Automatic determination and location of product support infrastructure resources

A system for automatically determining resource allocation for a consumer product, the system comprising:

• a processor configured to:
• algorithmically classify consumer products that requiring a support infrastructure based on a combination of determined product complexity and target market maturity for each of the consumer products by calculating product complexity of each of the consumer products utilizing a plurality of product characteristics, including release number of the consumer products, amount of change being made in the release, length of development cycle, and number of different development and support organizations involved;
• determine support resource allocations based on the combined classification along with historical usage records for similarly classified products for each of the consumer products;
• return the support resource allocations for each of the consumer products as one or more of a series of variables and associated values;
• perform an automatic determination of a best allocation of post-release product support resources for the consumer product from a combination of a calculated product complexity, the target market maturity, a historical usage, and a consumer awareness of the post-release product support resources, wherein the best allocation of post-release product support resources correlates to a level of post-release product support resources utilized by consumers, and wherein the post-release product support resources include support for one or more of set-up, implementation, and maintenance of the consumer product;
• and
• provide the best allocation of post-release product support resources to the consumers;
• wherein the calculating product complexity further comprises:
• identifying each of the consumer products including first assigning clip levels indicating a break in a normalized rating chart at which a product evaluates as having a specific classification among multiple classifications delineated by the clip levels;
• determining a list of characteristics for use in assessing classifications of the product complexity and market maturity, the determining including:
• defining a weighting factor for each complexity classification;
• and determining data sources to be evaluated for each classification;
• assigning a first value to each characteristic attributable to each of the consumer products and a second value to each characteristic not attributable to each of the consumer products;
• and
• evaluating a relative rating of each of the consumer products against a normalized rating chart based on a calculation involving at least one of the first value and the second value assigned to each characteristic, wherein evaluating based on the calculation comprises:
• determining whether each classification among multiple classifications for a product utilize a same set of characteristics;
• in response to the same set of characteristics being utilized for each classification, calculating both a product complexity score and a market maturity score as an average of a weighted score;
• and
• in response to different characteristics being used for different classifications, calculating the product complexity score as weighted sums of a percentage match of each classification, and calculating the market maturity score as a maximum of the percentage match of each classification.

A computer program product comprising:

• a computer readable storage medium;
• and
• instructions on the computer readable storage medium that execute on a processor of a computer device to enable automatic determination of resource allocation for a consumer product, the instructions including instructions for:
• algorithmically classifying consumer products that require a support infrastructure based on a combination of determined product complexity and target market maturity for each of the consumer products by calculating product complexity utilizing a plurality of product characteristics, including release number of the product, amount of change being made in the release, length of development cycle, and number of different development and support organizations involved;
• and
• determining support resource allocations based on the combined classification along with historical usage records for similarly classified products for each of the consumer products;
• returning the support resource allocations for each of the consumer products as one or more of a series of variables and associated values;
• performing an automatic determination of a best allocation of post-release product support resources for the consumer product from a combination of a calculated product complexity, the target market maturity, the historical usage, and a consumer awareness of the post-release product support resources, wherein the best allocation of post-release product support resources correlates to a level of post-release product support resources utilized by consumers, and wherein the post-release product support resources include support for one or more of set-up, implementation, and maintenance of the consumer product;
• and
• providing a best allocation of post-release product support resources to consumers of each consumer product
• wherein the instructions for calculating further comprises instructions for:
• first assigning clip levels indicating a break in the normalized rating chart at which a product evaluates as having a specific classification among multiple classifications delineated by the clip levels;
• identifying the product;
• determining a list of characteristics for use in assessing classifications of the product complexity and market maturity;
• defining a weighting factor for each complexity classification;
• determining data sources to be evaluated for each classification;
• assigning a first value to each characteristic attributable to the product and a second value to each characteristic not attributable to the product;
• and
• evaluating a relative rating of the product against a normalized rating chart based on a calculation involving at least one of the first value and the second value assigned to each characteristic, wherein the instructions for evaluating based on the calculation further comprises instructions for:
• determining whether each classification among multiple classifications for a product utilize a same set of characteristics;
• in response to the same set of characteristics being utilized for each classification, calculating both a product complexity score and a market maturity score as an average of a weighted score;
• and
• in response to different characteristics being used for different classifications, calculating the product complexity score as weighted sums of a percentage match of each classification, and calculating the market maturity score as a maximum of the percentage match of each classification.