{"id":378,"date":"2009-05-28T08:45:04","date_gmt":"2009-05-28T15:45:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tibetantailor.com\/?p=378"},"modified":"2009-05-28T10:14:23","modified_gmt":"2009-05-28T17:14:23","slug":"follow-the-money-easiest-way-to-learn-about-your-clients-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tibetantailor.com\/?p=378","title":{"rendered":"Follow The Money: Easiest Way to Learn About Your Clients Business"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span><strong>How do they make their money?<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span>Whatever client you are working on right now I want you to ask yourself \u201cHow do they make their money?\u201d If you are working on someone\u2019s website, especially a commercial venture, you better know how they (the business) makes their money.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>I hope you are not out there organizing websites just because you like to have things organized. \u00a0Perhaps some people do this because they have a predilection to being obsessive compulsive, but it would be much better if we are getting paid for improving information architectures or bettering usability because of a need.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Far too often information architects have no idea of the answer to the money question. Yes, I will submit that money is a proxy for measuring success. But it is a easy business metric to gain client\u2019s attention. \u00a0It is a good variable to pay attention to. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>It is a great variable to put into your \u201cbig picture\u201d macro view. \u00a0If you can show how what you are doing or changing is going to affect the money that is a incredible thing. \u00a0That is a powerful thing. \u00a0If you can increase profits or decrease costs you will have all the C-level executives eating from your hand, and actually if this is true you probably should be a C-level executive. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Now being able to have dollar \u201cmetrics\u201d is the ideal that many people have written about. \u00a0The point of this article is not to go into that at all. \u00a0This article is about knowing your clients business! The said fact is that many people don\u2019t even try to understand their clients\u2019 business because they are thinking ahead to the difficultly of metrics and don\u2019t want to go there. \u00a0In terms of knowing your clients\u2019 business this is a cop-out.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>In client conversations I love exploring what are some ways that they can make more money? Equally fascinating is what are ways they can save some money?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>So, I ask you: How do they make their money?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Here are the basic elements of learning \u201cHow they make their money.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><span>What do they obsessively count? Look in their annual reports, press releases, or even interviews with executives. \u00a0The numbers they tout. How do those relate to what is on the website.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span>What is going to get them promoted, a big fat raise, or get them fired? Is their an easy way for them to measure or predict these from website metrics or traffic?<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span>What is the smallest unit they count? \u00a0What is the level of granularity they are looking at? Is it a single transaction or the lifetime value of a customer? \u00a0Is it sales or service and maintenance? Consider how the internet experience maps to these different granularities.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span>If the website is focusing on increasing profits, consider savings. \u00a0If the website is focused on cutting costs also look at increasing revenue\/profits. \u00a0Fiance is a combination of cost structure and revenue streams.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><span>This concern about cost\/revenue models isn\u2019t going to transform you overnight into a financial consultant, and that is not the intent, but it is going to raise your appreciation of what the your clients\u2019 world is like. \u00a0Knowing more about your client, their infrastructure and finances and what is important to them should be a first step of understanding the design challenge and will help you design a better solution that balances client needs and customer needs. This is true design thinking.<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"diggbutton\"><script type=\"text\/javascript\">digg_url = 'http:\/\/tibetantailor.com\/?p=378';digg_title = 'Follow The Money: Easiest Way to Learn About Your Clients Business';<\/script><script src=\"http:\/\/digg.com\/tools\/diggthis.js\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How do they make their money? Whatever client you are working on right now I want you to ask yourself \u201cHow do they make their money?\u201d If you are working on someone\u2019s website, especially a commercial venture, you better know how they (the business) makes their money. I hope you are not out there organizing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,99],"tags":[109,113,115,116,110,112,62,114,111],"class_list":["post-378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-consultants","category-quality-research","tag-business","tag-cost-model","tag-design-challenge","tag-design-thinking","tag-knowing-your-clients-business","tag-metrics","tag-money","tag-revenue-stream","tag-successful-consulting"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tibetantailor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tibetantailor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tibetantailor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tibetantailor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tibetantailor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=378"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/tibetantailor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":393,"href":"http:\/\/tibetantailor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378\/revisions\/393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tibetantailor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tibetantailor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tibetantailor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}