The simplicity of internal product management (or lack thereof)

Most writing on the subject of product management focuses on B2C scenarios, with the occasional foray into B2B, SaaS and platforms. Very rarely is a reference to internal business (IB) applications ever made.

This may be for good reason - a focus on customers and markets is often considered an inherent part of the role of a Product Manager. When you’re working internally there is often no direct interaction with either, and the product or service your company sells isn’t the internal product you’re working on. Therefore in a literal sense this simply isn’t part of the role.

With this in mind, what does it look like to be a product manager when building internal applications, and how does it differ from its more familiar B2B and B2C siblings?

It’s more simple… right?

At first glance many observers might critique internal product management as the poor relation within the three types I’ve described. Citing examples like “you don’t need to worry about customer acquisition, retention or growth”, they do raise some genuine questions.

The roles are certainly different, but to conflate these limits on the scope of an internal product manager as making the role “simpler” is to ignore the additional complexities that come with working on product internally within an organisation.

1. Stakeholder management is potentially more challenging - very often, internal products are created for quite senior, experienced stakeholders who may hold strong opinions on how things should be done. Unless well managed, this can remove much of the agency that a product manager has within their role, reducing the value they can bring. At the same time, the concept of (internal) product management is relatively new in many organisations, so building the credentials, trust and confidence to be given the freedom to guide and steer the direction of the internal products rather than simply manage their delivery can often take time and patience.
2. Reliability, performance and integration are critical - done right, internal products form the operational backbone of an enterprise. At Boohoo I was responsible for the internal products that had to process over 8M price calculations a day, publish upwards of 500,000 products every night and manage the creation and processing of over 4,000 supplier orders per week. Any issues with these applications or how they integrated with one another could lead to incorrect prices, unavailable products and missed orders - resulting in delays, missed sales and reduced margin. In this regard, they were no less critical than the multitude of B2B/B2C SaaS products being used as part of our e-commerce websites and apps to provide search, merchandising, payments and other capabilities.
3. Brand specific capabilities and differentiation are complex - the predominant focus of internal products is to create capabilities that are unique to a company or brand, enabling them to differentiate themselves. This may be through their operations, marketing or customer experience, or a connection of all three. As a result, these capabilities will often be complex and come with their own sets of business rules, logic and requirements. Solving these is no less a challenge than doing so for a B2C or B2B scenario, and may be even more so given that you are often working to quite specific demands.
4. Complete functionality and replacement solutions are required - in a B2C scenario it might be possible to create an MVP of a product, test how the market reacts and use this to define what comes next. But with internal products this is frequently not the case. Products are often replacing an existing process or system as part of a bigger operation, so if the new application can’t do what the legacy one did, then they can’t/won’t be adopted. There are rare greenfield opportunities (in my case Order App was one of these) and business processes are there to be improved, but 9 times out of 10, an internal product needs to fit within an existing box, with all the dependencies that go with it.
5. Working away from the limelight requires fighting your cause - working on operational tools, hidden away in the background means shunning the limelight of the dynamic, customer-facing products and apps that everyone (business senior management included) knows and focuses on. Experiences will vary, but this lack of being centre stage and absence of direct customer interaction can make it harder to justify spend, request resources and maintain development progress - particularly when budgets are tight and sales / revenue are the order of the day.

Not easier or harder… just different

As a final aside, it’s worth considering that implementing product led ways of working in a more traditional project focused tech function and business shouldn't be underestimated. This is another point of difference between working on internal vs B2C or B2B products, as the foundations of product culture are often being laid as you go.

But even with all these points considered, this isn’t to say that managing internal products is any more complex or harder than external ones either. The fundamental product management methods and approach are the same - but the context and focus will be different.

One area where this is almost certainly the case is how close you are to the users, customers and buyers of your product, and why trust and credibility are therefore so important - something I’ll come onto next time.