Can you make a better burger than McDonalds?

In a recent blog post over on Cloud Ave, Ben Kepes quoted a “friendly SaaS vendor CEO who shall remain anonymous” as having said the following:

The app is to SaaS what the hamburger is to Macdonalds – people forget that. The app is a small part. To go global the BUSINESS MODEL and INFRASTRUCTURE and SYSTEMS need to scale… The actual application is the least of your worries. That’s why we have an average product but profit and high revenue wheras some slick apps out there have no money in the bank.

An insight well worth re-visiting every now and then.

No matter what line of business you are in, if you ever want to scale it up beyond a one or two man company then the processes and systems you have in place are just as important as the product or service you are delivering.

Can you make a better burger than McDonalds? Sure you can. But you can’t build a better burger-making-and-delivery system than McDonalds have.

McDonalds didn’t get so big because they make great burgers. It was because of the system they have for consistently delivering the burgers  the same way everywhere in the world – quickly and efficiently.

Before you ask, no – it wasn’t me that was quoted. I think our product is anything but average!