Tuesday, February 27, 2007
What Makes a Good Client (and Why You Should Care)
No where more than in the consulting world does the phrase "time is money" have more relevance. At its most basic level, Kaleidoscope sells hours. When clients engage with Kaleidoscope, they expect to receive high quality work (as good as or better than from their own staff) at a fair price as fast as possible (almost always faster than on the inside). A good client enables Kaleidoscope to help them realize these goals for the client. It also save the client money.So, what is a good client?
o One who is organized and disciplined
When the client is organized, they marital and manage their internal resources to rapidly review, evaluate and comment on Kaleidoscope work in process. When they are disciplined, they execute on internal processes working with the Kaleidoscope team minimizing unnecessary distractions and 'downtime' waiting for answers. Minimal downtime and distractions save time and time = money.
o One who is decisive
When a client is decisive, they know how to quickly and consistently reply to questions and render consensus decisions at reviews. No time is wasted waiting for responses and the client holds to decisions it makes. A decisive and consistent client saves time, and time = money.
o One who communicates
There are consulting firms which take the project and tell the clients to stay out of the way while they work. Certainly, this minimizes impact on the client's time. But, is the end result useful or practical? Does it make business sense? Can the client realize what is shown in the sexy presentation? A client who communicates well brings their domain knowledge to the process on a frequent basis. This allows for corrective 'nudging' of the work in process insuring that the outcome is one which has the best shot at realizing business goals. Clear and frequent communication minimizes mistakes and misunderstanding which saves time and time...
o One who develops a relationship
A key to providing seamless, high quality work is when Kaleidoscope can learn your processes so that our output can efficiently be integrated back into your company. Understanding the nuances of your process takes time and patience. The development of a continuing relationship leads to intrinsic understanding of your processes and culture. Every company has unwritten processes and norms of behavior that can only be learned over time. Simply, these details can never be fully captured in a Request for Proposal or specification. While Kaleidoscope strives to delight on every project, including the first, inevitably, mutual learning leads to better results as the relationship builds over time and multiple projects. When the relationship with the client matures, Kaleidoscope knows the clients unspecified needs and can target the project activities. This saves time and... you get the picture.
And why should you care?
Kaleidoscope tries its darndest to delight its clients. The delight comes when we can produce an extraordinarily surprising and pleasing result very quickly without asking for more money (on fixed price projects) or under budget (on time-and-materials projects). The delight also comes when the result of the engagement can quickly and seamlessly be integrated back into your company … as if your own best people executed on the project. Lastly, when Kaleidoscope can efficiently manage its projects for a client, the work takes less time and inevitably fewer man-hours. Remember, time = money. Inefficiency leads to higher cost projects as proposals need to account for this uncertainty in proposal estimates. Conversely, Kaleidoscope can provide a much tighter and less expensive proposal to a 'good client.' At Kaleidoscope, our goal is not to maximize the revenue on any given project- the goal is to be a partner for developing a continuing stream of successful products with our clients for many years into the future.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home