#4: Global Strategy in highly localized products - with Jesus Cagide Alvarado, Product Leader at Intuit and Paypal
Oct 14, 2024
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In this engaging discussion, Jesus Cagide Alvarado, a Product Leader at Intuit with a rich background at PayPal, dives deep into the complexities of global strategy for localized products. He highlights the vital role of trust in fintech and how emotional elements shape financial transactions. Jesus discusses the delicate balance between global goals and local needs, emphasizing market assessments and regulatory environments. He also shares insights on adapting products based on local consumer behavior and the critical success factors for product management across diverse markets.
Balancing global strategy and local needs is essential for companies to successfully tailor their products to diverse regional markets.
Establishing trust in fintech is crucial for enhancing customer interactions and alleviating anxiety around money management.
Deep dives
Navigating Global Strategy and Local Needs
Balancing global strategy with local needs is crucial for companies looking to expand their products across different regions. Understanding that global strategy focuses on fulfilling the company's broader mission while local needs encompass the specific attributes needed to serve customers at the geographical level is essential. Factors such as customer bargaining power, technological access, and regulatory frameworks significantly impact how products are tailored for local markets. For example, when launching a product in multiple countries, these considerations help shape the product's features, user experience, and communication strategies tailored to each locale's unique context.
The Importance of Trust in Fintech
Trust is a fundamental component in the realm of financial technology, as it governs customer interactions and shapes their experiences. In fintech, both individuals and institutions rely on trust to facilitate transactions, ensuring that money is used appropriately and that identities are verified. Establishing a sense of trust can be particularly challenging in sectors like fintech, where customers often experience anxiety surrounding money management. By creating processes and products that enhance trust between parties, companies can alleviate customer concerns and encourage the use of their financial services.
Assessing Market Opportunities
When evaluating opportunities for market entry or product launch, organizations must conduct a rigorous assessment of both market conditions and their internal capabilities. This involves identifying the potential client base, understanding local consumer behavior, and analyzing the competitive landscape to inform strategic decisions. The decision-making process not only assesses the market but also aligns with the company’s overall mission and financial goals. For instance, companies often categorize their approaches as activation, engagement, or growth, which impacts their strategies and potential for success in capturing market share.
Adapting Strategies for Local Cultures
Successfully penetrating diverse markets requires a deep understanding of local cultures and consumer behavior, which informs product design and marketing strategies. Local product managers play a vital role by providing insights into regional preferences, helping to tailor offerings that resonate with specific audiences. For example, adapting product interfaces, terms of service, and even communication styles ensures that financial tools meet customers' needs while aligning with their cultural contexts. This localization not only facilitates product adoption but also fosters loyalty as users feel better understood and supported.
As companies grow and expand their services, they need to localize their product. In some industries, where each region has very different needs and regulations, there is high interaction between the need for a global strategy, and the needs of each region to succeed.
Jesus Cagide, Product Leader at Intuit and ex-Paypal helps us explore how this can be handled in companies and industries where the local need has a critical role.
We talked about:
The role of fintech and money in people’s life.
What are highly localized products? The difference between the global mission and the needs of each region to achieve the product mission.
The 3 attributes you need to consider in a geographical basis: bargain power of customers, tech access and channels, and regulations.
How understanding opportunities at a local level affects the global strategy.
Besides your global strategy, you need to understand your strategic intent in each geography (and how to evaluate it based on the local diagnosis).
The importance of considering each geography the existing set of tools and to clearly communicate your value proposition according to each market.
Making market assessments per country: the lifecycle of the product, competitive intensity, and reach or size. How the lifecycle of your product actually varies by country.
Assessing your strengths in the country, from your brand power to your core capabilities.
How Paypal manages top-down vs bottom-up initiative proposal and assessment.
How adding services at a global level requires an impact analysis in a multi-year horizon (versus local initiatives related to the adoption of existing services in the portfolio).
The complexity of the product structure when combining global and local roles.
Jesus's last advice about strategy: “don’t bite more than you can chew”. How much time this global strategy exercise takes.