Based on the phenomenon of product homogeneity, can operations personnel become the main force in product development?

Generally speaking, the product-related positions of an Internet company include: technical development, product managers , and operations personnel. The product manager is responsible for the budding design of product ideas, the technical GGs are responsible for making the product come to market, and the operations staff are responsible for making the product known to more people and attracting more people to use the product for a long time.

Many people like to compare products to children. Product managers and technology are responsible for giving birth to children, while operations are responsible for raising them. As the children grow up, they will need to go back to the furnace from time to time to give the products and technology a facelift. This is indeed an interesting and appropriate metaphor. Take operations in a narrow sense for example. From the perspective of its functions, it can be divided into content operations , user operations , and activity operations.

• In the process of raising children, we continuously educate them so that they can acquire more knowledge and become well-read and knowledgeable. This is like the content production link of content operation .
• I hope my children can have their own friends, expand ( attract new members) and maintain (retain and activate) their own social circles. When one party is in trouble, all parties will help (money-making), which is a proper user operation .
• Maintaining social relationships inevitably requires having meals together or organizing trips together from time to time. This is like operating an event that can quickly make two people familiar with each other and increase their feelings in a short period of time. Of course, bad activities may also backfire, or you may have a lot of fun playing together, but become strangers after the fun - "rising high and then falling back".

This brings up another issue: even if you have a lot of parenting tips, if you don't have children to educate and train, it's still like "a good cook cannot cook without rice."

1. Changes in the status of various positions

This can be seen from the history of China's Internet development over the past 20 years:

First, technology has the highest status, because the initial Internet products first hoped to solve a certain demand. As for whether it looks good or not, and whether the interactive experience is good or not, I think the OS of the product manager at the time was: "Use it if you want, don't roll it, you don't have a better choice anyway."

Analogous to Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory, only after we have met our basic physiological (functional) needs will we consider more about how to make the product look more beautiful and more comfortable to use. This also means that the spring of product managers has arrived. Various product manager tutorials have begun to pop up like mushrooms after a rain, and various product experts have begun to be deified. The most representative ones are Steve Jobs and Zhang Xiaolong.

Logically speaking, the technology and product GGs have already enjoyed the spotlight. This throne of kings must be experienced by the operations guys.

It is true that product managers and technical GGs have achieved the goal of a product from 0 to 1, but the role of operations staff is still indispensable in determining how many zeros can be followed by this 1. Recently, the prevalence of various remarks that "the Internet is about to enter the second half" seems to indicate that the days when operations are king are really just around the corner?

2. Main products at each stage

From the product perspective, the trajectory of change is actually quite similar to that of the entire Internet industry. In the early stages of a product, when there are no other similar products on the market, it can be said that this is the era when product is king. At this time, the technical staff responsible for development and the product managers responsible for design can basically support a startup company. This is also the initial staffing structure of many Internet startups. If the founder also understands technology, then the founder himself may be a combination of a product manager and a developer. Then, he can recruit a few programmers and a company can be established.

As time goes by, more and more people will inevitably notice this blue ocean, and competitors will slowly begin to join in. At this time, it can be said that channels are king. Whoever reaches users first will gain more market share. Generally speaking, the distribution channels of an app are mainly various application markets and installation volume.

But when the market competition becomes fierce and product homogeneity becomes very serious. At this point, the functions and interactions of each product, at the product level, are almost the same as the user experience. At this time, operations must be relied upon to explore and meet users' deeper needs, retain users and monetize them. This is precisely the main reason why most users believe that the era of operation being king is coming.

3. How can operations be king?

If we, the people in operations, really want to become god-level figures like product managers and become the leaders in the post-product era. It is necessary to have capabilities that technical developers and product managers do not have. So what are the unique advantages of operations?

I think "grasping users" can be said to be the greatest competitive advantage of operations. In my previous articles, I have mentioned more than once that whether it is content operation, event operation, or user operation, its essence is operation on users.

Compared with product managers and technical personnel, operations are closer to users. They understand user needs better and can grasp users more accurately.

Operations personnel can be said to be the emotional link between users and products. Take the currently popular community operation as an example. Most Internet products now adopt a community operation model to better connect products and users, especially online education products. Taking Mantou Business School as an example, it will gather all students who have signed up for its paid courses into a unified study group, notify them of course information on a daily basis, facilitate exchanges between students, and send out the "Mantou Morning News" (a summary of the previous day's hot news) every day to maintain communication with students.

In addition, "social e-commerce " is also a popular concept nowadays. Many Internet companies that engage in e-commerce based on traditional industries have abandoned the costly method of developing apps and instead gathered users based on WeChat groups . An Internet company I know that "sells rice" is a representative of this model. The company's main business is "selling high-quality rice - rice with a fragrant aroma and germ rice". It accumulates users by building a community and serves as a direct sales channel for rice. By using the method of "killing the old customers" to accumulate the earliest batch of core users, and when a certain scale and operation framework is formed, more users are acquired through word-of-mouth communication, and the community operation model is copied from one WeChat group to dozens or even twenty WeChat groups. You should know that the circle of friends is the main battlefield for current "acquaintance" social networking. If there are 500 core users who are willing to spread the message, the word-of-mouth effect it creates will be very significant. This model alone helped them digest almost all of their rice stocks.

For example, social e-commerce platforms that sell rice can have "zero-distance" contact with users and understand their needs during the process of interaction between operators and users, and between users. This provides operators with considerable high-value information that is instructive for product iteration.

In addition, a good operator must be responsible for user monetization. They need to stimulate and induce users to pay and generate profits for the company. Every year is a capital winter. Whether it is the merger of Didi, Kuaidi, and Uber , the merger of Ctrip, eLong , and Qunar , or the merger of 58, Ganji , and Meituan, and Dazhong, each bloody lesson tells us that the capital market has become increasingly rational and they can no longer accept unlimited subsidies and burning of money. Only profitable companies have value in existence, otherwise only destruction awaits them. User monetization is precisely the ultimate result-oriented aspect of operational work.

Especially for data-driven operations, they have traces of every bit of user knowledge and can provide the most "authoritative" suggestions for product improvements. The improvements mentioned here of course also include the design of "paid functions."

4. Can operations be king?

The basic condition for becoming the king based on operations is the seriousness of product homogeneity. When all products can meet the basic needs of users, whoever can meet the psychological needs of users can truly own the users. So is the current product homogeneity really that serious?

Some people may wonder that the hottest "AV fields" nowadays - AI and VR , are both technology-oriented. This is still the world of product managers and technical GGs, and there is no operation involved.

It is true that science and technology are developing at a rapid pace, and technology is driving the development of human civilization. But here I would like to use the "80/20 rule" to make an inappropriate analogy. It is true that the world of "AV" is likely to be dominated by "AV" in the future, but this core technology and talent are basically in the hands of 20% or even 5% of companies. The remaining 80%-95% of Internet companies still have to care about users' daily food, clothing, housing and transportation, and the homogeneity of products in these areas has long been evident. When ordering takeout, you have at least three options: Ele.me, Meituan, and Baidu Takeout. When booking a hotel, you can choose between Ctrip, eLong, and Qunar. In addition to Mobike and OFO, there are countless unknown new players entering the hot shared bicycle industry. When buying clothes, do you go to Tmall, JD.com , Xiaohongshu , or Vipshop? As such, even though many products begin to enter vertical fields, their local homogeneity still exists.

Moreover, although various innovations are emerging one after another, the time left for the product itself to establish competitive barriers is getting shorter and shorter. Chinese people are born with the talent to follow trends and imitate . Once your product shows some promising signs in the field it is in, others will follow suit immediately. Driven by capital, they are growing rapidly and grabbing land to fight you to the death. The current Internet industry is not short of good product managers and technicians, and it is not difficult to find someone who is almost the same as you in terms of product function design. This can be said to have greatly accelerated the progress of operational personnel intervention.

As for whether operations will ultimately prevail, the author does not dare to make any rash judgment. But it cannot be denied that in the second half of the Internet, the role of operators will become increasingly important. However, given that operations itself is a relatively complicated and tedious job, this group has a large base, but only a few with outstanding abilities. As the market demand for high-end operations increases, this group will inevitably be seriously polarized. Operators with their own systems will get more opportunities, while those who are trapped in trivial matters without knowing it will find it difficult to catch up with this wave of industry dividends.

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The author of this article @糖愫尔 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!