Assume their next iteration will be better. Then what? By all means, believe in your team to be competitive head-to-head. But also assume Microsoft/Apple/google/... will be present and eventually if not already will/might be pretty decent.
Or they might just be part of the package. For many of our product champions in corporate environments, SharePoint was not something they chose, but it still was part of their daily reality and not something they could ignore or stop using.
I hope I'm not downplaying just how hard it can be when your core revenue generating product is just being completely commoditized by a 'ham sandwich'[1]. I'm just trying to relate an experience where we could absorb and even grow through the impact in the hope it might keep others from being discouraged in difficult times
[1] Steve Ballmer, famously said the company could bundle a ham sandwich into Windows if it wanted to
(1) Take a deep breath, don't pretend nothing happened
(2) Don't just compete, look at how you can provide additional value to those customers that will also use the incumbent's offering
(3) Get on with your roadmap on improving value for and delighting all your customers
When Microsoft announced Teams [1], we thought our own team collaboration product [2] would be severely impacted. Not that we were surprised that Microsoft came out with this product after having lauded ours in the past. Team collaboration was always on their radar, and had been declared strategic for years. But I will not deny that it still makes you feel as if the ground beneath your feet is rumbling.
We knew from past experiences, and our contacts, that Microsoft would push this product hard into their ecosystem. So we had to keep in mind that most of our customers would be aware of it if not already, soon, and at least there would be questions of whether they should consider going with Microsoft or not.
But we also had been competing successfully for years as a 'small indie' shop against outfits that were swimming in VC money, so stiff competition was not a 'new' experience. However, Microsoft being the gorilla in the room stapling in their offering into O365 might be a different beast altogether.
So what to do?
First we acknowledged that going forward many of our customers would also have Teams, by choice or by company policy. So we looked at how our customers might benefit from having both. I think this is a key question you should ask. Not just 'how is my offer better than theirs', but how are both together better than just the competing offer from the behemoth?
In our case this meant two things
- making sure that you play nice with the new app, in a way that the experience of using both is seamless.
- find specific scenarios where the users of the incumbent app benefit from having yours as well
We developed an integration with Teams[3] that covered these points. We also doubled down on our roadmap, making sure that both standalone and dual app users receive increased value over time. Dual might be a bit of a misnomer since nearly 100% of our customer base even before Teams touched collaboration across different applications and services, Outlook and SharePoint being the most prominent.
I'm not saying this is a recipe that will lead to guaranteed success in every case. It worked for us and we kept growing both our customer base and revenue all through the advent of Teams and thereafter. Of course I can not compare this to a world where Teams was never introduced. I remain however convinced that where possible, the strategy of not just competing but also adding value to those customers that chose or were forced onto the platform provider's own offer is far preferable to one were you just go head-to-head.
Always offer the best product, but also offer the better-together experience.
[1] https://products.office.com/en-us/microsoft-teams
[2] https://tasksinabox.com/apps
[3] https://tasksinabox.com/integrations/microsoft-teams-integra...