Efficient raw material management is essential in food manufacturing to reduce costs and ensure product quality. Python, with its robust libraries and tools, offers powerful solutions for this optimization.

Advantages of Python in Food Manufacturing

Python’s strengths in data analysis and machine learning make it ideal for optimizing raw material use. Key libraries include:

• Pandas and NumPy for data analysis.
• TensorFlow and Scikit-Learn** for machine learning.
• OpenCV for image processing.

These tools enable sophisticated management and optimization processes, enhancing efficiency and sustainability.

Key Applications

1. Data Analysis and Predictive Modeling: Python’s data libraries help predict demand, optimize ordering, and manage inventory efficiently.
2. Automated Quality Control: Using OpenCV, Python can automate the inspection of raw materials to detect defects and ensure high quality.
3. Supply Chain Optimization: Python can evaluate supplier performance, predict lead times, and optimize procurement processes.
4. Real-Time Process Automation: Python scripts can analyze sensor data in real-time to adjust production parameters dynamically, reducing waste and maintaining consistency.
5. Waste Reduction: Python tools identify waste patterns and suggest improvements, promoting sustainability.

Practical Implementation: A Case Study

A food manufacturer facing high raw material costs and quality issues can benefit from Python by:

• Data Collection and Analysis: Using sensors and IoT devices, data on raw material usage is gathered and analyzed to identify inefficiencies.
• Predictive Maintenance: Machine learning models forecast equipment failures to reduce downtime.
• Automated Quality Control: Python analyzes images of raw materials to detect defects, ensuring only the best materials are used.
• Optimizing Supply Chain: Algorithms improve supplier selection and delivery schedules, reducing costs.

These implementations can lead to reduced costs, improved quality, and higher efficiency.

Conclusion

Python’s versatility and powerful analytical capabilities make it essential for optimizing raw material usage in food manufacturing. By leveraging data analysis, machine learning, and automation, manufacturers can significantly improve their operations. As the industry evolves, Python-based solutions will continue to drive innovation and competitiveness.

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APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) allow different software systems to communicate and share data effortlessly via something called API integration.

They enable the creation of innovative applications and services, by providing developers with robust solutions to common use cases.

API integration is the art of bringing together multiple APIs to create a unified, cohesive ecosystem of interconnected applications.

It’s the glue that binds diverse systems, enabling them to share data, functionalities, and resources in real-time.

In this article, we’ll explore the significance of API integration, and its role in connecting diverse applications and systems.

Understanding APIs

At its core, an API is a set of rules, protocols, and tools that allow different software applications to communicate with each other.

APIs come in various types, each tailored to specific use cases and requirements:

• RESTful APIs: Leverage the principles of Representational State Transfer (REST). They enable communication over the web using standard HTTP methods like GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE. RESTful APIs are widely adopted for their simplicity, scalability, and flexibility. To learn more about RESTful APIs, check out our previous article here.
• SOAP APIs: SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) APIs, which use XML-based messaging protocols to facilitate communication between applications. While SOAP APIs offer robustness and support for complex transactions, they can be more difficult to implement compared to RESTful APIs.
• GraphQL APIs: Have gained traction for their ability to provide clients with precisely the data they request, eliminating over-fetching and under-fetching of data common in traditional RESTful APIs. GraphQL APIs offer greater flexibility and efficiency, especially in scenarios where clients require dynamic data retrieval.

What is API Integration?

API integration involves the process of linking disparate APIs together to enable smooth data exchange and functionality across various applications and platforms.

By integrating APIs, organisations can access a wide range of benefits:

• Leads to improved efficiency by automating workflows and eliminating manual data entry and processing. This automation streamlines business processes, reducing the time and resources required to complete tasks.
• Enhances functionality by leveraging the unique capabilities of different APIs to enrich applications with new features and capabilities. For example, integrating a payment gateway API into an e-commerce platform enables secure online transactions, enhancing the overall user experience and driving sales.
• Facilitates streamlined workflows by creating a cohesive ecosystem where data flows seamlessly between systems. This eliminates data silos and improves data accessibility, enabling stakeholders to make informed decisions based on real-time information.

In essence, API integration empowers organisations to leverage the collective power of multiple APIs to create robust, agile, and interconnected systems that drive innovation, efficiency, and growth.

It serves as the backbone of modern digital infrastructure, enabling organisations to adapt and thrive in an ever-evolving technological landscape.

Types of API Integration

When it comes to API integration, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach.

Different scenarios call for different integration methods, each with its own strengths and use cases:

• Point-to-Point Integration: This approach involves directly connecting two applications using their respective APIs without an intermediary system. While it’s relatively simple and straightforward, it can lead to scalability issues and tight coupling between systems. For example, integrating a customer relationship management (CRM) system with an email marketing platform to sync contact information. Check out our guide to making your first API integration by clicking here.
• Middleware-Based Integration: Middleware serves as an intermediary layer between applications, facilitating communication and data exchange. This approach allows for more flexibility and scalability, as middleware can translate data formats and handle complex workflows. For instance, using an enterprise service bus (ESB) to integrate multiple backend systems, such as ERP, CRM, and HR systems, to ensure seamless data flow across the organisation.
• API Management Platforms: API management platforms provide a comprehensive solution for designing, deploying, and managing APIs. They offer features like access control, rate limiting, and analytics, empowering organisations to govern and monetize their APIs effectively. For example, using a cloud-based API gateway to expose internal APIs securely to external partners and developers while monitoring usage and performance.

Each of these approaches has its own set of advantages and use cases, allowing organisations to choose the most suitable method based on their specific requirements and constraints.

By understanding the strengths and limitations of each approach, organisations can implement API integration solutions that drive efficiency, agility, and innovation across their digital ecosystem.

Challenges and Considerations

While API integration offers numerous benefits, it also presents several challenges that organisations must address to ensure successful implementation and operation:

• Data Security: Ensuring the security and privacy of data exchanged between systems is paramount. Common security challenges include unauthorised access, data breaches, and compliance with regulations such as GDPR and HIPAA. Implementing robust authentication, encryption, and access control mechanisms can help mitigate these risks. To learn more about the fundamentals of API security, check out our previous article here.
• Compatibility Issues: Integrating APIs from different vendors or versions can lead to compatibility issues, resulting in data format mismatches or functional inconsistencies. Thorough testing and validation of APIs, along with clear communication and documentation of integration requirements, are essential to mitigate compatibility challenges. This is where the APIDNA platform excels, utilising autonomous agents to simplify data transformations for you. Get in touch for a FREE demo by clicking here.
• Scalability: As the volume of data and transactions grows, scalability becomes a critical consideration. APIs must be able to handle increased loads without sacrificing performance or reliability. Implementing scalable infrastructure, such as cloud-based services or distributed systems, can help accommodate growing demands. To learn more about building scalable API architectures, check out our previous article here.

Conclusion

API integration serves as the backbone of modern digital ecosystems, enabling seamless communication and data exchange between diverse software applications.

From understanding the fundamentals of APIs to exploring advanced integration techniques, we’ve seen how API integration drives interoperability and innovation.

We encourage you to practise and explore further reading resources below to deepen your understanding and harness the full potential of this technology.

Further Reading

API integration – Postman

What is API Integration? – Cleo

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Welcome to the next part of the “Image similarity search with pgvector” learning series!

In the previous articles, you used the multi-modal embeddings APIs of Azure AI Vision for generating embeddings for a collection of images of paintings and stored the embeddings in an Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL table.

Introduction

If you have followed the previous posts, you should have successfully created a table in your Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL cluster, populated it with data, and uploaded the images to a container in your Azure Storage account. Now, you are fully prepared to search for similar images utilizing the vector similarity search features of the pgvector extension.

In this tutorial, you will:

• Develop an image similarity search app using Jupyter Notebook.
• Write SQL queries to detect similar images based on a text prompt or a reference image.
• Apply a simple metadata filtering method to narrow down search results.

Prerequisites

To proceed with this tutorial, ensure that you have the following prerequisites installed and configured:

• An Azure subscription – Create an Azure free account or an Azure for Students account.
• Python 3.10, Visual Studio Code, Jupyter Notebook, and Jupyter Extension for Visual Studio Code.

Set-up your working environment

In this guide, you’ll learn how to query embeddings stored in an Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL table to search for images similar to a search term or a reference image. The entire functional project is available in the GitHub repository. If you’re keen on trying it out, just fork the repository and clone it to have it locally available.

Before running the Jupyter Notebook covered in this post, you should:

1. Create a virtual environment and activate it.

2. Install the required Python packages using the following command:

   pip install -r requirements.txt
   

3. Create vector embeddings for a collection of images by running the scripts found in the data_processing directory.

4. Upload the images to your Azure Blob Storage container, create a PostgreSQL table, and populate it with data by executing the scripts found in the data_upload directory.

Detect similar images using the pgvector extension

The code for image similarity search with the pgvector extension can be found at vector_search_samples/image_search.ipynb.

The image similarity search workflow that we will follow is summarized as follows:

1. Use the Azure AI Vision Vectorize Image API or the Vectorize Text API to generate the vector embedding of a reference image or text prompt, respectively. It is crucial to employ the same embedding model for queries as the one used to generate embeddings for the images in the dataset.
2. To calculate similarity and retrieve images, utilize SQL SELECT statements and the built-in vector operators of the PostgreSQL database. Specifically, cosine similarity will be used as the similarity metric.
3. The similarity search will produce a list of vectors that are most similar to the query vector. The raw data associated with each vector can then be accessed.
4. Download the images from the Azure Blob Storage container and display them using the matplotlib package.

This workflow is illustrated in the following diagram:

Nearest neighbor search using pgvector

Given the vector embedding of the query, we can use SQL SELECT statements to search for similar images. Let’s understand how a simple SELECT statement works. Consider the following query:

SELECT * FROM table ORDER BY vector <=> '[0.003, …, 0.034]' LIMIT 5

This query computes the cosine distance (<=>) between the given vector ([0.003, …, 0.034]) and the vectors stored in the table, sorts the results by the calculated distance, and returns the five most similar images (LIMIT 5). Additionally, you can obtain the cosine similarity between the query vector and the retrieved vectors by modifying the SELECT statement as follows:

SELECT image_title, 1 - (vector <=> '[0.003, …, 0.034]') AS cosine_similarity FROM table ORDER BY cosine_similarity DESC LIMIT 5;

The pgvector extension provides 3 operators that can be used to calculate similarity:

Code sample: Image similarity search

In the Jupyter Notebook provided on my GitHub repository, you’ll explore the following scenarios:

1. Text-to-image search: You will use a text prompt to search for and identify paintings that are semantically similar, relying solely on the vector embeddings without utilizing image metadata, such as the title or description of the painting.
2. Image-to-image search: You will use a painting as a reference to search for similar ones by comparing the vector embedding of the reference image with those in the collection.
3. Metadata filtering: Filtering enables users to narrow down search results, such as searching for paintings by a specific artist. However, implementing accurate and fast metadata filtering in vector search systems is a challenging task. You can read the article The Missing WHERE Clause in Vector Search on the Pinecone blog to learn about the two fundamental approaches for metadata filtering and understand the complexities involved in implementing such filters into vector search applications.

Images retrieved by searching for paintings using the text prompt “flowers by Vincent van Gogh”.

Feel free to experiment with the notebook and modify the code to gain hands-on experience with the pgvector extension!

Next steps

In this post, you explored the basic vector similarity search features offered by the pgvector extension. This type of vector search is referred to as exact nearest neighbor search, as it computes the similarity between the query vector and every vector in the database. In the upcoming post, you will explore approximate nearest neighbor search, which trades off result quality for speed.

If you want to explore pgvector’s features, check out these learning resources:

• How to use pgvector on Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL – Microsoft Docs
• Official GitHub repository of the pgvector extension

Hi, I am Foteini Savvidou!
An Electrical and Computer Engineer and Microsoft AI MVP (Most Valuable Professional) from Greece.

LinkedIn | Blog | GitHub

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A project timeline is a project scheduling tool that’s used to estimate the total duration of a project from start to end by mapping tasks, deliverables and milestones in chronological order. Gantt charts are the most commonly used tool to create and manage project timelines, but there are other methods and tools you can use like Excel.

In this blog, we’ll go through a step-by-step guide on how to create a project timeline in Excel using various methods and then, we’ll explore other project scheduling tools that can help you create a project timeline such as Gantt charts, kanban boards or project calendars.

Why Should You Make a Project Timeline In Excel?

Before learning how to make a project timeline in Excel, let’s review the final product to better understand how this tool can help you. As you can see, this Excel project timeline resembles a Gantt chart that includes your project tasks, their duration and due dates as well as a visual representation of your project timeline.

The best part is, that once you make this Excel project timeline, you’ll have a template that will allow you to estimate future project timelines based on project tasks and due dates. As project timelines are one of the most important tools to execute a successful project, having a template on hand can be extremely helpful and reduce wasted time. We encourage you to download our free file below!

Get your free

Project Timeline Template

Use this free Project Timeline Template for Excel to manage your projects better.

Download Excel File

While Excel can be a helpful tool, a project timeline in Excel can only do so much. Think of timelines as just an inferior Gantt chart, which is a staple of project management. If you want to elevate your project timelines, ProjectManager is an award-winning project and portfolio management software that has powerful Gantt charts that can do more than what Excel does.

For example, our Gantt chart will link all four dependencies to help you avoid costly delays. It also filters for the critical path to identify essential tasks. Then, set a baseline to track planned progress and costs against actual progress and costs to avoid missing deadlines and overspending your budget. Get started with ProjectManager for free.

How to Make a Project Timeline In Excel

Excel wasn’t designed for project scheduling, but fortunately, we can use its stacked bar chart feature for creating a simple Gantt chart project timeline. Here’s what you’ll need to do.

1. List Tasks and Their Due Dates

Start by creating four columns for your task names, start and end date and duration. List your tasks and due dates in day/month/year format, but leave the duration column empty. We’ll add a formula to calculate task duration in the next step.

2. Create a Formula for Calculating Task Duration

Go to the first row in the duration column, and enter a formula to subtract the “End (Date)” value from the “Start (Date)” value. To do so, begin by typing an equal symbol “=” to start creating a formula, then select the “End (Date)” cell, add a minus symbol “-” and finally select the “Start (Date)” cell as shown below. The difference between these two values will determine the duration of each task measured in days.

Apply the same formula to the remaining cells in the task duration column. Then you should have a table that indicates your project tasks, their due dates and duration. Now it’s time to create a Gantt chart so you can visualize your project timeline.

3. Insert a Stacked Bar Chart for Your Excel Project Timeline

Select all values in the “Start (Date)” column and then insert a stacked bar chart following these steps:

1. Click on the “Insert” tab at the top left corner of your screen
2. Click the chart icon
3. Select the stacked bar chart

4. Select Data for Your Excel Project Timeline Gantt Chart

Once you complete the last step, a stacked bar chart should automatically appear. Now we’ll need to add some data to it so it shows your project timeline information. Right-click your stacked bar chart and click select data from the dropdown menu.

A window will pop up. Now, click “add” as shown in the example below.

Now choose the “Duration (Days)” column header as the series name and then, select all the numeric values in the “Duration (Days)” column as the series value.

Again, right-click your stacked bar chart and click on select data. This time, select edit under “horizontal (category) axis labels” once the window pops up and then select the values from the task name column as shown in the examples below.

5. Format Your Excel Project Timeline

Now your project timeline’s Gantt chart has the right data. Now it’s time for the final formatting steps to create your project timeline in Excel. Right-click on the blue bars of your stacked bar chart, go to the “fill” options and select no fill. This will make those blue bars disappear and will show your project tasks as the remaining stacked bars.

Now right-click the task names, select “Format Axis…” and then check the “categories in reverse order” checkbox on the right side of your screen.

Congratulations! You’ve created an Excel project timeline equipped with a working Gantt chart that’ll adjust itself based on the task information data you add to the table.

Project Timeline Excel Template

This project timeline Excel template is ideal for creating a project timeline you can share with your project team members or stakeholders. Simply enter your project information and estimate your project timeline in minutes.

Once you’re ready to try project management software, you can upload this project timeline Excel template to ProjectManager and use its advanced project management tools such as Gantt charts, project calendars, dashboards and much more.

Advantages of an Excel Project Timeline

Now that you’ve learned how to make a project timeline in Excel, it’s important that you clearly understand both the pros and cons of using Excel for project scheduling or project management. Let’s start with the advantages of using a project timeline for Excel.

• Most People Are Familiar With Excel: Excel is a very popular software that’s widely used by organizations across industries, so your team members are likely familiar with it.
• Compatible With Project Scheduling Software: Excel files can be exported to advanced project management software such as Microsoft Project or ProjectManager, which have much more advanced project scheduling features and are easier to use.
• Simple to Use Project Timeline Template: Our Excel project timeline is simple to use. All you need to do is fill out the template with your project information and it will automatically generate a Gantt chart project timeline.

Disadvantages of an Excel Project Timeline

While a project timeline for Excel can help you visualize your project timeline, it’s a very limited tool with very few project scheduling features that can’t compete with project management software.

• Limited Project Scheduling Functionality: Our Excel project timeline only allows you to get a high-level view of your project timeline, but lacks advanced Gantt chart software features such as assigning tasks to team members, monitoring their progress, identifying task dependencies or finding the critical path.
• No Online Collaboration, Hard to Share Files: Excel doesn’t allow multiple users to collaborate on files online, which means everybody has to work on their copy of the Excel project timeline. Worse than that, that means that whenever someone makes changes to it, it needs to be sent to everyone on your team.
• Editing Excel Files Is Time Consuming: In general, creating, editing and maintaining Excel project documents and templates is a time-consuming process that involves too much manual work.

More Free Project Management Templates for Excel and Word

We’ve created dozens of project management templates for Excel, Word and Google Sheets. Here are some that can help you as you go through the process of creating a project timeline.

Task Tracker Template

As discussed above, your project timeline is made up of many individual tasks that need to be completed on time. This task tracker template for Excel helps you to track the due dates, progress and status of your project tasks so you can track their completion. This is very important; if tasks aren’t completed on time, their duration will extend and so will your project timeline.

Project Budget Template

Creating a project timeline is just one of your responsibilities as a project manager. Besides estimating the duration of your project tasks, you’ll also need to estimate their costs. Once you do so, you’ll need to create a project budget which will define how much money will be available for the execution of your project.

Project Plan Template

A project plan is a comprehensive document that describes how a project will be executed. It includes important components such as the project timeline, budget and schedule. It also establishes the guidelines and procedures that the project team should follow for specific project management areas like resource management and risk management.

Using ProjectManager Is Better Than Creating a Project Timeline for Excel

ProjectManager offers a wide variety of project management tools that will allow you to create detailed project timelines, collaborate with your team and track your project progress. Here’s a quick overview of some of its key features.

Multiple Project Scheduling Tools

ProjectManager offers multiple project management views such as Gantt charts, kanban boards, task lists and project calendars to give you multiple project planning alternatives. You can use them to assign tasks to your team members, set due dates and adjust your project timelines. All of them sync with each other so the changes you make in one view will reflect on the others.

Powerful Resource Tracking Features

To execute your project tasks, you’ll need resources like people, materials and equipment, so you’ll need a tool that helps you allocate them and track their availability and utilization. ProjectManager offers various tools like workload management charts, dashboards and timesheets to help you allocate, schedule and track your project resources and costs.

Import and Export Excel Project Timelines

ProjectManager allows you to import Excel files so you can view and edit your Excel project timeline with its project views. Or in the opposite case, you can create project timelines in ProjectManager and then download your project data as an Excel file.

ProjectManager is online project management software that connects teams whether they’re in the office, out in the field or anywhere else. Excel can’t let you share files, comment at the task level and stay updated with email and in-app alerts like we do. Join teams at Avis, Nestle and Siemens who use our software to deliver successful projects. Get started with ProjectManager today for free.

The post How to Create a Project Timeline In Excel (Free Template Included) appeared first on ProjectManager.

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The vibe 

The 2023 Chicago PMA Summit was held in the northern section of Fulton Market in the Convene – a sleek (yet cozy) space designed like a modern hotel. 

When I got there, I was surprised to learn there were other Summits going on for PMA’s sister communities Sales Enablement Collective and Revenue Operations Alliance. 

What a unique opportunity to turn breakfast into a chance for networking with chief revenue officers, sales enablement practitioners, and revenue operation pros!

The PMA Summit included people from the Chicagoland area and beyond – including PMMs from as far away as Los Angeles, Boston, Indianapolis, and Cleveland.

So, what was it like?

It was a two-day event that included a varied mix of topics and presenters. Each session employed one of the following formats: 

• An expert presenter using a deck.
• Panel sessions with a handful of experts and a moderator.
• An interactive group activity led by a facilitator.

All sessions included a Q&A, either via Slido or with a mic. 

Why’d I attend? 

Networking, networking, networking. Oh, and to learn best practices, too!

Full transparency, I’m searching for my next director of product marketing role at a B2B SaaS company. I’m also running a PMM consulting practice and am always on the hunt for new clients and collaborators. 

What better place to network than the Product Marketing Summit?

There were a ton of opportunities for networking between breakfast, lunch, and happy hour. Plus, you could also chat with the folks sitting at your table during the sessions

Pro tips to maximize networking:

• Define your networking goal and craft an elevator pitch around it. 
• Network with people from the other Summits – you never know who you’ll meet!
• Change tables a few times throughout the day, say every three sessions or so, to maximize the number of people you meet.
• During meals, try joining groups from different Summits to expand beyond the PMM sphere.

The most electrifying session

All the sessions were incredible, but the first session was a shock to the system. 

Jason Lord, VP of Product Marketing at TransUnion, kicked things off by emphatically stating that “corporate life is bullshit.” “BS” became the common theme throughout his presentation, and he left us with three golden nuggets:

1. Stop being boring.
2. Stop hiring the same kinds of people and expecting different results.
3. Stop expecting meaning from a system that doesn’t have any (except for maximizing profit).

It was a great reminder to stand out – I know I’ll never forget his presentation.

A spicy take on product narratives

PMMs get told to “create a new category” every other breath. Taryn Knowles, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Workiva, disagrees with that mandate. 

Her advice? 

“You can’t just build a category. It has to fulfill a marketplace gap and lean into pains and consequences.”

What a reaffirming message for all PMMs that have had to persuade leadership to avoid going down the category creation path, right?

Natasha Janic, Sr. Product Marketing Manager at Clari, also shared a great one-liner that’s been living rent-free in my mind: “Say it straight. Then say it great.” 

She suggests just getting the product narrative down and then switching your focus to making it sound great. I wish I’d heard this advice a decade ago – it would have saved me a ton of time.

Raising prices on a billion-dollar book of business

You better believe I was paying attention when Josh Bean, Sr. Director of Product Marketing at Zendesk, started sharing his glorious pricing wisdom. 

Along with a handy pricing framework (check out the photo), Josh also shared a shortcut PMMs can use for selecting the exact percentage by which to raise prices. 

The magic number? 12%.

(Check out recent price increases by Netflix, Disney, etc. for proof)

Oh, and he suggested we all implement discount recapture programs ASAP – essentially rightsizing prices for customers that have substantial discounts in place. This has two benefits – first, it increases revenue now, and secondly, when it’s time to raise prices, those customers won’t experience a huge price jump.

The Chicago PMA Summit was chock-full of frameworks, best practices, and nuggets of wisdom just like this one.

Chloe Cucinotta, Director of Product Marketing for Docker, agrees. She walked away having “gained insights from new frameworks that provide opportunities for more GTM experimentation.”

She also mentioned that the Summit “reinforced the importance of an inclusive work environment where everyone is encouraged to bring their authentic selves.” 

Fantastic takeaway and a topic that also came up in Stu’s session about promotions. (More on that in a sec!)

How to finally get that director of PMM role

Ever see a framework and think – “Dang, that’s incredible!”?

If you want that feeling again, check out how Stu Kendall, Director of Product Marketing at Foursquare, outlined the differences between a PMM and a director of PMM and what it takes to make the jump.

Want to get promoted? 

Stu suggested developing a broader understanding of other areas of the business, including product, marketing, success, sales, and the overall company. 

Along with that, he recommended making a mindset shift to treat your work output like a product and position yourself accordingly.

Handy chart, right? I’ll definitely be sharing this with PMMs interested in climbing up the ladder.

Sense of community

One thing that snuck up on me was the sense of community I started to feel.

It hit me early on. PMMs shared their challenges, successes, and aspirations and I couldn’t help but smile – they were speaking my language. 

These were my people. 

It made me daydream about how powerful it would be to have hundreds of PMMs backing me up the next time I have a tough conversation with sales, product, or leadership.

I spoke with Meg Murphy, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Visual Lease, who shared a similar feeling. She said: 

“Working remotely it’s easy to start to feel isolated – like the problems I’m working through are unique. I came to this event for best practices, but what I walked away with was validation – not only that my approaches are sound, but that best practices are never perfectly implemented. Plus, I have a community of PMMs excited to share the way they worked through the same blockers. I’m so energized and inspired by this community.”

She also mentioned that, generally, PMMs tend to talk about initiatives that go well. 

This summit was different – people were publicly vulnerable and spoke about what they learned from their failures. As Meg put it:

 “I actually got more from the mistakes shared than the best practices – so much of what we do is about managing nebulous projects and competing priorities and difficult personalities. The soft skill lightbulb moments were perhaps the most invaluable.”Presenters got a ton out of the conference, too. Bryan Elanko, Senior Product Marketing Manager at CloudBees, presented a tool that helps PMMs more deeply understand buyer centers.

He shared how exciting it was to present because “every product marketer you meet at a PMA summit wants to explore new ideas and elevate the whole profession at their workplace.”

Bryan received “excellent feedback from various attendees and rediscovered the benefits of always sharing what you learn with the broader community.”

Maybe you should consider presenting at the next Product Marketing Summit!

See you at the next one?

Bottom line – the summit was a fantastic opportunity for networking with other PMMs and learning best practices.

For me, it was a gold mine. 

• I met three PMMs running their own product marketing consultancies that I’m following up with to see how we can collaborate and partner moving forward.
• I also met a recruiter who said we should connect to discuss director of PMM roles opening soon.
• Oh, and I met a potential candidate for a role I’m helping a client fill!

As if that wasn’t enough, I walked away with a ton of best practices and new ideas that I’m going to take with me into my next role and use with my consulting clients.

So, see you next time?

The post What you missed at the 2023 Chicago Product Marketing Summit appeared first on ProdSens.live.

A few years ago, I had just wrapped up a hectic Friday afternoon that looked like this:

• An impromptu call from Mandy, the Sales Manager, urgently requesting a step-by-step video showing our users how to implement our latest feature
• A Slack from Mark, the VP of Product, asking PMM to conduct user research to help the product management (PM) team design a new feature
• A 4 pm meeting with Andrea, Director of Support, asking for 10 new customer service email templates 

Needless to say, I was looking forward to the weekend.

As I ate dinner that night, I realized two things:

1. Product marketing shouldn’t be responsible for these requests. 
2. These requests were low on my priority list. 

The issue is that product marketing lives at the intersection of product, sales, marketing, and customer success, so when those teams need something, they go to you – in other words, PMM can easily become the catch-all for every other team in your company.

That means a lot of meetings, Slack messages, and calls end with a new request for product marketing. The requests feel never-ending and it’s impossible to do them all.

The following Monday, I told my manager I was going to create a Product Marketing Team Charter to clarify what the product marketing team does and then present it across the company to get alignment. 

He agreed.

Here’s how I did it – and how you can use my PMM Team Charter template at your company to do the same. 

Defining product marketing

Every PMM will agree with this one undeniable truth – product marketing is different at every company.

So, it’s up to you to define what Product Marketing will focus on and (equally important) what you will not focus on. 

That felt like a daunting task the first time I did it, so I started with gathering data. I looked at PMA’s definition of Product Marketing and found the responsibility breakdown (below) to be a helpful starting point. 

The rest of my time was spent:

• Asking the PMM team for their ideas – Along with the more standard responses, they mentioned product-led growth (PLG) and community.
• Circling back with my manager – He mentioned we didn’t have the bandwidth to tackle community and that PLG was an initiative for next year, so I removed those from the list.
• Reading the latest company strategy documents – To remind myself of the company’s key objectives. (Note: Remember to read the marketing and product teams’ charters to ensure alignment.)
• Speaking with the CEO – To get a sense of the board’s direction and priorities for the company.
• Speaking with the leaders of key departments to get their feedback and buy-in – For me, that was sales, product, marketing, customer success, and customer education. This was a critical step that really honed how I defined PMM and the key areas we should focus on.

Here’s how I ended up defining product marketing at my B2B company:

Product marketing lives at the intersection of sales, customer success, marketing, and product.

We combine market, customer, and competitive insights with product innovation to create a crystal-clear narrative and winning go-to-market strategy.

Our goals are to increase revenue, product adoption, and customer retention.

Is that right for your PMM team? Probably not. You have to customize it to your company’s objectives and needs.

With a high-level definition of PMM checked off my list, I focused on breaking that down into key focus areas.

Identifying key focus areas

I started thinking through what PMM really meant at our company. 

PMM efforts started with understanding our customers, the market, and our competition. Everything stemmed from that deep understanding – from what product built, to how we created, positioned, and messaged, to how we launched products, to how sales sold those products, to how we encouraged adoption.

That felt like a good summary, so these became the key focus areas. My team and I fleshed that out a bit to come up with this:

Allocating responsibilities across the team

Next, we had to figure out what each product marketer would manage. Now, organizing PMM teams is a meaty topic. 

The most common methods of organizing teams are by function, product, segment, outcome, or alignment with product managers. 

Which option you choose depends on your company stage and size, breadth of responsibilities, number of products, the size of your team, and more. It’s too complex to explain in this article, but here’s how PMA breaks it down.

At my company, we took a hybrid approach to meet our needs:

• Two PMMs focused on specific products
• One PMM focused on a specific customer type
• One PMM focused on a specific function

We included this in a slide, so the rest of the company knew which PMM to reach out to. 

Who we work with

To encourage other departments to work with PMM, we included a slide with the teams we worked with the most. This will vary depending on your company, but typically includes product, marketing, sales, and customer success.

During the company presentation, we shared three examples of collaborating with other teams. In departmental meetings, we used three more relevant team-specific examples.

Gauging success

We also wanted to clearly show how our team evaluates success. This is where you want to include key OKRs, metrics, or other ways your PMM team determines success.

My team didn’t have great overall measures of success in place and ended up using situation-specific measures, including attach rate for a complementary product, usage metrics for a new feature, upsell revenue from a marketing campaign, etc.

While those are fine, I’d suggest sticking with higher-level measures of success when possible. If you use objectives and key results (OKRs), this is a perfect place to leverage key results.

Here are a few ideas for success metrics you can use: 

• Sales win rate: XX%
  • Number of deals won/number of qualified opportunities. 
  • This measures whether the sales team is converting opportunities well and gives you a sense of whether your positioning and messaging resonate
  • If the win rate is not increasing (or staying steady), you’ll want to reevaluate your messaging, specifically reviewing the pitch deck, talk track, sales collateral, and objection handling. 
  • Note: This is typically a shared goal with sales.
• Product usage: XX% weekly average users (WAU) and XX% monthly active users (MAU)
  • Measures whether your customers are using your product regularly. I suggest combining this with Net Promoter Score (NPS) for a fuller picture of user engagement.
  • Compare average engagement (WAU/MAU & NPS) for customers that renewed in the last six months to average engagement for customers that churned in the last six months.
  • Determine the ideal level of engagement based on that comparison and work with customer-facing teams to ensure users achieve it; this will help minimize churn.
  • Note: This is typically a shared goal with product, customer success, and customer experience.

• Sales enablement usage: >XX% 
  • This measures whether sales reps are using the sales collateral you create via a sales enablement platform like Seismic, Showpad, or Highspot.
  • There should be a correlation between sales collateral usage and meeting/exceeding quota.
• Website conversion rate: >XX% 
  • Number of conversions/total number of visitors.
  • Measures how effective your website’s positioning and messaging is.
  • If it’s decreasing, revisit your website’s messaging.
  • Note: This is typically a shared goal with Corporate/Brand Marketing and Demand Generation.

Again, these are examples. You’ll have to choose success metrics that make the most sense for your team and company in your team charter. 

You’ll also want to do some qualitative research by talking to customers, prospects, and internal stakeholders to determine whether your content is resonating. 

The proof is in the pudding 

At this point, I felt pretty good, but figured I’d get some feedback from a colleague before moving forward. She mentioned that while the concepts were clear, it didn’t feel concrete and suggested I add a few real outcomes to bring it to life.

I added a few visual examples – a product page on the website, a one-pager, and a screenshot of the in-app onboarding process – along with key stats showing the outcomes each item had. 

Share, share, and share some more

Finally, my team was ready to share our PMM Team Charter. 

After aligning with my manager and C-Suite, my team and I presented it on the next company call as well as in smaller meetings with key departments. We also shared it on key Slack channels and added it to SharePoint for reference.

Review, revisit, and revise

One point to remember is that for your PMM Team Charter to be effective, you have to use it. Your charter should be referenced before your team agrees to new requests. If the new initiative doesn’t align with your charter, then you’ve got a valid reason to decline the request. This is easier said than done (especially when the request comes from the Chief Product Officer), but you can use the charter as the basis for your conversation. 

A good rule of thumb is to share it with each new leader that joins your company.

About twice a year, revisit the charter with your team and manager to determine if it needs to be revised to align with changes to your team or company objectives. 

Good luck creating your own Product Marketing Team charter! Hope this template helps.

The post Product Marketing Team Charter (or how to get everyone to stop telling PMM what to do) appeared first on ProdSens.live.

Introduction:

As Developers, we always prefer not to write the same code again and again. Snippets solve this problem by making repetitive tasks simpler and quicker.

There are thousands of pre-built snippets on VS code to make our work easy. We can also create our own custom Snippet according to our preferences. In this article, we’ll discuss How to create our own custom VS Code snippet.

So, Without delaying further, Let’s START!!!

What is Sippets?

A snippet is a template that can be inserted into a document. It is inserted by a command or through some trigger text.

In simple words, with snippets we create a boilerplate file, and insert commonly used blocks of text.

Types of Code Snippets in VS Code:

In VS Code Snippets are scoped into 3 types. They are:

1. Language Specific (Only specific language can access).

2. Global Snippets (Every language can access).

3. Project Scoped (Restricted to project).

Why to use Snippets?

Before creating our custom snippets, let’s see why we need snippets.

• It reduces repetitive work.

• Adds more reusability by allowing you to reuse the same code in multiple places.

• Reduces the chances of errors when copy-pasting.

• Increase the speed of your development.

• It makes your code consistent

Creating Snippets:

Now we have an understanding of what is snippets and why we need them. So let’s start creating our own custom VS Code Snippets.

1. At first, click on the settings icon at the bottom left of the VS code. It will open this kind of pop-up.

1. Now Click on User Snippets. Now we can choose which kind of snippets we want to create. For this example, we’ll choose the Global Snippets file.

1. Now we have to give the name of that file. Here, we’ll be giving the name as custom_snippets.json.

1. After that, It should look something like this if you have not set up any snippets yet.

1. We’ll be creating a console.log snippet for logging a string. Here’s the code for that:

{
    "console.log string": {
        "prefix": "cls",
        "body": "console.log("$1");",
        "description": "Custom snippet for logging a string"
    }
}

If you would prefer to write a snippet in a GUI, you can use the snippet generator web app.

If you want to know more about the Syntax, Check this.

1. Now we have created our Snippet! Let’s see if it works or not!

Yay! It works!

Now we have created our first custom VS Code snippets.

Amazing! Now you can create your own custom snippets according to your requirements!

Conclusion:

If you found this blog post helpful, please consider sharing it with others who might benefit. You can also follow me for more content on Javascript and other web development topics.

To sponsor my work, please visit: Arindam’s Sponsor Page and explore the various sponsorship options.

Connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube and GitHub.

Thank you for Reading

The post Create a Custom VS Code Snippet appeared first on ProdSens.live.

Tell me if this sounds familiar…

You’ve spent months preparing for a product launch, new positioning, or major initiative. You’ve crossed all your t’s and dotted your i’s. You’re feeling good and ready.

Until you present it to the sales team.

At best, they’re skeptical about what you’re launching. Worst case scenario, they’re actively, publicly criticizing your new launch in front of the entire sales team. 

And the worst part? They probably made some good points. 

But guess what? This could have been avoided with just a bit of planning. 

Aligning with sales leaders isn’t enough

Any PMM worth their salt aligns with sales leaders during major initiatives. 

That includes looping them into kick-off meetings and regular check-in calls. Plus, you collaborate with them to determine packaging and pricing, develop sales collateral, train the sales team, and more.

So, why isn’t this enough? 

By only including sales leaders, you’re getting a distorted view of reality – it’s like playing a game of telephone. 

You haven’t included individual contributors in the process, which means…

1. You didn’t get their insights, and 
2. They don’t trust you to know what they’re going to experience when the rubber hits the road. 

The solution: A Sales Advisory Council

A Sales Advisory Council (SAC) is a group of sales team members that provide feedback on packaging, pricing, selling rules, sales collateral, etc.

The goal of a SAC is to ensure that individual contributors in sales have a voice in key initiatives – from product launches, to revamped positioning, to new marketing collateral.

Imagine launching a new product knowing that there are influential account executives, account managers, and business development reps vouching for and promoting your new product launch. That would feel fantastic, right?

Plus, you’ll have a better product with enhanced positioning and pricing – and a sales org that’s eager and enabled to sell it. The SAC will make you, your team, and your outputs better and it’ll make your sales team happier because it will be easier to sell.

Let the members select themselves

For the SAC to be successful, sales reps can’t be forced to join; they must opt in voluntarily. 

Your job is to share your vision for what this SAC will be and how it will make everyone’s lives better – hopefully, you sell it well enough that your sales reps are eager to join.

I don’t believe in half-baked solutions, so I’m sharing the Sales Advisory Council deck I’ve used to get sales orgs’ buy-in.

Download your Sales Advisory Council deck for FREE and get started today!

Include the right people

Once you get the sales org’s buy-in, make sure to have the right teams represented based on how your sales org is run. 

You’ll typically want a few business development reps, account executives, and account managers. If your company has partnerships and success managers within sales, it’s always a good idea to include them too. 

You’ll want to keep the group small, aiming for between one and three representatives from each group, for a total of no more than ten. That’ll make the conversations more manageable.  

To get diverse opinions, I recommend setting up a maximum term for membership, so new, fresh voices are added to the council periodically. I’ve found six months to be a good rule of thumb.

Consulting the SAC

Every company and PMM team is different, but here are four stages where you’ll want to collaborate with your SAC:

1. Ideation stage: Share general feedback on a high-level concept
   Example: We’re thinking about offering professional services as a monthly subscription. It would include X, Y, and Z. Thoughts?
2. Testing stage: Provide input on packaging, pricing, and selling rules
   Example: The proposal is to offer two tiers of professional services for $XX and $XXX per month. They can be discounted by 10%. What do you think?
3. Pre-launch stage: Make requests and provide feedback on proposed sales collateral
   Example: The plan is to create three email templates and two PowerPoint slides focusing on X, Y, and Z. Would that help you sell this new product, or is there different collateral you would prefer?
4. Post-launch stage: Periodically asking sales what they’re hearing from prospects and customers after the launch.
   Example: Prospects are saying it’s a bit too expensive, but they love it! Customers can’t get enough of it and don’t mind the price.

Five steps to get your Sales Advisory Council off the ground

So, we’ve established what a Sales Advisory Council does and how it will benefit your company. Now let’s dive into how to get it up and running as smoothly as possible. 

Step one: Meet with sales leadership and explain your goal

Explain your vision with passion. Reassure them that PMM will continue working directly with sales leadership; this is simply an expansion of that partnership to include individual contributors. Key callouts to include: 

1. The SAC will make sales leadership’s jobs easier: Their teams will be more receptive to new initiatives because they’ll be part of shaping them from the get-go.
2. The SAC will increase sales: Sales reps will have influence earlier in the go-to-market motion. That means positioning and pricing they stand behind and sales collateral that actually helps them sell.
3. Ask if they have any reservations or if they will support you: You must get sales leaders on board and nip any doubt in the bud for the SAC to succeed.

Step two: Give leadership a heads-up

Once sales leadership is bought in, make sure you or your manager let the company leadership know. You’ll want to get alignment right out of the gate to avoid any unwelcome surprises later down the line.

Step three: Present your shining vision for the Sales Advisory Council to sales

Join a standing meeting that includes the entire sales organization and use the sales advisory council deck to present it to them. A few tips:

1. Go for the layup, not the hook shot: To maximize attention and receptiveness, ask a key sales leader – ideally the CRO or the VP of sales – to introduce you and reinforce what you’re saying. 
2. Set the scope: Define the bounds and scope of the SAC clearly to keep everyone on the same page and eliminate confusion. That includes explicitly stating what the SAC does not do. I typically include that the SAC does not: 
   1. Determine what initiatives the PMM team works on
   2. Serve as product marketing’s “official spokesperson” to the rest of the company, 
   3. Use SAC time to propose new product ideas. 
3. Pass to the right team member: Ask sales leaders to encourage the most influential reps to apply – it’s important to have them on board so they can motivate the sales org.
4. Set a deadline: Ask reps to let their sales leaders know if they’re interested in joining by a specific date. If there are more volunteers than spots, ask the relevant sales leaders to choose.

Step four: Announce the Sales Advisory Council 

The formation of the Sales Advisory Council is exciting – announce it to the rest of the company during a company meeting or the next sales meeting and via internal Slack or Teams channels. Include a quick blurb about what it is and tag the folks that are members.

Step five: Set up an initial kick-off meeting 

For the first meeting, I like to reintroduce what the SAC is and does, introduce PMM team members, have the members introduce themselves, and have a short brainstorming session about an easy topic to get momentum going.

And that’s it! You’re off to the races. You and your team can meet with the SAC as needed for key initiatives. 

Try to meet with the SAC a minimum of once every six weeks to keep a good cadence and to facilitate team cohesion.

Remember to switch out members every six months, or as often as needed for fresh perspectives 

Download the FREE Sales Advisory Council deck to get started!

The post Sales Advisory Council: How to get sales on your side appeared first on ProdSens.live.