"A superior infrastructure that's every bit as good as the product is needed to ensure the success of nearly any significant business venture."

- Kevin

A Mercedes Is Nothing Without A Freeway

The Importance of Infrastructure in Business Development

© 2005 By Kevin Wirth - all rights reserved worldwide

Word Count: 975

Updated 12/11/05

Once upon a time in my career I was working with a respected colleague for a young company that was in the early stages of trying to deliver a hot, new, internet-based product to the marketplace. The company we were consulting for offered a database driven service that many people needed. But there were internal infrastructure problems within the company - things like a failure to appreciate the need for more servers (hardware), a consistent and effective training program, and most important - a way to convince members of their target market that what we were doing was not only legitimate, but would help grow their business. This was actually a huge issue that no one, from the top down, was effectively resolving. They just treated it as a part of doing business.

The Company also tied our hands behind our back because, for reasons of confidentiality, they wouldn't allow us to provide potential prospects with referrals from happy customers. Yet they expected these prospects to be willing to fork over thousands of dollars in fees for the privilege of doing business with this company. There was a huge mountain of similar infrastructure issues - and they were not being effectively addressed by Corporate Management.

When I pointed this out to my colleague he just said it wasn't our problem, and that everything would work just fine anyway. He preferred to just stay focused on what he had been hired to do, and boasted to everyone who would listen that the company we were working for was creating "a Mercedes" product, and then carried on like nothing was wrong. But when I pointed out that the issues I mentioned were actually standing in the way of ensuring that the service would endure, much less gain momentum in the marketplace, I got a blank stare. It was the type of disconnect I had witnessed all too many times in Corporate America, and it almost always led to a dysfunctional and disastrous outcome in my experience.

So I said wait a minute, Bud. And, I drove the point home by telling him that what he forgot is that a Mercedes is nothing without a freeway. A superior infrastructure that's every bit as good as the product is needed to ensure the success of nearly any significant business venture.

I made it very clear to him and others that the service this fledgling company was attempting to create in the marketplace would be much more difficult to establish than it needed to be unless the infrastructure issues I had identified were first addressed effectively. Ignoring these issues meant that the company would suffer incredible growing pains and bring enormous amounts of stress and frustration down upon the backs of many of its best employees.

And, would you believe it - I still got blank stares.

You need much more than just a great product to make this or any business venture succeed. All the support systems need to be in place (but they weren't) and they need to be functioning smoothly. Or at the very least, we needed to have a practical plan to get us there. We needed an effective training program up and running so we could have people ready to explain how the product works to our prospects and clients. And we also needed to have a powerful and compelling response to the reasonable concerns our prospects would have about our service (and we didn't). I had identified a rather sizeable laundry list of additional support issues that no one seemed interested in actively addressing.

You can create the most incredible Mercedes in the world, I said, but if you don't also have a reliable infrastructure to support it (ie, a Freeway), then you should be building something closer to a Hummer instead.

It could be the most durable, beautiful, and wonderfully appointed automobile ever built, but if we don’t have pavement, specifically – a freeway - what's the point? A Mercedes is designed for freeways - but if all you have is a dirt road with a bunch of potholes, you’re not going to get very far, and in fact, you'd quickly get several flat tires and end up destroying the suspension.

Not to mention that you'd get mired and stuck in the mud a few times. The end result of these and other road hazards is that you would soon be forced to slow down to a crawl.

I'll end my car metaphor here, because instead of designing a transportation product, my colleague and I were supporting a really awesome information product. Yet, in the same sense that we don’t tend to notice everything about a freeway infrastructure, we can never afford to lose sight of the fact that a smooth, reliable, and well-maintained infrastructure is needed to pave the way to prospects and clients. If your product is technology related, then the platform that it moves on isn’t just the internet – or the hardware and software that makes it all work - it’s also the methodology we use to train people who present the product to your prospects and clients and everything else needed to support and sustain that product.

If support staff and others are not able to meet the demand of your clients, then it wouldn’t matter how cool the product is. Just like it wouldn’t matter how cool a Mercedes Benz is without a great freeway. If the infrastructure does not flow smoothly, then the entire system slows down and could eventually grind to a halt.

So remember - creating a product isn’t just about building a better mousetrap - it’s also about building the most effective way to deliver, promote, and support it. And the effort required to create the infrastructure is often equal to if not even greater than the effort required to create the product it supports.

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Kevin Wirth is the owner of KEVS-KORNER ezine, a free online newsletter offering articles, tips, resources, and insight on over 200 different marketing tactics. He is bringing together a growing community where you can work with others to create and market products online. To discover how Kevin can help you grow your online business, and get a free gift just for visiting, please head on over to www.kevs-korner.com.

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Kevin and 'Sailor'

Kevin Wirth is the editor of KEVS-KORNER ezine and publisher of several reports and articles on many diverse topics such as Customer Loyalty, Internet Marking Tactics, and Seafood. A 25 year veteran of Corporate America, Kevin consults with netpreneurs and small businesses to help them attract and retain customers and design, build, and market digital products. He is also an expert on Team Dynamics, Project Management, Process Management, Risk Engineering, and Information Management. For a free sampler of his articles, reports and to sign up for a free subscription to KEVS KORNER ezine, be sure to visit Kevin's home page at:

http://www.kevs-korner.com.

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