It’s time to change the way we build digital products

30 years ago, the internet changed everything. 10 years later, mobile unshackled the web from the desktop. Now, AI is the latest seismic sea change accelerating digital disruption—promising to buoy the next generation of innovative “Netflixes” while sinking the “Blockbusters” in its roiling wake.

In today's market, every company is becoming a digital product company. The largest banks in the US now engage more people via digital apps than they ever did in branches. The largest apparel companies are selling directly to consumers through digital channels, in addition to physical retail. And recent research from Airtable, surveying 550 product leaders at enterprise companies, found that 92% of product leaders are responsible for revenue goals and performance metrics that extend far beyond the quantity and quality of features shipped.

Whether you’re leading Product at a bank, airline, retailer, or tech organization, the ability to deliver business impact through your digital products at scale is a core requirement for success.

Unfortunately, many product leaders are not set up to deliver impact at the pace required of a quickly changing technology environment. Airtable’s research found that the average product manager spends 66% of their time on administrative tasks—and Product leaders are drowning in spreadsheets and powerpoints, as opposed to focusing on strategy and customers.

Introducing, ProductCentral

Today, Airtable is launching Airtable ProductCentral, Airtable’s first solution for AI-powered product operations. Airtable ProductCentral is a dedicated solution to power end-to-end digital product operations for any company building software, websites, mobile apps, or other digital products.

Major organizations like JetBlue and BlackRock already use Airtable to power their product development processes. BlackRock, for example, achieved 2X product velocity since implementing Airtable. This powerful solution leverages the best practices of leading product organizations, applies AI automations to eliminate manual admin work, and seamlessly integrates with existing systems of record within the enterprise.

What makes Airtable ProductCentral different from competing tools for Product teams?

It manages your entire product org: Unlike narrow point solutions, ProductCentral powers your entire product organization – from resourcing and feedback management to roadmapping and launch execution.
It infuses AI across operations: We've integrated AI automations to eliminate tedious work for PMs—in particular, synthesizing customer feedback. But we've taken this one step further. You can also create custom AI automations tailored to your organization's unique needs, built on your own data.
It integrates with critical systems: It doesn't only connect with engineering tools like JIRA and Azure DevOps. It seamlessly integrates with enterprise systems of record such as Salesforce, Workday, and Snowflake, giving you a truly comprehensive view of your product landscape.
It is infinitely customizable: Built on Airtable's no-code platform, ProductCentral is endlessly extensible. You can adapt it to your specific workflows and evolving needs, without limitation.

Ultimately, to be successful, product organizations must have visibility, connection, and acceleration across every stage of the product development life cycle. ProductCentral helps leaders:

Synthesize customer truth with AI: Let AI find the signal in seconds from mountains of direct customer insights, feedback sources, and data points. Use AI to parse mountains of customer data and translate customer insights into product strategy.

Translate headcount investment into business impact: Plan your roadmap with a unified view of every investment, across every team. Visualize and adjust investment levels to meet company priorities, and track and understand investments over time. Finally, automate prioritization according to predicted impact, and keep teams focused on the work that matters most.

Increase confidence and visibility for every product stakeholder: Airtable ProductCentral is infinitely extensible to adjacent workflows such as UX Feedback Management, Goal Tracking, Marketing Campaign Management, and Sales Account Planning. Integrate with Salesforce to tie Product investments directly to revenue. Eliminate the “black box” of Product by ensuring that every stakeholder input is accounted for, and every stakeholder has visibility into what’s shipping when.

To meet this moment of ongoing transformation, product teams urgently need to change the way they think about and build digital products. That's why we're inviting you to a game-changing product launch event to see what’s new from Airtable.

How can you leverage ProductCentral to lead transformation?

To answer that specific and crucial question, Airtable is releasing a new product specifically designed for product teams, bringing powerful unification to your entire product life cycle. Join us on 10/16/2024 to learn more.