Operations is product.

Your product isn't just the thing you ship. Your product is your whole company.

Great hardware with buggy software delivers a poor customer experience. So does great software on defective hardware. So does late fulfillment, inaccurate documentation, difficult installation or slow customer support.

The customer doesn't care which department dropped the ball. They just feel let down. And customer trust takes a long time to earn but can be lost in an instant.

The entire operations stack has to be ready and aligned — engineering, manufacturing, fulfillment, support, documentation. Every touchpoint either builds trust or erodes it.

Repeat purchases happen when customers are satisfied. Price premiums are earned when customers are delighted. And the best thing that can happen to your business? Your existing customers become product evangelists - new customers find you rather than the other way around.

That doesn't happen just because you built a great widget. It happens because every part of the company delivered.

Operations isn't back-office support. Operations is product.