CASE STUDY
THE SEMANTICS OF PROBLEM SOLVING
TLDR
Affiliate manager / billing portal.
BACKGROUND
Recently, our product team added a basic affiliate managment system for invoicing and permissions. In order to sign, potential client New Orleans Tour Co. requested our system add expanded sales and commission tracking capability for a broader range of affiliate scenarios.
Wanting to leverage our prior build rather than refactor, we had to take a closer look at exactly what was being asked of the team.
WHAT ROLE DOES SEMANTICS PLAY IN PROBLEM SOLVING?
New Orleans Tour Co. regularly partners with other businesses as affiliate sellers, and these sellers receive a commission of booking sales. These relationships range from handshake deals with random street vendors to large formal contracts with internationally recognized hospitality brands and travel agencies.
OTAs (Online travel agencies) are the standard affiliate, but they can also be hotel concierges, etc.
Generally, when referring to commissioned entitites, the tourism industry uses the term “affiliates” for organizations, and “agents” for individuals. Because each business is unique, New Orleans Tour Co. developed the additional descriptors “inside / outside” to describe whether agents were on staff.
Industry terms
SOLUTION
At first glance, it seemed we’d need to support four distinct types of affiliate permissions, requiring a major overhaul of the system. But as we looked closer, we realized the differences were mostly semantic. “Inside agents” and employees were functionally the same—both were staff receiving commissions. Likewise, “outside agents” and affiliates were simply non-employees receiving commissions.
By reframing the problem around outcomes instead of labels, we uncovered a simpler solution. We added a commission toggle at the employee level to support “inside agents,” and extended the existing affiliate system to track commissions for “outside agents.” This approach met all business needs without bloating the feature set or duplicating logic.
Scoping a lift score.
RESULTS
Using the revised request, we were able to reduce the scope complexity by roughly 35%.
The client appreciated the simplified workflow and signed, leading to a six-figure ARR.
The feature expansion of affiliate management provided immediate value to about 50% of our existing clients, and made our system a much more competitive market offering.
FUTURE NICE-TO-HAVE
The team was super focused on reducing timeline, and the project was really about figuring out how to do more with less, but I couldn't help but design a commision tracker for employees receiving a commission. This feature could provide a motivating factor for users and allow operations to run sales competitions and incentives programs.
Commission tracker provides constant user motivation.