Four questions that must be considered before mid-platform building

Through the previous sharing, I believe you have gained some understanding of the concept of middle platform.

There are many people and articles discussing the concept of middle platform in the community now, but few articles describe the implementation methods in detail.

It’s not because the landing of the middle platform is so mysterious, but because as mentioned earlier, the middle platform is an enterprise-level ability to reuse platform. First of all, the middle platform focuses on the development of the enterprise level. Generally, we often refer to this level of problem as the strategic problem of the enterprise. Each enterprise has different strategies and core capabilities, so naturally the middle platform of each enterprise is also different.

Since the middle platform of each company is different, does that mean that the landing method of the middle platform can only be explored by oneself and there is no trace to be found?

The answer is naturally negative. There must be rules to follow when building a middle platform, but compared to other technical methods, it is more abstract. How to put it? Essentially, the middle platform is still an architecture problem, but it is no longer the technical architecture we often see, but a higher level, an enterprise architecture problem.

Therefore, starting from today, we will officially enter the second part of the course, which is the content of the landing section. Let’s explore the methodology of mid-platform building landing together.

Are you already eager to give it a try? However, we still need to wait a bit. Before we officially start discussing the methodology, we need to think about some questions first.

In recent years, I have participated in the mid-platform building of many enterprises. Some of them only got involved in the mid-to-late stage of mid-platform construction, in other words, to put out fires. When I first got involved, I found that mid-platform building had reached a bottleneck period and there were various problems. After continuous analysis, I found that most of the problems could be attributed to not thinking clearly about the following issues before the mid-platform construction officially began.

So, let’s start with these few questions.

# Start with a story

To help you better understand, here we create an example.

“Geek Real Estate” is a real estate enterprise. Unlike other real estate enterprises, this enterprise focuses on more vertical fields, mainly responsible for the development of real estate projects around high-tech parks in first- and second-tier cities, and the target audience is mainly IT practitioners.

The entire real estate industry is now developing towards a light-asset and diversified business direction due to policies and other reasons. I heard that several large real estate leading companies are vigorously conducting mid-platform building. The boss of Geek Real Estate called in Xiao Wang, the most senior and IT-savvy person in the company, hoping that Xiao Wang can take on the responsibility of mid-platform building and help the company’s future transformation and development.

After learning this news, Xiao Wang was very excited. As the person who knows the most about the company’s information construction, and has been paying close attention to the concept of the middle platform that everyone is talking about outside, he knows the core and importance of the middle platform to a company. With such an important task on his shoulders, Xiao Wang is determined to do it well and not disappoint the boss’s trust.

In the blink of an eye, six months have passed.

Looking at Xiao Wang at this moment, he has long lost his original ambition and ambition. Instead, he is exhausted and suffocated by the pressure from all sides. This is manifested in:

• Since the establishment of the mid-platform team, all businesses have been constantly submitting demands. The boundaries of the mid-platform itself are relatively blurred, but because people and resources were initially borrowed and divided from the front desk, it is difficult to refuse the demands of each front desk. The mid-platform seems to have become an internal outsourcing team shared by all front desk business teams. Problems of demand congestion and scheduling have also begun to emerge. There are too many demands to handle, and front desk business continues to complain about the slow response of the mid-platform, which affects front-line business.
• The position of the mid-platform team is also quite awkward. There are many stakeholders, with various business front-end teams in the front and various core systems that the enterprise already has to integrate in the back, and they also have to face continuous supervision from the leaders. Moreover, the most important thing is that all parties feel that there are different understandings and demands for the mid-platform, and even the demands of some different stakeholders will contradict and conflict with each other. The mid-platform team and Xiao Wang are sandwiched between all parties, constantly pulled and pulled by various stakeholders, which is very uncomfortable.
• Also, the middle platform has been under construction for some time, and half a year has passed. However, what worries Xiao Wang is that he feels that there are not many construction results. The things done are messy, mainly responding to the needs of various front-end businesses, but the front-end businesses do not like to use them much. When the requirements are raised, they are more and more active. When the front-end access is really needed after completion, they use various excuses to refuse and are not very willing to connect. It feels that there is not much difference between whether the middle platform is done or not, and it has not achieved the expected effect, and even the expected effect has not been thought through.
• ……

There are many similar problems. Xiao Wang has lost his initial sharpness and frowns every day.

# Four questions to consider before building a mid-platform

Although this is a fictional story, situations like Xiao Wang’s in reality are not uncommon. In the mid-platform building process of many companies I have come into contact with, similar problems have occurred to varying degrees, which have troubled all mid-platform teams and even shaken the determination of mid-platform building in enterprises, rethinking whether mid-platform is the right direction.

But in my opinion, to get out of this predicament, we need to think through four questions before mid-platform building.

What is the vision of mid-platform building?

“When in doubt, look at the vision.” This is the sentence I say the most in the process of mid-platform planning and implementation.

Too often we confuse the solution with the problem itself. The middle platform is just a solution, but many times I see people treating the middle platform as the problem itself, torn apart by what other people’s middle platforms look like, and what their own middle platform should look like, rather than focusing on whether the middle platform has solved the problem that needs to be solved, or even hoping that the middle platform will solve the problem without thinking clearly.

So what I am often asked is, what should the middle platform look like? How should the middle platform be built? And I usually ask back first: What problem are you building the middle platform to solve? What value does it have for the enterprise and business? In many cases, the other party cannot give a clear and direct answer, or they say a lot of “big talk” like eliminating chimneys and removing islands. In my opinion, this is because the vision of mid-platform building has not been clarified.

The mid-platform is like a product, it needs a clear vision so that everyone can clearly understand the value of mid-platform building for the enterprise and business, so that they can continue to move in the same direction together. If the vision is missing, we will easily lose our direction and determination in the mid-platform building process.

Vision helps us understand our mid-platform building goals and judge what is in line with the mid-platform building vision. As a mid-platform team, we need to consider this. In addition, it is more important to help us judge what is not what the mid-platform needs to do and subtract for the mid-platform. This is actually more important in the process of mid-platform building.

Especially in the early stages of mid-platform building, projects are often still in the pilot stage, and there are not many available personnel and resources. Without their own direction, they will fall into the situation where Xiao Wang is located, turning the mid-platform into an internal shared outsourcing team.

Therefore, before building the middle platform, the first thing to ask oneself is: what is our vision for building the middle platform? And more importantly, this vision needs to be clear and agreed upon by all roles, from the enterprise management to every relevant personnel in the middle platform.

How to achieve it specifically? In the actual implementation process, we will have some tools and practices. I will share them with you in the course of mid-platform design later.

Who are the users and customers of the middle platform?

This issue is also very crucial, because the middle platform is an enterprise-level matter and will inevitably face organizational issues and complex stakeholder issues.

To put it more bluntly, the construction of the middle platform usually accompanies organizational restructuring and the redistribution of interests and responsibilities within the enterprise. If the relationships between the various stakeholders in the middle-platform building are not understood, it is inevitable to encounter obstacles in the construction process of the middle platform, fall into a “stakeholders vortex”, face various obstacles, and fall into a very passive situation.

Therefore, before mid-platform building, it is best to clarify who the users and customers of the mid-platform are as a product. Are users and customers a group? What other stakeholders are there besides users and customers? What are their expectations for the mid-platform, and are these expectations consistent?

In order to clarify this issue, we can imagine a company as a family. Specifically, a Line of Business is like a child in the family, who cares more about whether I can play a little longer today, which is what we often call short-term tactical goals. Back in the company, it is whether the KPI goals of my Line of Business for this year or even this month can be achieved.

The management of the enterprise is like the parents of this family. They are more concerned about the future of their children, whether they can compete with tens of thousands of other children during the college entrance examination, and achieve sustainable development, which is what we often call long-term strategic goals. They are concerned about what the enterprise will look like in the next five years, ten years, or even longer.

At this moment, the middle platform is like a K12 English education product. Think about it, if you were the Product Manager of this product, who would you pay more attention to? Is it the short-term tactical goal of the child who is the actual user of the product, to make him enjoy playing, even like a game? Or is it the long-term strategic goal of the parents who are the actual buyers of the product, even sacrificing their child’s User Experience to achieve the best results?

In this example, the fundamental problem lies in the contradiction between long-term strategic goals and short-term tactical goals. The answer is actually very simple: we need to pay attention to both. We need to find the combination point between the focus of enterprise management and Line of Business, that is, the combination point of long-term strategic value and short-term tactical value.

Moreover, for the middle platform, the situation may be more complicated than mentioned above. Its stakeholders are not only users and customers, but also numerous and complex due to its special position. It is very difficult and necessary to find the combination of interests of all parties while maintaining its own direction. Otherwise, it will encounter resistance from all parties during the construction process, resulting in friction and making it difficult for the middle platform to be implemented.

On the other hand, the middle platform should not only try to meet the demands of all parties. After all, the mid-platform team is not an outsourcing team for business. The middle platform needs to have its own ideas and plans, be able to listen to others, but also clarify its own goals and follow its own path. Its goals come from the mid-platform building vision mentioned above, and the vision of the middle platform often comes from the strategic needs of the enterprise.

Therefore, I often say that although mid-platform building needs to take into account the interests of all parties, it is mainly to solve the fear and anxiety of the enterprise management for the long-term survival and sustainable development of the company .

It is very important to think clearly about this point, because the next question is related to this point, which is who should pay for the middle platform?

Who pays for the middle platform?

We often say that talking about money hurts relationships, but we often choose to avoid it. However, the issue of money is often the essence behind many problems and the source of many conflicts in the mid-platform building process.

The money here is spoken in plain language. For internal enterprises, it may represent people and resources. Therefore, this question can also be extended to where do the people in the middle platform come from? Should they be secondments from the front-end team or newly recruited? A mid-platform building often lasts for a long time, so who will bear the cost of these people? If the middle platform is empowered for front-end business, shouldn’t a portion of the budget for front-end business be allocated as the construction budget for the middle platform?

If these issues are not carefully considered, they will also bring great trouble to mid-platform building.

In my opinion, mid-platform buildings on the market can be basically divided into two types in terms of investment structure, namely " crowd funding model " and " investment financing model ". Of course, we can also see these two types of Blend Mode.

First, let’s talk about the " crowd funding model ". I believe you can understand at a glance that the crowd funding model is the user’s advance payment, and the producer promises to provide a certain type of product after a certain period of time. Returning to the background of mid-platform building, it is to raise funds from the front-end of the business. Those who have money hold a money field and those who don’t have money touch a personal field. Those who can come up with a budget come up with a budget, and those who can come up with people come up with people to form a mid-platform team, and then serve the front-end business team in turn.

As I mentioned in the previous lectures, the middle platform is born for front-end business, so it seems that the front-end provides resources and the middle platform serves the front-end, taking people’s money to help them avoid disasters, which is only natural.

Actually, there is a big problem hidden here, which lies in the matching of the vision of mid-platform building and the investment model of the middle platform. Because the business front-end prioritizes its short-term practical problems, it allocates certain resources from the already resource-tight front-end business to mid-platform building. As the actual investor of mid-platform building, the business front-end will also pay more attention to short-term tactical goals, naturally hoping that the middle platform can see results in the short term and help solve practical problems.

If the vision of the mid-platform is to solve the short-term problems of the business side, it’s actually okay. But most of the mid-platform building visions I see are at the strategic level of the enterprise and are built for the long-term development of the enterprise.

At this time, if the crowd funding model is still used, it will be found to be very contradictory. The management team of the enterprise is often the initiator of the middle platform, and they focus more on long-term strategic goals, which the mid-platform team needs to listen to. However, the front-end business team, as the actual investor and user of the middle platform, is both a user and a customer. They focus on relatively short-term tactical goals and need to see the actual value of the mid-platform building results for the business in the short term, which the mid-platform team needs to listen to. At this time, the team of the middle platform will naturally be pulled back and forth between long-term and short-term goals, which is very uncomfortable.

So if the vision of mid-platform building is to solve the long-term strategic goal of the enterprise, then I suggest using another “financing model” that everyone is familiar with, or at least a combination of financing model and crowd funding model.

The investment and financing model , as the name suggests, is a model in which the investor invests in the early stage of a product’s construction. After a period of construction according to the product’s construction goals, it gradually allows users to use it, and finally satisfies users through user services, achieving income and recovering enterprise investment and profits. Currently, most start-up companies adopt a similar model, which I believe you are also familiar with.

For the investment and financing model of mid-platform building, it is the early stage (from 0 to 1) of mid-platform building. Resources are not directly allocated from the front-end business team, but invested and constructed by the enterprise’s own strategic reserve resources. After a certain period of construction, such as 6 months, suitable front-end businesses are gradually found for pilot integration. If the effect is good, it will be promoted to more front-end business teams. After the service is stable and has generated stable value for the front-end, a certain amount of resources can be gradually collected from the front-end, which can be people or other resources, that is, the so-called recovery of investment and realization of profit. The profit here is just a metaphor, which may meet the needs of the enterprise management for the enterprise’s strategic goals.

The advantage of this model is that the mid-platform team will have more autonomy in the early stage of mid-platform construction, and will not be affected by too much existing business pressure during the start-up and fragile period, which can better realize the mid-platform’s own construction vision. However, the disadvantage is that the enterprise needs to have strong strategic resource support and greater strategic determination. I have seen many internet companies’ mid-platform building often adopt similar models, so in the eyes of the outside world, their mid-platform building is very direct and rapid.

Therefore, if the vision of your company to build a middle platform is to solve the pain points and problems at the short-term tactical level, you can use the crowd funding model and the progressive investment structure to start. The advantage of this is that the start-up of the middle platform will be smoother, the resource utilization rate will be high, and the initial new cost will be lower. However, if the goal of mid-platform building is a long-term strategic problem, such as business transformation, it is still recommended to consider using enterprise strategic investment and investment financing mode more, which is more conducive to the healthy and rapid development of mid-platform building.

How to verify the target of the middle platform?

Do you remember the story of Xiao Wang mentioned at the beginning? Another difficulty of mid-platform building is that it is difficult to quantify the construction results. This is not like the front-end Line of Business or the common ToC type products, where it is relatively easy to find some quantitative indicators to measure the success of the product, such as common user numbers, user engagement rates, or market coverage rates.

Of course, the mid-platform can also be said to have achieved these results in the front-end because of the empowering effect of my mid-platform, but this is often dangerous. Because we cannot provide detailed data to prove how many of these users and market share are actually due to the results of mid-platform building. On the contrary, the front-end business may say that the mid-platform is still lagging behind. If it weren’t for the mid-platform failing twice a few days ago, which affected our front-end business, the numbers might have been much better than they are now, and so on.

You see, as a front-end service provider, the middle platform not only cannot share the joy of business success, but is also easily blamed as a scapegoat.

Therefore, starting with the end in mind, we should consider how to verify and measure the middle platform before construction. By considering this issue in advance, we can avoid some disputes and risks in the middle and later stages of construction.

Currently, there are some mid-platform assessment standards in the industry that we can refer to. For example, Alibaba’s mid-platform assessment is designed as follows: 40% stability + 25% business innovation + 20% service access + 15% customer satisfaction.

Can we simply reuse other people’s metrics for our own mid-platform? The answer is definitely no. The vision of mid-platform building is different, and the assessment methods and metrics are naturally different.

For example, in the case of Geek Real Estate, the vision of mid-platform building is to support business transformation and new businesses. Therefore, it may not be necessary to require such high stability and access volume in the early stages. It may only support one or two new Lines of Business, and the focus is more on service satisfaction or other indicators.

When it comes to the verification index design of a certain middle platform in a company, it is a complex process that often evolves. It needs to be comprehensively designed based on the middle platform vision, investment model, stakeholders’ interests, and other relevant factors mentioned above. I will elaborate on some of the ideas and thoughts we use in the middle platform planning and design section.

Finally, it is recommended that you do not wait until the construction is completed to consider how to measure the problem. Try to consider it in advance or even make a clear agreement before the construction, so as to help the mid-platform building avoid deviation and confusion to the greatest extent.

# Summarize thinking

Actually, mid-platform building is a very “dangerous” process, and the above problems are only the most basic ones.

It is important to think through these issues because they can help us judge whether the “surrounding environment” of mid-platform building is ready. We see many companies building mid-platforms, some successful and some failed, not because of any significant differences in strength and methods, but because the problems and difficulties encountered by everyone are often the same.

The most important thing is whether the environment of the middle platform incubation has matured . Some companies have not succeeded in the end because they have gone too early, their ideas are too advanced, and the surrounding environment is not ready.

Therefore, before truly starting mid-platform planning construction, it is necessary and helpful to ask ourselves these four questions based on my own experience.

Finally, if your company is also planning or has already started building a middle platform, please think about whether you have thought it through for the four questions mentioned today. Can you write down the conclusions of these questions on one page of A4 paper and show them to others to see if their understanding is consistent?

If you haven’t been exposed to mid-platform building yet, do you have any questions about today’s content? Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section and let’s discuss together. You are welcome to share today’s article with your friends, see you in the next lecture!