Systems approach in the studio business
In this article I will propose a method of thinking in the organization of a business studio for the production of sites and an approach to how to avoid “system traps”.
If you look at the definition of Wikipedia, the system is a combination of elements isolated from the environment and interacting as a whole. As a result, a systematic approach is a way to look at a business organization, as a structure of interrelationships of the surrounding world and several feedback cycles.
Thus, even the development market can be perceived as a large system of elements interconnected with each other.
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First, let's introduce some simple definitions:
The stock is a cumulative component of the system, the main component determining the success of the system. In the case of a web studio, we can talk about both money and the number of projects.
Flow - stock movement within the system
Product - the result of the system, released into the environment
Environment — The space from which your system receives stock and to which the product is shipped.
Feedback - information that you receive from the system and on the basis of which you make decisions. Feedback can occur at different frequencies depending on the method of organization of your system.
The amplifying cycle is a dynamic part of the system, changing with time. An example of an intensifying cycle could be the profit of your company.
Balancing cycle - the constant cycle of the system. An example of such a cycle is the work of your HR specialist who maintains a constant supply of people in your structure.
So, you run a studio, and as a result, a system.
You may have an accountant, designer, coder, programmer, and maybe even a lawyer. By combining them with different interconnections, you have thus built a system based on the idea of ​​an increasing cycle of stockpiling. Simply put - you want to receive money from your system, and more and more each time.
Below I will try to show the various blocks of the web studio business and possible “system traps”.
Sales
Your manager, bringing new orders to the company, is the entry point for the system flow. Management can use various media channels in its work: contextual advertising, social networks, a circle of friends and acquaintances, and many others. Any media channel involves investment (cash or sometimes time investment).
System error: unstable stock investment sales organization.
Evaluating the sales of our studio for several quarters, we faced an interesting fact: our sales were not constant. Peak load in the sales department accounted for every second month.
For many, many colleagues argue that seasonality is a fundamental factor in the market development sites. Thus, in August, at the time of holidays, and in January, due to the New Year holidays, sales are bound to fall sharply. Due to this, management reduces investment in advertising, since demand is expected to be several times less.
Do not forget about the delay in feedback from your system.
Most often, 3-4 business weeks pass for the sale of the site from the moment of the first call of the customer to the arrival of the prepayment. Thus, the money that you invest in advertising this month will affect the sales of the next month.
As a result, if the demand for site creation is lower in January, then sales are bound to fall in February.
When selling websites, you should not expect instant feedback from the system; investing in advertising, you should expect the effect in a month. And having received sales and received only calls - continue to invest in advertising, creating a balancing cycle of awareness of the target audience about the services of your company.
Production
Developing a quality website is a group of labor-intensive processes. When building production, it will be necessary not only to organize the transfer of information from sales to production, but also to synchronize all the processes. The slightest failure in the flow can lead to the fact that projects in the system will get stuck together, creating a peak load on resources, and as a result will reduce the quality of the product.
System error: collect everyone in the office.
- The company webprofy.ru most of the developers sitting in the office, which allows you to set a stable pace of production. Webprofy, having a large number of professionals in the office, can perform many orders on the stream. But in the case of a decrease in the number of orders, such a system is subject to the risks of high salary costs. Such risks may occur as in the case of not the right investment in advertising, and seasonal sales decline. In this case, the company will be forced to lay off staff.
Together with the departing people, a rumor will be spreading around the market that a “end” has begun from the company. Such rumors make the system even more vulnerable, as the departed employees are pulling behind them the personnel remaining in the system, generating new “waves” of layoffs.
Thus, the ideology of the offline company itself contains systemic risk: the more personnel in the office, the less flexible the company becomes.
To the credit of webprofy, it is worth noting that a company not only invests steadily in its advertising (upon request in the “website development” Yandex, the company most often stands in prominent positions in directo), but also maintains a qualitative level of production.
xqdesign.ru prefers to recruit remote managers, “keeping in check” production costs and minimizing the risks of forced reductions in resources.
Market
Scale up: agree that the site development market is a system of systems.
The total “reserve” of this system, money, is about 270-280 million dollars (for 2008, according to the tagline).
It is more correct to call the market an “ecosystem” - systems tend to maximize the stock, periodically evolving and changing the system of systems as a whole. Also, companies developing websites interact with the systems of customers who intend to spend some amount of money to increase the stock in their market.
System error: creating dumping.
Knocking down the market price, companies begin to work with a minimum profit (or sometimes no profit at all) to increase the number of customers. Thus, an increasing cycle of reducing margins is created on the market, which leads to a general depletion of money in the system. Reducing the stock depletes the market, reduces the quality of services provided, which makes it less attractive for both new players and customers.
We live in a capitalist society, therefore making a profit is a categorically important factor. Taking independent profit you improve the market as a whole. And vice versa, the less you earn, the lower the total stock of money in our market.
System error: incorrect goals and linearity of advertising dependence on profit.
Most studios target commercial customers by competing for B2B budgets. At the same time, no more than 10% of state organizations have their own website (based on gov2russia.ru). Thus, B2G looks much more attractive, but the flexibility of the studio systems does not allow them to invest profits in working with government agencies.
Most of the management of many companies (and not only studios) is waiting for linear dependencies when investing in advertising:
if today is a ruble investment in advertising and you get ten, it does not mean that investing two rubles tomorrow you will get twenty.
So instead
For an adequate comparison, imagine the oil business. By opening a new field, you can increase the margin by the pressure in the well (demand). The discovery of a new field is associated with the risks necessary to reconfigure the system (diversification): setting up the flows included in the system, other requirements for the quality and pace of work. But it is precisely this path that is capable of making a tangible profit, or even excess profit. Thus, working with state customers can allow showing high system efficiency with adequate investments in “production of orders from a well”.
Timofey Zinin
If you look at the definition of Wikipedia, the system is a combination of elements isolated from the environment and interacting as a whole. As a result, a systematic approach is a way to look at a business organization, as a structure of interrelationships of the surrounding world and several feedback cycles.
Thus, even the development market can be perceived as a large system of elements interconnected with each other.
')
First, let's introduce some simple definitions:
The stock is a cumulative component of the system, the main component determining the success of the system. In the case of a web studio, we can talk about both money and the number of projects.
Flow - stock movement within the system
Product - the result of the system, released into the environment
Environment — The space from which your system receives stock and to which the product is shipped.
Feedback - information that you receive from the system and on the basis of which you make decisions. Feedback can occur at different frequencies depending on the method of organization of your system.
The amplifying cycle is a dynamic part of the system, changing with time. An example of an intensifying cycle could be the profit of your company.
Balancing cycle - the constant cycle of the system. An example of such a cycle is the work of your HR specialist who maintains a constant supply of people in your structure.
So, you run a studio, and as a result, a system.
You may have an accountant, designer, coder, programmer, and maybe even a lawyer. By combining them with different interconnections, you have thus built a system based on the idea of ​​an increasing cycle of stockpiling. Simply put - you want to receive money from your system, and more and more each time.
Below I will try to show the various blocks of the web studio business and possible “system traps”.
Sales
Your manager, bringing new orders to the company, is the entry point for the system flow. Management can use various media channels in its work: contextual advertising, social networks, a circle of friends and acquaintances, and many others. Any media channel involves investment (cash or sometimes time investment).
System error: unstable stock investment sales organization.
Evaluating the sales of our studio for several quarters, we faced an interesting fact: our sales were not constant. Peak load in the sales department accounted for every second month.
For many, many colleagues argue that seasonality is a fundamental factor in the market development sites. Thus, in August, at the time of holidays, and in January, due to the New Year holidays, sales are bound to fall sharply. Due to this, management reduces investment in advertising, since demand is expected to be several times less.
Do not forget about the delay in feedback from your system.
Most often, 3-4 business weeks pass for the sale of the site from the moment of the first call of the customer to the arrival of the prepayment. Thus, the money that you invest in advertising this month will affect the sales of the next month.
As a result, if the demand for site creation is lower in January, then sales are bound to fall in February.
When selling websites, you should not expect instant feedback from the system; investing in advertising, you should expect the effect in a month. And having received sales and received only calls - continue to invest in advertising, creating a balancing cycle of awareness of the target audience about the services of your company.
Production
Developing a quality website is a group of labor-intensive processes. When building production, it will be necessary not only to organize the transfer of information from sales to production, but also to synchronize all the processes. The slightest failure in the flow can lead to the fact that projects in the system will get stuck together, creating a peak load on resources, and as a result will reduce the quality of the product.
System error: collect everyone in the office.
- The company webprofy.ru most of the developers sitting in the office, which allows you to set a stable pace of production. Webprofy, having a large number of professionals in the office, can perform many orders on the stream. But in the case of a decrease in the number of orders, such a system is subject to the risks of high salary costs. Such risks may occur as in the case of not the right investment in advertising, and seasonal sales decline. In this case, the company will be forced to lay off staff.
Together with the departing people, a rumor will be spreading around the market that a “end” has begun from the company. Such rumors make the system even more vulnerable, as the departed employees are pulling behind them the personnel remaining in the system, generating new “waves” of layoffs.
Thus, the ideology of the offline company itself contains systemic risk: the more personnel in the office, the less flexible the company becomes.
To the credit of webprofy, it is worth noting that a company not only invests steadily in its advertising (upon request in the “website development” Yandex, the company most often stands in prominent positions in directo), but also maintains a qualitative level of production.
xqdesign.ru prefers to recruit remote managers, “keeping in check” production costs and minimizing the risks of forced reductions in resources.
Market
Scale up: agree that the site development market is a system of systems.
The total “reserve” of this system, money, is about 270-280 million dollars (for 2008, according to the tagline).
It is more correct to call the market an “ecosystem” - systems tend to maximize the stock, periodically evolving and changing the system of systems as a whole. Also, companies developing websites interact with the systems of customers who intend to spend some amount of money to increase the stock in their market.
System error: creating dumping.
Knocking down the market price, companies begin to work with a minimum profit (or sometimes no profit at all) to increase the number of customers. Thus, an increasing cycle of reducing margins is created on the market, which leads to a general depletion of money in the system. Reducing the stock depletes the market, reduces the quality of services provided, which makes it less attractive for both new players and customers.
We live in a capitalist society, therefore making a profit is a categorically important factor. Taking independent profit you improve the market as a whole. And vice versa, the less you earn, the lower the total stock of money in our market.
System error: incorrect goals and linearity of advertising dependence on profit.
Most studios target commercial customers by competing for B2B budgets. At the same time, no more than 10% of state organizations have their own website (based on gov2russia.ru). Thus, B2G looks much more attractive, but the flexibility of the studio systems does not allow them to invest profits in working with government agencies.
Most of the management of many companies (and not only studios) is waiting for linear dependencies when investing in advertising:
if today is a ruble investment in advertising and you get ten, it does not mean that investing two rubles tomorrow you will get twenty.
So instead
For an adequate comparison, imagine the oil business. By opening a new field, you can increase the margin by the pressure in the well (demand). The discovery of a new field is associated with the risks necessary to reconfigure the system (diversification): setting up the flows included in the system, other requirements for the quality and pace of work. But it is precisely this path that is capable of making a tangible profit, or even excess profit. Thus, working with state customers can allow showing high system efficiency with adequate investments in “production of orders from a well”.
Timofey Zinin
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/109453/
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