A data-backed framework to evaluate, classify, and act on a 20+ product portfolio, from strategic alignment scoring to Board-ready communication.
When you’re managing a portfolio of 20+ products spanning e-commerce, retail, and supply chain verticals, one question eventually becomes unavoidable: which products deserve more investment, and which ones need to go?
That was the exact challenge facing a global shipping SaaS company, a GCC operating out of India, with a product portfolio valued at over USD 200 Mn. The company’s leadership needed clarity, fast. Not opinions, data-backed clarity they could take to the Board.
This is the story of how a structured product rationalization framework transformed portfolio uncertainty into a clear, actionable strategy.
The company had built a broad portfolio of products serving enterprise and SMB clients across multiple verticals. Growth was strong, but with growth came complexity. The senior executive and product leader identified a critical gap: there was no consistent framework to evaluate products across both financial performance and strategic fit at the same time.
Without such a framework, three problems festered:
Products were being assessed in isolation — some by revenue, others by customer count, and a few by gut instinct alone. There was no single model to compare apples to apples across the entire portfolio.
Leadership needed a data-backed, Board-ready narrative — not a spreadsheet dump, but a coherent strategy with clear next steps for each product.
Even if decisions were made, there was no standardized way to communicate product direction to internal teams, clients, and external stakeholders.
The core question wasn’t “what should we build next?” — it was “what should we stop doing, and how do we tell everyone about it?”
The consulting partner designed and deployed an end-to-end Product Rationalization Framework. Rather than relying on a single metric, the framework evaluated every product across 24 distinct parameters, grouped into two primary dimensions.
This dimension assessed how well each product aligned with the company’s future direction. It examined three pillars: Product Fit (how closely the product matches the company’s core value proposition), Market Attractiveness (size of the addressable market, growth trajectory, and competitive dynamics), and Internal Readiness (whether the company had the engineering talent, infrastructure, and organizational capacity to scale the product).
Borrowing from the time-tested Recency-Frequency-Monetary model, this dimension looked at hard numbers: how recently the product generated meaningful revenue or engagement (Recency), how consistently it contributed to pipeline and retention (Frequency), and the absolute revenue and margin contribution (Monetary).
Each product was scored across all 24 parameters, creating a composite picture that balanced forward-looking strategy with backward-looking performance.
With scores in hand, every product was plotted onto a 2×2 matrix: the Grow-Stay-Shrink-Go classification model. This matrix became the single source of truth for portfolio decisions.
|
Grow
High fit · High performance
High strategic fit, strong performance. Increase R&D investment, expand GTM, double down. |
Stay
Steady contribution
Solid performance or strategic value, but not a breakout. Maintain current investment, optimize efficiency. |
|
Shrink
Declining relevance
Declining relevance or performance. Reduce investment, harvest remaining value, plan migration. |
Go (Sunset)
Low fit · Low performance
Low on both axes. Initiate customer migration, reallocate resources, retire the product. |
The outcome was decisive. The framework didn’t just generate a classification, it gave leadership a ready-made action plan for every product in the portfolio.
|
~75%
Products in Grow or Stay
|
~25%
Flagged for Rationalization
|
24
Scoring Parameters
|
20+
Products Evaluated
|
Roughly three-quarters of products were classified into Grow or Stay zones, confirming they were worth continued or increased investment. The remaining quarter was identified for rationalization or sunset, freeing up R&D budget, engineering talent, and management attention for the products that mattered most.
Beyond classification, the framework delivered zone-wise strategies covering R&D investment priorities, go-to-market adjustments, customer migration plans for sunset products, and resource reallocation across the portfolio.
Perhaps the most underrated part of the entire engagement was the communication strategy. Sunsetting a product is a business decision, but communicating it poorly can erode customer trust and create internal confusion.
The consulting partner developed a standardized communication plan that was benchmarked against industry terminology and competitor practices. This gave leadership a consistent vocabulary and narrative to explain product direction to three critical audiences: internal engineering and product teams who needed to understand resource shifts, enterprise and SMB clients who needed assurance about migration paths, and the Board, which needed confidence that the strategy was rigorous and data-driven.
The result: the Global Product Head was able to present a Board-ready, data-backed product strategy, not a vague “we’re focusing on our core” statement, but a detailed execution roadmap with clear rationale behind every decision.
This case offers several lessons for any organization wrestling with portfolio complexity.
First, multi-dimensional scoring beats single-metric analysis. Revenue alone doesn’t capture strategic alignment. Customer count alone ignores financial sustainability. A composite model, like the 24-parameter approach used here, gives a far more honest picture of each product’s future potential.
Second, classification frameworks drive action. A 2×2 matrix isn’t just a consulting artifact, it’s a decision tool. When every product sits in a defined zone with a predefined action plan, leadership spends less time debating and more time executing.
Third, communication is strategy. The best rationalization plan in the world fails if customers hear about it through a vague email. Investing in a formal, benchmarked communication playbook is just as important as the analysis itself.
Finally, rationalization isn’t about cutting, it’s about focusing. The goal was never to shrink the portfolio for the sake of it. The goal was to channel resources toward the highest-impact products and give every stakeholder confidence in the path forward.
Product rationalization, done right, isn’t a cost-cutting exercise — it’s a growth strategy disguised as portfolio hygiene.
THANK YOU
FOR YOUR RESPONSE
