
BDTI's Sounding Board Service™
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BDTI's Sounding Board Service™

Expert opinion — Industry perspective — Constructive advice

Whether you're working on a marketing pitch, designing a new product, brainstorming ideas, or planning your next strategic move, BDTI's Sounding Board Service™ can help you achieve a successful outcome.

Sounding Board for Marketing: Presentations, Positioning, and Pitches
Sounding Board for Engineering: Processor, Software, and System Designs
Sounding Board for Executives: Roadmaps and Strategies

Sounding Board for Marketing: Presentations, Positioning, and Pitches

If you're in product marketing, you know that a key component of any marketing program is the presentation that introduces your company's latest product. This presentation is often the first time that your prospective customers (and members of the press) will hear about your new offering, and you want to make sure to get it right.

The best way to ensure that such a presentation is effective is to test it out on a knowledgeable, critical, and responsive audience. The right test audience can help you ensure that your content is clear, credible, and—just as important—that it's interesting enough to keep your audience engaged.

Through the Sounding Board Service, BDTI analysts can become your test audience and give you the insightful feedback you need. BDTI's analysts have hands-on experience with signal processing technology and have spent years tracking the industry—and listening to hundreds of product pitches along the way. This experience makes them shrewd audience members with a unique combination of technical expertise and industry savvy.

To ensure that your overall marketing message is cohesive, BDTI's analysts can also provide thoughtful critiques on related product brochures and press releases. If you're still in the early planning stages and don't yet have materials for review, BDTI can help you brainstorm and come up with a unique, compelling angle.

When you engage BDTI's analysts for a Sounding Board session, you'll receive specific, detailed suggestions for achieving technical accuracy and clarity, and for creating a credible, compelling marketing message. Moreover, BDTI is often able to identify product advantages that may have been overlooked.

Find out more about how to quickly and cost-effectively leverage BDTI's expertise in a Sounding Board Basic Session or Extended Session.

Sounding Board for Engineering: Processor, Software, and System Designs

If you're developing a processor, chip, or system that implements signal processing technology, you'll benefit from BDTI's expert insight and advice. BDTI's analysts can leverage their technical expertise and broad industry knowledge—including experience with a wide range of processors, tools, applications, and algorithms—to quickly analyze your processor, software, or system and provide practical suggestions for improvement. They can help you determine which features are must-haves, and which can be safely dropped or postponed. They can help you brainstorm new ideas or product strategies. They can tell you whether your product provides what your customers are looking for—and what your competitors are missing. They can help you understand the unique challenges of signal processing applications, and ensure that your product will meet those challenges.

Find out more about how to quickly and cost-effectively leverage BDTI's expertise in a Sounding Board Basic Session or Extended Session.

Sounding Board for Executives: Roadmaps and Strategies

BDTI's analysts are widely recognized as savvy industry observers and opinion-makers. They've been analyzing signal processing technology trends and the competitive landscape for over a decade. But make no mistake, BDTI's analysts are not market researchers—they are skilled engineers who have developed and used a huge variety of signal processing technologies themselves. As a result, BDTI's team can offer business insights and advice that are deeply grounded in an understanding of the technologies involved. They are experts in evaluating business and technical opportunities and creative brainstorming—while maintaining strict client confidentiality.

Whether you're a CEO trying to quickly come up to speed on signal processing technologies, a CTO faced with a complex make-vs-buy decision, or an engineering director planning a product roadmap, BDTI can help.

Find out more about how to quickly and cost-effectively leverage BDTI's expertise in a Sounding Board Basic Session or Extended Session.

Sounding Board Sessions

Basic Session

In a Basic Session a BDTI team spends approximately five hours focused on your company's challenges.

In the first hour, you present a briefing on a product, technology, program, or challenge. Two or more BDTI personnel (including one senior staff member) attend the briefing. After the briefing, the BDTI team members confer with one another and coordinate their analysis and feedback. (BDTI recommends starting a Sounding Board session in the morning so that you may visit one of Berkeley's fine eateries at lunchtime while BDTI's team performs its analysis and compiles its feedback.)

BDTI will then present its findings in a session of approximately two hours. During this session BDTI delivers its feedback orally and answers questions.

Alternatively, if the focus of your Sounding Board session is brainstorming, BDTI typically uses a round-table format. We will hash out ideas with you for up to five hours, and potentially identify opportunities for further analysis or collaboration. Brainstorm with us, and you'll come away with surprising new insights and exciting ideas.

BDTI always maintains strict confidentiality of customer-confidential information.

Extended Session

In an Extended Session BDTI dedicates more time to you. A typical extended Sounding Board session takes place over two weeks. An extended session begins the same way as a basic session: you meet with BDTI to introduce the topic—product marketing strategy and associated collateral material, processor, software, or system design, or critical concepts for discussion and research—and identify key questions for BDTI to consider. Then BDTI's team members confer to assemble initial feedback, and to develop an approach for further exploration.

In the feedback session, BDTI delivers its initial feedback and presents its approach for follow-up. Then, over the next week, BDTI investigates the topic further and prepares its response.

The extended session ends with another meeting, in person or via conference call, for additional feedback and discussion.

Optional Services

BDTI offers the following optional services in conjunction with a Sounding Board session:

Written report: BDTI will provide a brief written report (typically about four pages) summarizing its feedback.
Copyediting of materials: BDTI will review and edit materials for grammar, language use, and formatting, to ensure that you achieve your goals for technical accuracy and clarity.

FAQ

What customers say—

"The Sounding Board session was quite valuable for us. We plan to make it a regular part of our product announcement process."

—Product manager

"... the Sounding Board session was a resounding success."

—IP manager

"I will never do another product launch without doing a Sounding Board first."

—Product manager

Q: When is the best time to come to BDTI for a Sounding Board session?
A: As soon as you can. If, for example, you want BDTI to review a presentation, the best time is when it is in draft form. BDTI's input is of the most value at this point and can really help drive the effort to a successful conclusion. If you wait until the presentation has been fully scrubbed and polished, it will be more difficult to incorporate BDTI's feedback. In the usual course of events, you should come to BDTI weeks, not days, before the first scheduled presentation. For other types of Sounding Board sessions, too, the earlier you engage with BDTI, the more easily BDTI's input and recommendations can be used.

Q: How can I ensure that information presented to BDTI prior to public announcements will be kept confidential?
A: BDTI has been receiving confidential product disclosures for many years, sometimes under NDA and sometimes with only an informal agreement not to disclose information. BDTI is extremely careful to guard such information and has an outstanding track record of maintaining confidentiality. BDTI will respect any request for embargo of pre-release information.

Q: How do I know that BDTI will not use access to my company's confidential product information to help my competitors, or in its analysis activities?
A: All confidential information will be shared among BDTI staff only on a need-to-know basis. Every BDTI staff member with access to the information will be briefed on its confidentiality, and informed that the material cannot be used in any other analysis or consulting activities. BDTI will not use your confidential information for any purpose other than to help your company.

Contact BDTI

Got an upcoming presentation? A new product under development? An idea just beginning to form? Contact BDTI to arrange a Sounding Board session and put BDTI's expertise to work for you. Contact BDTI for information by sending email to info@BDTI.com.