Friday, 5:00pm, Continental Ballroom
Topic Summary: In this case study from a top internet retailer, the client and consultant will discuss how we worked together to successfully identify a business case and ROI for an enterprise information architecture project that led to significant money and resource commitments. We will explain how we were able to evangelize horizontally and vertically, present our case to executives, and bring a true business perspective to an information architecture project that enabled wide spread cross divisional support.
Enterprise information architecture is often thought of as a method for improving internal knowledge management or enhancing a company intranet. In this case, we knew that enterprise IA was also essential for improving the public-facing website’s customer experience. In order to justify and prioritize the IA work required for improved customer experience, we defined an ROI that included revenue, brand health, strategic alignment and operational efficiency. This allowed us to create and sell a business case for foundational enterprise IA work that executives understood and supported.
The business case has been so successful that the company has re-prioritized other projects to ensure the enterprise IA work can be funded, even though historically the company has not practiced information architecture nor had an IA team. Creating and presenting the business case from the executive’s strategic and financial perspective fostered buy in across the organization, helped manage scope going forward, and provided a simple way of describing the project benefits to everyone in the organization.
Take aways: Handouts and takeaways from this presentation will include:
1- Components necessary for creating a strong business case
2- List of stakeholders who should be involved in every IA project
3- Tips for creating a believable and compelling ROI
- Main key topics: Strategy, ROI and business value, MBAs for IAs
- Target audience: The talk is relevant to client side managers who value the importance of IA and want to increase its influence, and to agency/consultant side employees, leads or principals who want increase their ability to sell IA projects.
INSTRUCTORS
Samantha Starmer
Over the last 11 years, Samantha Starmer has worked on a wide variety of user experience and information architecture projects while at Amazon.com, SchemaLogic and Microsoft. She is currently a senior manager at REI.com, leading the teams who run online information architecture, program management, operations and analytics. She holds a Master’s of Library and Information Science degree from the University of Washington and a certificate in Content Management. Samantha is currently on the Executive Steering committee for the Online Marketing Council and has also served on the boards of the Information Architecture Institute and Content Management Professionals.
Gary Carlson
Gary Carlson brings over 20 years of experience as a taxonomist, consultant, product manager, and information manager working for small to Fortune 100 companies. The past ten years have been spent helping organizations boost revenue, customer satisfaction and efficiency via well executed information and knowledge management initiatives. He has worked extensively on major information and knowledge management projects and products spanning taxonomy tools, search, auto-categorization, expert systems, content management, governance and overall information infrastructure. Additionally Gary has lectured and taught classes at the University of Washington, University of Toronto, University of Wisconsin, and University of North Carolina.