The Three Things to Focus on When Introducing New Products

A synchronized and enthusiastic team in product/business development

How to stay competitive in the era of endless choices and provide the best products to fit all your customers’ needs?
Focus on 3 things:

1. Understand your customers’ needs. This includes their current processes, their dream scenarios and the obstacles in achieving these scenarios
2. Know what’s out there. Look beyond your own products and services and find out what’s happening inside and outside your industry
3. Focus on the main objectives and keep it simple. When you are innovating, there is always a risk of getting carried away. To avoid that, keep a firm focus on clients’ objectives.

How to create a successful development team? What are the most important skills required for product/business development professionals?

I am responsible for FX Business Development at SEB. FX has a variety of stakeholders including trading, sales, quants, IT, back office etc. A successful FX development team should be able to understand and interact with all of these stakeholders. In the ideal world, development should be in the DNA of everyone working in the business.
A skilled development professional needs to have a wide variety of skills including listening, innovating, managing projects etc. But the most important ingredient is believing in what they are doing and enjoying their job. Their enthusiasm is often contagious and helps drive change.

What do you see as the biggest challenge or limitation of technologies in regard to product/business development?

There are plenty of challenges. If I had to pick one, it would be reaching out across product silos to give clients a seamless digital experience. Clients use our bank to myriad of financial needs. These needs often span across different departments and product areas in the bank. It is often difficult to sync our development activities across these product areas.

 

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James Prasad is the Head of FX Business Development & Transformation at SEB. In his role, James helps define the short and long term ambition for SEB’s FX business and drives the FX organization towards achieving those ambitions. James joined SEB in 2020 and has over 25 years’ experience in the financial markets. He has worked in Singapore, Sydney, London and across the Nordics and has held a myriad of roles from Bonds, Rate Derivatives and FX Options trading, to running Structuring, Advisory and Digitalization teams.