Together, the financial, healthcare, retail, and even transportation sectors are creating cross-industry ecosystems that are linked and able to serve a greater spectrum of client demands.
As product managers, we are tasked with developing cross-domain interoperable systems in the middle of this convergence.
When you take into account competing regulatory norms, partnership dynamics, and a wide range of client expectations, the complexity of this function grows enormously.
The development of cross-industry ecosystems is mostly due to the increasing digitization of products and services.
Fintech businesses have expanded their business beyond financial services. Additionally, they are collaborating with retailers to provide personalised shopping experiences and with medical providers to offer practical ways for patients to pay for telemedicine services. Similar to this, well-established sectors like transportation are collaborating with fintech to enable cashless transactions and with merchants to conduct in-app marketing campaigns.
However, what does this entail for managers of products?
Product managers are fundamentally required to serve as the link between these several domains. Gaining a thorough understanding of how to create products that serve numerous sectors at once in addition to one industry is essential for success.
This calls for expertise in managing partnerships, deft handling of intricate API interfaces, and development of scalable ecosystem infrastructures.
Ensuring interoperability is a major difficulty in cross-industry product management. For example, you may be faced with stringent compliance requirements in the financial industry, yet in the retail industry, consumer experience may come first.
Careful preparation and cooperation are needed to design a solution that satisfies both industries’ criteria without sacrificing the product’s efficiency.
An ecosystem infrastructure that is comprehensive must be scalable across industries, flexible enough to adjust to evolving rules, and capable of smoothly integrating complicated integrations.
As an illustration, consider the growth of fintech-healthcare alliances. Particularly in the aftermath of a pandemic, digital healthcare solutions necessitate safe and practical ways for users to pay for online services like prescription medication delivery, diagnostics, and consultations.
Strict data protection and healthcare laws (including the US’s HIPAA and the EU’s GDPR) must be followed when using these technologies. Fintech companies must simultaneously guarantee PCI compliance and the safe transfer of payment information.
Product managers in this context are not just developing healthcare software or a payment gateway—they’re creating an integrated system that must meet the demands of two heavily regulated sectors while providing a smooth, user-friendly experience.
Another aspect of cross-industry ecosystems is partnership management. Successfully launching multi-domain products requires forging and maintaining partnerships with different companies in varying industries.
This can involve anything from negotiating API contracts with payment processors to forming strategic partnerships with logistics firms for the delivery of healthcare or e-commerce.
It is our responsibility as product managers to be flexible in managing these partnerships, coordinating incentives amongst partners, and making sure that the product roadmap represents the interests of all stakeholders. Simultaneously, we must consider how these alliances might change or turn as the digital economy expands.
The ultimate test for every cross-industry solution is scalability. An ecosystem that has been carefully planned ought to be able to grow without requiring major overhauls.
A payment system that was first created for retail, for instance, may be expanded to accommodate government, healthcare, and educational services.
The platform should be robust enough to handle different regulatory environments, security concerns, and customer expectations.
One of the main duties of product managers is to ensure this scalability; they have to think about how the product will change when new sectors join the ecosystem, in addition to how it functions now.
In these environments, managing product roadmaps requires careful balancing. Product managers have to take into account various dependencies and a dynamic regulatory environment while creating cross-industry solutions. Every industry has unique standards, challenges with compliance, and operational frameworks that may run counter to one another.
Strict guidelines that are intended to stop fraud and protect data must be followed by financial services. On the other hand, customer-focused sectors like retail might value a smooth user experience more than stringent security measures.
Finding the ideal balance between these conflicting demands is crucial to making sure your product satisfies the requirements of all parties involved.
A potent instrument for addressing some of the difficulties in cross-industry product management is emerging: blockchain technology.
Two ways that blockchain technology can simplify intricate, multi-party relationships are through smart contracts and secure, transparent data transfers.
Blockchain technology, for instance, may make it possible for patients, insurers, and hospitals to safely and securely share patient billing information, safeguarding patient privacy and lowering the possibility of fraud.
Ecosystems spanning industries will be crucial to product management in the future. Product managers need to become ecosystem designers as more industries come together, juggling partnership relationships, technological complexity, and legal obligations.
We are heading toward a future in which no product functions alone; rather, every solution will be a component of a larger, networked system spanning sectors and regions.
Product managers who can successfully negotiate this confluence with innovation, flexibility, and a forward-thinking approach will be the most successful ones.
They will create platforms that not only satisfy current needs but also get ready for the difficulties posed by the growing digital economy of the future.
Meet the writer:
*Chukwuemeka Nzegbu Jerome is a Senior Product Manager with five years of experience in leading major projects across the fintech, e-commerce, and healthtech industries. He is versed in several project management tools including Tableau, Trello, Figma and SQL. Chukwuemeka has successfully led cross-functional teams in the development of user-centric products. His expertise includes product life cycle management, data-driven decision-making, and nurturing collaboration toward the achievement of measurable results within dynamic environments.
