Why do product managers make bad internal tools?
It’s not your fault. If you are a B2C Product Manager, the backend side of a platform is often an afterthought.
Let’s look at an example of a popular B2C platform: a ride-sharing app. It’s a platform that consists of a front end consumer-facing app that allows people to request rides on-demand and a backend app for drivers so they can accept requests and pick people up. In general, the majority of a company’s focus and money go towards the consumer-facing app because that is how they generate revenue.
Let’s say you have $1,000,000 to build a direct to consumer product. Are you going to invest that money to drive revenue or to optimize operational efficiency? This is the classic chicken-or-the-egg scenario. Without any customers, it’s extremely challenging to justify building the backend solution first. However, if you are successful, you won’t be able to support your customers without sacrificing quality or customer service. Are you going to tell your investors, “sorry we didn’t hit our revenue targets because we spent our time building an internal tool”? Naturally, the system is stacked against building really good backend solutions.
While the less sexy and non-revenue generating tools are often the backbone of a business by allowing employees to perform their jobs more efficiently, this side of the platform gets neglected. The backend solution gets pieced together in a Frankenstein way with very little design, atrocious UX or general product strategy. The justification I often hear people say is, “this product is for our employees, it doesn’t have to be pretty”. 🤦
Yes, while it doesn’t have to be pretty, the lack of product strategy creates a gap that is not sustainable. Investor-backed companies talk about scale and growth but those discussions are driven around revenue growth and market share adoption. The backend tool is neglected in favor of rapid expansion rather than slower yet sustained growth.
Operational tools are not built to support the growing needs of the front end. At some point, your business will reach a tipping point when demand becomes too much for the business to support. In theory, this is a good problem to have. However, the years of band-aid solutions will eventually impact sales as quality starts to diminish, employees become overworked and company culture gets negatively impacted. Now, it’s an emergency, but the damage is so great that a complete refactor is needed and it’s a race against time to recover.
Even though the cards might be stacked against you as a B2C Product Manager, there are some strategies you can implement to help minimize your risk as you experience rapid growth:
- 💪 Create a strong design system. Spending the time up front to create a scalable design system with reusable components will reduce the need to design something new just for the backend tool. The trade-off decision is that you will sacrifice speed to market initially in exchange for accelerated growth as you scale.
- 🔑 Operation and internal teams are key stakeholders. Even if the product is not focused on them at the beginning, understanding their needs and requirements from day 1 can help you implement the necessary building blocks for scalability.
- ⚖️ Ugly doesn’t mean bad. Emphasis UX over UI and make sure the employee tasks are optimized for efficiency. It doesn’t have to be fancy.
- 📈 Data, data, data. Use data to identify the true pain points so the backend solution can be specific, streamlined and focused.
- 🌦 Find a way to work on the back-end solution in small chunks because there will never be a good time. Instead of planning dedicated sprints to work on the back-end tool, treat it like tech debt and either sprinkle it around as you go, or fill your lower capacity moments with these back-end improvements. It’s important to groom these stories in advance so they are ready to go when the time comes.
The consumer facing application is a revenue generating solution while the goal of the back-end tool is to reduce costs and increase efficiency. While both are equally important, the revenue strategy will consume most of your time and resources. If you are not careful, the lack of love towards the back-end tool will hurt you more in the long run.
