Profit Motive & The Business of Design

Who deals with the money, and how?

This session focuses on how finance, metrics and performance influence an A+D practice’s wellbeing and its success moving forward, as well as the firm culture and its bottom line. Think-Time Tuesdays host and SO|arch founder, Elisabeth Sporer, AIA CIC, provides an overview about the metrics behind the business of design and how A+D founders and leaders can achieve and maintain fiscal health for their businesses—from basic best practices to advanced systems that can help measure, predict, and manage their firm's performance.

The session demonstrates and discusses the Key Performance Indicators an A+D firm needs to monitor [operating profit rate / utilization rate & target utilization / payroll multiplier & net effective multiplier / overhead & break-even rate] and discusses best practices of monitoring cash flow, AR, backlog volume and proposals pending. Then in conversation with her clients, Elisabeth presents case studies that founders, and leaders of small studios and midsized firms will find useful:

• Transitioning to professional systems for midsized firms with Cecilia Quezada [Quezada Architecture]
• Optimizing basic systems for small firms with Khal Khaireddin [K2A]