With a packed zoom audience full of winning product leaders, incredible product discussions with leading industry executives, and a killer soundtrack, the 2021 Product Awards took over the virtual product space the first week of March. If you weren’t there, don’t fret! We recorded the full event and made it available right here on Products That Count so the entire product community can relive all of the inspiring moments. Swing on over to catch the highlights of the Age of Product and see the winners accept their awards in real-time, and don’t forget to save that date for next year’s event.
The Conceive, Build, & Operate Stages
On the first day of the event, we celebrated the Conceive Stage, the Build Stage, and Operate Stage of the product lifecycle, sponsored by Autodesk, Sisense, and Indicative. Mimicking live events in a virtual setting, between each stage the guests joined various breakout rooms to engage in inspiring product conversation with the nominees, sponsors, and their fellow attendees.
To start off the show, Products That Count Founder SC Moatti sat down with Autodesk Executive Vice President of Architecture, Engineering, and Construction Design, Amy Bunszel for a fireside chat about the Conceive Stage.
“One of the things that excites me about this stage is that it really brings product management out into the open. By being collaborative, participatory, and inclusive in how we conceive new product ideas, we really help answer the question people have on what product managers do.”
With a list of finalists packed with powerful product tools, Awards Advisory Board member Patrick Blute expressed the nominees of the Build Stage as products that “represent the nexus between idea and opportunity”. During their fireside chat, Sisense CPO and CMO Ashley Kramer joins SC onstage to share her insights on customer expectations.
“Gone are the days, unfortunately, of extreme customer loyalty alone. Today, customers are looking for that enhanced experience. They want to understand right out of the gate what you can provide to them, the differentiation that you have within your market, and how you really can provide them quick time to value.”
Before the winner’s announcements for the last stage of the day, the Operate Stage, Indicative CEO Jeremy Levy spoke on the Age of Data and how to maximize a product beyond market fit.
“The Operation Stage is really where companies are looking to maximize product success. It’s not uncommon, but it’s pretty rare that a company will launch a product and it’s a perfect fit from the get-go. In this stage, product teams really get smart. The best product teams are ones that are able to quickly incorporate information and iterate their products, which leads to a better customer experience.”
Special Awards Presentations
After a full day on Tuesday, the crowd came back for day two amped and ready for more product action. The day started off with the presentation of our special awards. Heap Founder, Matin Movassate presented their awards of Product Growth Hero and Analytics Insight Hero to Priya Gopalakrishnan, Sr. Marketing Systems Manager at Twillio, and Adam Smith, Web Analytics Director at 1-800-Flowers, respectively.
“Heap, as a product analytics, we are quite literally a “product that counts”. If you talk to different product orgs, there are different shapes of greatness, different ways to build great products, but one commonality is a very deep understanding of, and empathy for, the customer. Heap was born from a frustration of trying to make good use of data, and a desire to remove the back and forth between engineering and data analysts to get the answers to questions fast.”
The Customer Experience Innovation went to Bluedot for their excellence in developing solutions that elevate the customer experience in this new Age of Product. In a fireside chat with SC, Bluedot Co-Founder Emil Davityan shared his insights on how customer experiences has evolved over the last year.
“One of the biggest things we’ve seen product managers grappling with in the last year is redefining that customer experience. What is the new end-to-end experience when everything has changed in the market? Something that really captivated us at Bluedot was the ability to give a platform and tools to product managers to understand the context of their users and consumers in this new fully digital space.”
The Design and Collaborate Stages
Day two of the Product Awards wrapped up with the announcements of the winners in the Design and Collaborate Stage. Before handing out the awards, AAB Member Neha Taleja spoke on the importance of good design for a successful product.
“Good design means good business, right? No matter how amazing your product is, if it’s designed poorly, you’re not going to provide your users with the best experience possible. Creating good design takes a lot of effort, collaboration, and thoughtfulness. There’s magic that happens behind the scenes and we wanted to do identify what the products are that are helping make that magic.”
Rounding out the day, AAB Member Nita Maheswaren took the stage to present the winners in the Collaborate Stage and expresses the importance of good collaborating between both internal and external teams
“Collaboration is super critical in the sense that you have all these high-value customers, and it’s up to product managers to make sure they have the best customer experience. That’s a critical thing and having the right tools to collaborate with your stakeholders on all sides of the aisle is super important.”
A huge thank you to all of our sponsors, winners, nominees, and attendees who helped make this year’s virtual version of our annual Product Awards the best iteration yet. Catch the entire rebroadcast right here and browse through all the winners at the links below. Cheers to continued digital acceleration in the Age of Product!
