Return on Intention

A budget will tell you more about what needs to happen than any specification sheet ever will. The purpose of budgeting isn’t to find out how much you can get away with not spending but is an exercise in insight. Developing a budget requires a company or person identify how much they CAN spend on a project. To get that information, it is necessary to first identify why the project is going to be done and what it is supposed to accomplish. ( Don’t spend $500 to get $400 of value. Also, don’t expect to spend $500 to get $1,000,000 of value. )

Often, this process is done the other way around. Someone gets an idea that they “need” something, and then put together a Request For Proposal (RFP) to find out how much it will cost by getting bids on it. This doesn’t seem bad on the surface, except that most of the RFPs I come across are copies of some other RFP for someone else, or an old one that is reused with only a few words changed in it. To say the least, these RFPs have missed the whole point of an RPF.

This happens most with technology related purchases. It seems that some companies base their decision to buy something on some technology that is hot, or that other companies like them are buying. “Well, XYZ company just got a new widgetizer 5000, and they are doing good, we should get a widgetizer 5000, too.” This line of thinking does not a good strategy make.

A new technology foundation for your website (read CMS) or a new shopping cart will not increase the value of your website on its own. A good web strategy is not defined by what software packages you put on the back end. You can run a website on anything if your strategy is sound. If your strategy is not, no software package in the world will help you out.

Magento is an open source shopping cart and storefront that seems to be getting a lot of attention lately. I’m in the midst of working with Magento right now for a few clients myself. It has some really great features, but it is not the greatest thing to hit the internet. It will not improve your conversion rate. It has ton’s of features, but that also means its very complicated. One client requested it from the C-suite, and when the employees that actually have to run the software found out, they go scared. “We have seen Magento, and we don’t get it.”

We have been shown time and time again that sometimes what makes a technology so successful and useful is by what it DOESN’T do, not what it does do. Don’t buy bullet points on a box. The only way to know what features you need and what features you don’t is by understanding what you need to accomplish, and why. Start with the strategy. Plan it out, make charts. Understand as much as you can about the outcomes you want, and then work backwards to arrive at what you need. When all that is done, then go software shopping.

Tags: desicion making, magento, software strategy, technology mistake

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 12th, 2009 at 3:03 pm and is filed under Doin' it right, Management, Total Quality Mistake. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.