Product vision and the process we went through to create it. In it, you will find the definition of a Product vision, Why we need one at Garantme, How we built it, and What it looks like.

We hope that this article can be helpful to entrepreneurs, companies, and product people.

Product Vision Definition

At Garantme, the product vision describes how a future world could benefit from our Product. It’s not what we have but what we would like to have in the future.

The Product Vision is not focused on UX, we don’t really care about usability. Instead, we are focused on generating emotions by talking about the problems we aim to solve.

The Product Vision comes in two forms.

Why did we work on our Product Vision?

In just 4 years, we went from selling one insurance product through a website to handling different types of insurance products throughout multiple platforms.

With such fast growth, it can be hard internally for teams and externally for the partners and clients to keep track of the end goal and find the meaning behind each strategic move. The Product Vision came in to help us give a clear destination to everyone.

If you want to know more about our growth check the following article:

Bilan 2021 : Garantme atteint €10 M de primes !

The Product Vision as a powerful tool to attract and recruit talents

The best product people like to work on a compelling vision. During the first interview rounds, we started sharing the Product Vision. Our hypothesis was that:

1. It will increase the engagement of the candidates and thus reduce the drop
2. It will showcase our Product Culture witch is an important criterion for candidates
3. It will allow us to validate the fit of the candidate with the vision and our Product Culture

It also applies when it comes to recruiting experts and partners (SEO, SEA, Brand), for example, we give them access to the following notion page to fasten their onboarding and enable them to use our work when conducting their mission.

The Product Vision as a discussion medium with your market

The Product vision is not set in stone, it’s a tool to engage in discussions with your market.

It needs to be shared and validated.

Are we getting feature requests that correspond to the vision? Are partners and clients buying into our Product Vision?

That’s why we share the Product Vision with as many stakeholders as possible including investors, clients, partners, and team members. We also frequently confront it with our backlog to check if our day-to-day efforts are bringing us closer to the vision or on the contrary, the product vision is outdated and needs to be worked on.

The Product Vision as a tool to align and empower teams

Having a clear vision empowers teams to set up the rest of the chain. The Product vision describes our destination. Having a clear vision of the destination gives teams a clear starting point and a solid basis to define how we are planning to get to the destination (Product strategy) and the best tactics that can actually get us there helps (Product discovery).

Source: "Product Strategy: The Missing Link" by Inspired Author Marty Cagan of SVPG at Lean Product Meetup

We’ll be writing an article on Product Discovery at Garantme soon. Stay tuned 😉

How did we build our product vision?

Basic Product vision principles

There is no need to re-invent the wheel, so when we set out to create our Product Vision we started with research. You can find the documentation that was the most useful to us in the references section.

We finally decided to keep in mind the principles best summarized by Product Board in the following article: How to write and communicate an effective product vision

• Customer-focused: Customers are at the heart of our product, the product vision should talk about the value they will get out of our Product.
• Ambitious, but not unrealistic: The vision needs to be attainable in the next 3 to 5 years. If it’s too much of a stretch, it will be difficult to rally teams it.
• Competitive: Something in the vision should explain why the product is different from competitors.

Following these principles allowed us to make sure that our Product Vision:

• Addresses our key clients: Real Estate Professionals
• Describes what we aim to have in 3 to 4 years
• Highlights the power of combining insurance with day to day operations

Who works on the Product Vision?

It’s a job to be done by the product leader, depending on the organization it can be the CPO, the head of product, and sometimes the CEO. It’s a job that requires strong collaboration with Product Design especially when it comes to communicating the Product Vision.

The leadership of a company doesn’t need to create the Product Vision but they need to be included and feel shared ownership. This will facilitate the communication and adoption of the Product Vision outside the Product Team and will contribute to a common culture accross the company.

For more details about this, I highly advise you to read the Product Vision section of Marty CAGAN’s EMPOWERED

Building the Stated Product Vision

We decided to work on the first version of our Product Vision 3 weeks before the 2021 annual review. The annual review was the ideal candidate to kick-off the Product Vision as it is a moment when we celebrate our success and create alignment for the future.

To achieve this goal we followed these steps:

1. Define the 3 pillars of the Product Vision: The CPO in collaboration with the CEO defines the 3 pillars based on the company’s mission and ambition, the strategy, the OKRs & Business Plan, industry insights and tech knowledge.
2. Kick-off the production of communication materials with the Product Designer. In our case we decided to build one visual per pillar.
3. Iterate with the Product Designer
4. Validate and pitch the Product Vision with the CEO
5. Present the Product Vision during the Annual Review
6. Gather feedback
7. Organize sessions with the different teams to share the vision in more details

Building the Tangible Product Vision

Picture of the team working on the product vision

We organized 3 sessions to work on the Product Vision involving participants from different teams to leverage their creativity and their knowledge.

Each session included a reminder of the Product Vision and 2 workshops

Workshop 1: Exploring the now - 10 minutes

The goal of this workshop is to take a moment to visualize the current state of our Product. It’s mainly done to put the participants in the best conditions for the creative workshop that will follow. For that we used the Rose/Thorn/Bud workshop.

You can find out more about the method here and use the following notion template if you ever decide to organize this type of workshop.

Workshop 2: A look at the future - 30 to 50 minutes

The goal of this workshop is to leverage the creative power of each participant and generate as many ideas as possible.

1. Each participant takes the time to imagine the product in the future - 5 minutes
2. Participants work in groups of 2 or 3 to share their ideas and about the future product - 20 minutes
3. Each group presents their product vision to the rest of the participants - 5 minutes per group

Picture of the sketches

What is our Product Vision?

1. Garantme’s Stated Product Vision

Our product vision is built on 3 pillars that are focused on Real Estate Professionals.

1. Protect your landlord’s assets

Garantme enables real estate professionals to secure 100% of their rental portfolio with a wide range of insurance products while benefiting from

• Optimized processes that fit their day to day operations like extraction and digitization of slips
• Fast approvals and reimbursements
• Transparency and visibility on the management of their claims

2. Offer the best rental experience to your clients

Garantme enables Real Estate Professionals to offer the best experience to their clients through the whole rental lifecycle. Listings, apartment visits, applications, and contract management are centralized in one tool that guarantees smooth operations.

3. Grow your agency

Garantme provides GDPR and ORIAS council to enable Real Estate Professionals to acquire new business by leveraging market data and increase their revenues with the sales of insurance products to tenants and landlords.

2. Garantme’s Tangible Vision

The results of these workshops allowed us to work on a hight fidelity prototype that gives us a clearer vision of the future we imagine.

You can find our first sketches on this Figma

Conclusion

We are at the premise of building a powerful product vision. So far we managed to achieve very short-term gains.

•   We created engagement internally and clarified strategic decision
•   We are increasing engagement during our recruitment processes
•   We leveraged the Product Vision to enrich our Fundraising deck

What’s left to do? Iteration! We’re currently working on our tangible vision and gathering feedback.

References

• Product Vision & Roadmap | Amazing Teams by Slack | 2016
• (EN) Roadmaps are dead! Long live roadmaps! (Bruce McCarthy, Founder @ ProductCulture)
• INSPIRED, EMPOWERED by Marty CAGAN
• The Product Vision Sprint: 5 days to a tangible product visionby ****Kelsey Shanahan
• 5 UX Workshops and When to Use Them: A Cheat Sheet by Nielson Norman Group
• "Product Strategy: The Missing Link" by Inspired Author Marty Cagan of SVPG at Lean Product Meetup