Driving Customer-centric Enhancements
A Conversation with Hypori’s Senior Director of Product Management, Esther Kent
At Hypori, we’re committed to innovation, which stems from our dedication to meeting the evolving needs of our customers. Furthermore, we recognize that customer feedback is the key to effective product development, and this has shaped our software-as-a-service (SaaS) strategy and approach to continuously improving Hypori Halo.
A critical part of the product development process is ensuring that our enhancements align with customer needs and market trends; Esther Kent, our Senior Director of Product Management, is integral to this process.
This blog explores Hypori’s latest SaaS improvements and how the product development team ensures that Hypori Halo remains a cutting-edge solution. We will also learn about Esther and how her team drives innovation through a customer-centric strategy.
Can you explain how Hypori’s product development team looks at product enhancements and how your role as product leader helps drive improvements?
At Hypori, we believe in customer empathy, deeply understanding their needs to ensure our solutions are genuinely impactful. Maintaining a focused approach allows us to drive significant value. Strong execution is key to turning our vision into reality - delivering products that make a meaningful difference. Monitoring product adoption and usage, in addition to customer feedback, provides insights that help us iterate on our solutions, ensuring our products exceed customer expectations and drive high satisfaction and business growth.
As a product leader, my primary responsibility is to ensure a clear product direction and product focus is defined and communicated across teams. There’s a strong partnership and collaboration between the engineers and product managers to ensure we’re delivering substantial value to our customers and the business. This approach emphasizes achieving meaningful outcomes rather than merely shipping features.
Hypori has recently made several notable product updates. Could you highlight some examples and the rationale behind these changes?
One of our significant updates is transitioning Hypori Halo from on-premise deployments, which included major configuration changes from customer to customer, to a cloud-based SaaS product. Originally, onboarding a new customer required a substantial implementation project due to varied configurations.
Over the past two years, we've automated deployments, minimizing onboarding time and delivering value to customers faster. Leveraging cloud resources and a Kubernetes-based control plane allows us to innovate more quickly, focusing on our core business. Kubernetes offers robust scalability, automation, and efficient management of containerized applications, enhancing our operational efficiency and flexibility.
We are also working on shifting from large servers hosting multiple users to individual users having smaller dedicated hosts. This change will allow us to manage cloud instances with greater control, offering faster virtual device connections, smoother app experiences, and dynamic scalability, all while minimizing costs.
How does your team approach identifying areas for improvement and determining what updates to make to Hypori Halo?
We actively gather customer and prospect feedback, analyze support tickets, and monitor market trends.
This comprehensive approach ensures we are continuously improving our product based on real user needs and feedback, complementing our product vision and strategy.
What challenges has the product development team encountered in the process of continuously improving the product, and how has the team overcome them?
One of the challenges in Product Discovery is navigating the strict requirements and processes associated with our government customers, who often have security clearance mandates. These restrictions make it difficult to obtain direct feedback from users, which is crucial for continuous product improvement.
To overcome this challenge, Hypori uses indirect feedback channels where we gather customer needs and pain points from authorized team members who directly interact with the customers.
What are some of the key priorities and goals for the Hypori product team in the near future?
We are focusing on:
Launching dedicated cloud instances for each virtual device, significantly enhancing user experience by improving reliability, consistency, and performance.
Strengthening our support for operating as a SaaS product to enable quicker and smoother customer onboarding, delivering value faster.
Outside of Hypori, what advice would you give to other women in product roles who are striving to drive innovation and make a meaningful impact in their respective industries?
I think women bring a unique perspective to product roles with their empathy, attention to detail, and strategic thinking. My advice is to find good role models and continuously learn your craft. Focus on outcomes rather than activities and outputs. Cultivate an attitude of humility, curiosity, empathy, and high agency. Always start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology. Building a great product requires patience, skill, dedication, and iterative refinement. One of my favorite quotes from Steve Jobs captures this perfectly:
"There's just a tremendous amount of craftsmanship in between a great idea and a great product. As you evolve that great idea, it changes and grows. It never comes out like it starts because you learn a lot more as you get into the subtleties of it. And you also find there are tremendous trade-offs you must make."
Hypori is Hiring!
Hypori is looking to expand its Cloud Operations and Engineering – Research & Development team. It currently has openings for a Senior Cloud Platform Engineer and a Senior Site Reliability Engineer. To learn more about these roles and other career opportunities at Hypori, please visit our Careers Page.
