Did you know…companies with leading digital and AI capabilities outperform laggards by 6x?

Major change is happening faster than ever, and for 9 in 10 digital leaders, their priorities are to  improve operational efficiency, enhance customer experience, and create new products. Yet today, 7 in 10 digital leaders say a skills shortage is preventing them from keeping up with the pace of change.

Responsible for the end-to-end lifecycle management of digital products, such as mobile apps, digital content platforms, SaaS offerings and IoT devices, a digital product manager bridges the gap between business objectives, user needs, and technology. Therefore, it’s perhaps unsurprising that demand for product managers in the UK has grown 8x. While three-quarters (75%) of product development executives say acquiring digital skills is a key priority for them, to build on advances in computing power, analytics approaches, and AI.

So what’s the best approach to upskill your product managers and build future digital leaders?

Apprenticeships change lives - UK Government

McKinsey says, “Apprenticing offers hands-on learning to demystify change and role modelling to demonstrate hard-to-teach skills, such as problem-solving mindsets.” Nearly 9 in 10 business executives agree, they believe apprenticeships help learners develop skills relevant to their organisation.

At Cambridge Spark, we set the gold standard in apprenticeships that build data and AI skills. With our approach, training outcomes map to skills gaps across every function in the business. We deliver training via live lectures, workshops, and self-paced e-learning. And learners are always supported by our expert lecturers, technical mentors and professionally trained coaches. It means they’re ready to put their new skills into practice from day 1 of their programme. 

In particular, our Digital Product Manager Apprenticeship (L4) is designed to equip teams with the necessary skills to create and manage digital products that transform your business.

Customer-Driven Product Management 

Your employees need a solid understanding of the product management lifecycle, from the conception of idea and strategy, through to development, growth and maturity, and onto decline/evolution. 

It’s important for them to grasp the key roles and responsibilities involved, and know how to communicate and collaborate across cross-functional teams. And because we’re dealing with digital products, your team also needs to learn how to leverage AI to enhance innovation and decision-making, and keep your business competitive. 

However, throughout everything, your team needs to know how to maintain a strong focus on the customer - specifically their needs, preferences, and behaviours. During the product development process, your team will be subject to numerous ideas and opinions. But just because they can do something (or a senior leader asks them to do something) doesn’t mean they should. An apprenticeship will teach your learners how to place the customer at the centre of product design, filter through the noise, and when necessary, push back and manage stakeholder expectations.

Stakeholder Management and Effective Communication

Identifying stakeholders and analysing their needs enables prioritisation and robust communication planning, as well as fostering greater stakeholder engagement, collaboration, and conflict management.

The #1 reason for transformation programme failure is poor communication. It results from emphasising output over outcome, confusing presentation with communication, and not checking to see if a message was properly received. 

Effective communication skills are vital to prevent misunderstandings, protect ongoing dialogue, and present what products are being developed and why. In particular, visualisation and storytelling are powerful techniques that transform data insights into a compelling narrative, using quantitative and qualitative data to promote a shared understanding and secure buy-in to change.

User-Centric Design 

Ultimately, you want to create products that are useful, usable, and used. An apprenticeship introduces your team to the world of user research, problem-solving methodologies, and prototyping, which enables effective identification and understanding of problems. It’s so important that every $1 invested in UX results in a return of $100.

With user-centric design, the customer remains at the centre of everything you do, because your digital product managers ask important questions, like:

• Who is the actual customer? What do they want? Why?
• Is this problem worth solving? How can we address it? What’s the likely outcome?
• Do we need to create a product from scratch? Can we evolve an existing product? 

Digital product managers are taught to challenge the status quo and rethink how things can be achieved for new, different, or better outcomes. They learn how to start small with a minimum viable product (MVP) to test if it works before scaling. And they know when to involve collaboration partners to enhance their own skills.

Data Analysis for Product Management

Fundamental to a digital product manager’s success is understanding how data can drive growth and inform strategic product decisions, as well as how to analyse, visualise and share their findings. 

There are 3 types of data, which are key to digital product development:

• User data: what customers think, how they behave, and their future needs.
• Product data: what user flows looks like, popular features, and where users drop off.
• Market research: including competitor analysis and PESTEL analysis.

Statistics are core to data-driven decision making because it allows us to distill meaningful insights about customer behaviours from large data sets. It means that rather than rely on gut feeling (or listening to the loudest voice in the room), digital products are developed based on evidence. For example, A/B testing allows you to compare different versions of the same feature to determine which performs best.

Through data analysis, digital product managers are able to identify which products, features, or enhancements are likely to generate the best ROI, and are therefore worthy of making it onto a development roadmap.

Digital Product Planning

Digital product managers need to explore the principles and practices of agile product delivery and iterative development, as well as the importance of adapting to change and maximising customer value.

According to PwC, "A company that wants to deliver customer-focused products can no longer do without digital tools and capabilities, such as artificial intelligence and data analytics." Those who do invest in the development of digital products boost their efficiency by 19%, while reducing time to market by 17% and production costs by 13%.

Through developing their digital skills, product managers learn how to test new product ideas and quickly capitalise on market opportunities, use insights to create products customers genuinely want/need, help the business to scale without incurring significant cost increases, and reduce business risk by enabling the business to ‘pivot’ when change occurs.

Managing Digital Products

On completion of their apprenticeship, digital product managers will know how to achieve a successful product launch and enhance the operation of digital products, while measuring performance and maintaining a customer-first approach. 

It’s not enough to simply put a new product out into the world. For digital products, the launch is just the beginning - managers need to constantly monitor performance and evaluate how their products are used, and by whom, to tweak and refine them over time.

To come full circle, managing digital products is about the entire lifecycle - knowing when and how to optimise products for better engagement/returns, and when to ‘kill’ products that cease to be useful, usable, or used.

Upskill Your Team With Cambridge Spark

Our Digital Product Manager Apprenticeship (L4) is designed to equip your employees with the skills to manage the entire product lifecycle for new digital products that will transform your business. The programme develops a user-centric design approach focussed on business requirements, builds the skills to use data, and shares knowledge of how AI can impact product development.

At Cambridge Spark, we’re always first to market with recognised certifications and qualifications that develop new skills. We have a 99.5% pass rate with 70%+ distinction/merit grades compared to an industry average of just 33%. And to date, we have generated £350m+ in ROI for our clients. 

Find out more about our Digital Product Manager Apprenticeship (L4) and enrol.