Product Operation: How to build a business architecture from 0 to 1?

Based on his own thoughts and ideas from project practice at work, the author of this article shares his experience in building a business from 0 to 1 from 5 aspects and combines them with cases for everyone's reference and learning.

We often hear about "iOS architecture engineer" and "senior product architect", but don't we rarely hear about the establishment of business architecture?

In many small and medium-sized Internet companies, after deciding to develop a new business, they build the business architecture through continuous trial and error, which includes the establishment of business model, exploration of business model, adjustment of organizational structure, standardization of work process, reservation of team size, etc.

If you are lucky enough to participate in this process, it will be a very difficult but precious opportunity. This article would like to share some experience in 0-1 business building based on the author's experience in some 0-1 projects as a product manager and product operator .

1. Products are not equal to business. Building a new business architecture is not equal to creating a new product.

Before we talk about this part, let’s recreate a scene: a conversation between the operations director and product director of a well-known education Internet company is as follows:

Operations: "When we were conducting user research, we found that many users did not attend the course trial. Is it because our sales model has certain usage barriers? The user path is too long? Can we consider optimizing this path and implement system appointment?"

Product Director: "We are already at the implementation stage of your idea. We are spending a lot of manpower on this right now. We want to replace labor with products and improve labor efficiency!"

Operations: "Replace all of them? Can the current system support our user needs? Is there a need for transition?"

Product Director: “We will also consider this and synchronize with you when the time comes.”

The above conversation seems very harmonious, doesn’t it? It seems that a new plan is about to be born and a perfect cooperation is about to take place. However, if we look beneath the surface to see the essence, in this demand, the "system appointment" mentioned by the operations colleague, can it be completely solved by relying on a system or product? Let's analyze the scenario for this example and what issues we need to consider to solve this pain point:

• Presentation layer: shorten the user path, reduce user decision-making costs, and improve sales efficiency;
• Product layer: Products provide system support from front-end to back-end;
• Business level: When the business model changes from telemarketing to SOP, will the average order value, sales method, and operating model be affected? Are the existing course products suitable for the SOP process? Should the course format be innovated to match them accordingly?
• Human resources level: After removing the human resources’ phone appointments, can the effect completely replace telemarketing? Human power cannot be rolled back.

These are not all the problems. They also involve a series of issues such as new user acquisition channels and maintenance of old users. We will find that this is not something that can be solved by a new product or a new function, but involves a series of changes from beginning to end. Are such changes really worthwhile? Should we try and error, or should we innovate?

In the above examples, I just want to express my point of view : products are not equal to business, but business can derive products.

2. The birth of a new business must be accompanied by the establishment of a corresponding business model in order to last long

A stable business monetization model is a common goal pursued by many Internet products. However, before starting up, many businesses overly consider the scale of users and market share. They only have large-scale plans for the development of the subsequent business model without detailed thinking. As a result, many products "are born in customer acquisition and die in monetization." There are countless companies that have raised a large amount of funds to develop products, but ultimately went extinct due to their inability to monetize or convert.

For example, for membership-based music, social, news, and fitness apps that are not in high demand and have many competing products, it is a very difficult problem to encourage user conversion and stable monetization after reaching a certain user scale. After all, ensuring profitability is the way for a company to survive in the long run.

FOR EG: Keep, a unicorn in the fitness field, is a typical non-essential product. However, online fitness is actually a very good opportunity for the current market, and the purchasing power of the target users is also relatively high. However, Keep did not do a good job in providing membership services, and chose to develop hardware, shopping malls, offline stores and other projects that are difficult to make profits quickly after financing. It is very dangerous to invest a lot of money to develop other businesses when the MVP business model has not been fully implemented. The summary is probably three points:

1. At the beginning, we didn’t think about the ultimate goal of this business, whether it was to monopolize the online market, OTO, or to be the leader in the entire industry.
2. After raising funds, they are eager to expand the scale and business, running too fast, forgetting to examine whether the path they are taking is a path that can be monetized one day, or a path that only wastes money but does not return it;
3. Before you complete one thing to perfection, you start doing the second and third things. This is a supplement to the second point.

The author is still very optimistic about the future development of Keep. After all, in this era of faith, slogans like "Self-discipline gives you freedom" can indeed be deeply rooted in people's hearts. It depends on what the next step is and whether it can get back on track. Anyway, serving users well is the first priority, and serving account members is definitely the right thing to do.

3. Standardize from the perspective of process and personnel, whether it is a new market, new business or new field

Not all big companies are regulated, and not all small companies are chaotic. Although some small companies have a small staff size, they have reasonable staffing and standardized processes, which are particularly important for every subsequent link. In recent years, a position called HRBP has emerged that goes deep into business lines. It is reasonable to carry out more accurate personnel management and recruitment based on a specific department or business line.

We always hear that the business scale is still small, so it is normal to be irregular, and it will get better slowly in the future. A chaotic process will only lead to the accelerated death of the business.

Let me give you an example. I am a product manager by profession, but there are no project managers in small and medium-sized factories. Some smaller companies don’t even have product managers. The boss is the product manager. There is no problem with this. We don’t need to strictly require who does what, but we need to plan a route at the beginning. No matter where you are on this route, you should do your job well.

• the distinction between management and execution;
• The coordination between each position;
• Ensure that each business line has its own product;
• Positions can be vacant or merged, but responsibilities cannot be blurred. (For example: there may be no project manager, but it is necessary to clearly define who will manage the project and who will be responsible for the overall project progress)

4. Build the B-side synchronously and build the data base from the beginning

Let’s talk about data first. Data can empower business, whether it is the placement of a product or the data statistics and analysis after the product is launched. All these actions are to promote business development, improve business capabilities, and improve business efficiency.

Don’t leave empowerment as the last step. After all, if you do something too late that is just icing on the cake, it will be too late to even provide timely help.

What is the purpose of our data? To put it simply and roughly:

• Know how the battle is going;
• Know which team is stronger;
• Know which team or soldier is lagging behind;
• Do you know if there is nothing wrong with the team but the food supplies were delivered too late?

These roughly correspond to the data we are familiar with, such as behavioral data, user data, product data, market data, etc.

Working with data is a waste of manpower and brainpower, and the same is true for analysis. But although you may not believe it, there are too many companies that only start to address the data issue after their business models have already been formed. The silent cost consumed in this process can be imagined.

Let's talk about the simultaneous construction of the B-end. The B-end here has different definitions for different industries. We usually think that products used by internal employees of the company or products used for internal management are the B-end, but in fact it also includes major customers. If a business is started without considering whether it will become the strongest and largest in the future, then you don't have to consider this point, but if you want to do it in a refined and detailed manner, whether it is product or operation, you can't let go of this area.

5. Stay forward-looking, look three steps ahead before taking one step, and stop loss when you can’t move forward.

To explain from a product manager's perspective, an excellent product manager creates a feature in order to lay the groundwork for countless features later on, and can be forward-looking both from the user level and the backend technology level.

For example, when you take over a new project, you need to consider whether its carrier is an app, a mini program, or a community. This decision is not made overnight, and your current decision is only applicable to the present. Some project businesses that are currently applicable to communities will not be able to support a large volume as their scale expands, and they will need to be unified. Then how do you plan the subsequent closing route, how do you plan the user life cycle management, how do you plan at which link and scene your users enter, in which scene they are active, and finally in which ecosystem they stay, is it a long-term project or a short-term experimental project, whether your ROI can support it, etc.

Summarize

The opportunity to start from 0 to 1 is rare, but also difficult. It is not easy to prove yourself and pave the way for future generations. This article is just the tip of the iceberg written with Internet thinking.

The "business" mentioned in this article can be big or small, as big as a whole new field, or as small as changing a current payment model to create a new payment business, etc. However, whether it is a big business or a small business, if every link is done meticulously and leaves room for iteration, it will not be too bad.

Author: Anbo

Source: Anbo