Customer Needs

To ensure a project to be a success and to ensure a happy client at the end of the project life cycle, efforts has to be made upfront to understand the customer needs properly. Most of the times, customers tend to have a business idea which they note down in a few lines and give it to the development team. Its very important for the development team to analyze the requirements and come up with questions. The sales team should never jump the gun and make assumptions while quoting the client. Most of the times, due to severe sales pressures, the sales team make assumptions of the client needs and give a quote. Sometimes, the sales team talk with the customer, get the budget and quote a price without proper analysis. Other times, the sales team take help of the technical analysis team to get a proper estimate done. But here also the technical team does not spend the necessary time needed to gauge the customer's needs properly. If the needs and the pain points of the customers are not analyzed before the start of the project then the project is doomed.

As a customer its very important that before you select a vendor for your project or business idea implementation do a thorough evaluation of how a vendor is treating your project. Is the sales team quoting you without askingany questions? Are they having a fair understanding of your requirements? Are they saying "YES" to all your questions? Rather than going for the least price option its most important to be confident about the vendor. For a project to be a success, the vendor company should show empathy towards the client. If the effort is to just close the deal then as a customer you should think twice before signing the dotted line. Most of the times, these type of quick and unanalytical decisions leads to a lot of problems. As the project goes on, the development team finds that there are a lot of complex stuff and they try to hike the price. You as a customer will feel cheated because by then important time has already been lost and since you will be more focussed on getting the product to the market you will end up spending more than you initially budgeted for.

So, the next time you are evaluating a vendor for your project, give them your requirements and then see what type of questions they are asking. If they understand the project requirements properly then most of the times you will find them asking the right questions. If they are asking the right questions or if they are coming up with intelligent add-ons for future growth, you will know that you are at the right place. The best vendor companies or partners are those who give you a project quote only after they have understood your requirements fully. These companies would never give you a financial proposal till the needs are properly documented. These companies are here for long term and would never go for short term money.

As a software development or web development firm its better to have 20 super happy customers than having 1000 unsatisfied clients who will never give you a second project or refer you to new clients.

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Communication is the key

For any relationship to thrive, communication plays a very important role, be it a parent-child relationship or a husband-wife relationship. The same is true for business organisations. In a business there are various stakeholders, like, employees, vendors, clients and ofcourse the management team. If there is a lack of communication between any of the stake holders, the business suffers. Communication is not about how well you speak or write in a given language. In this post, I will take English as an example since its most used in the business world. Lets start with a small example. If an employee has a certain problem and he is not able to effectively communicate the same to the management then the importance gets lost and what we get is a disgruntled employee and an unhappy manager. An open organisation allows employees to speak freely with the management and because the employee is at ease in such a structure, he or she is able to communicate the problem effectively. Organisations which are top heavy and where the top managers are not easily accessible, you will find that employees are always cribbing about bosses behind their back. This in my opinion creates negetive environment which in turn effects their work and which in turn leads to lesser quality work and an unhappy customer at the end. Think about it, maybe a small issue for an employee which was not dealt with correctly by the company management can lead to a loss of a customer. Will a company owner enjoy such a scenario? Certainly not, according to my opinion. But the problem with most companies is that once a customer gets irated, the top management gets into action. This is a reactive strategy. But here also, there is a problem, because when the company's top brass tries to get the customer back, the focus is totally on the customer and the basic problem of the employee gets lost. The account manager will get a lot of brownie points if he is able to get the customer back on board but the disgruntled employee because of whom this whole scenario happened will get kicked either ways. So what is the solution? In my opinion, all managers have to learn how to communicate effectively with their team members. In work there is bound to be friction but we need to lessen our egos and as managers, the less ego you have its better for you. If one of your team members have a problem, listen to his or her issue and give a solution to solve that issue rather than shoving it under the carpet. There are some managers who act well, i.e, who will act as if he is genuinly concerned about your problem and give you a good ear but will actually not do anything for you and will plan how to save the client whom the employee is handling because after speaking to you, he will know that you will lose focus on your job so save the client. This leads to him/her becoming a great asset for the company's management but the employee who has no access to the top management will get more disillutioned and finally might even leave the job. Is this good for company's growth? Certainly not. In short term, it seems to be great because one junior employee hardly matters for a company but the rot starts and in the long run the company's culture gets contaminated and in the future can lead to huge repercussions. As company owners, one needs to look at long term goals along with short term goals and hence each and every stake holder should be given equal prominence. Its easier said than done but with effective communication processes, one can improve the culture inside the organization. As a company owner, you love your customers and you would want your employees to love them as well but why will they love them like you if you do not empower them. Everything starts at the top. If you as a business owner communicate effectively, the people reporting to you will learn from you and this will go down the line till your junior most employee. Keep the door open and listen to what your employees' says. Think the problem that they have by being in their shoes and come up with a solution. This way both you, your company and the employee all go back happy. Remember, a happy employee will lead to happy customers who in turn will get you healthy bottom lines.

Customer service is the key and good customer service happens through effective communication. Try to understand the clients' problems and think how you can solve his problem. Do not treat this as a job because if you treat this as a job, that you have to do, then by the time the day ends your quality of service will go down and the final few customers will not be very happy. Enjoy the work in hand, and you will find that your energy levels are high throughout the day and this will mean that you will be able to do your work properly. Always listen to what the customer has to say, analyze the problem and then give your solution which will solve the customer's problem. If you are not able to analyze the problem properly, don't assume and give a solution, better speak with your peers or your immediate reporting head and then provide the solution. Clients need solutions to their problems they don't need half baked solutions within a minute. If a specific problem needs to analyze, communicate that to the client and 99% of the times you will find that the client will understand. Give an ETA to the client and you will see that the client will not bother you till that time arrives. In the meanwhile, focus all your energy on analyzing the problem and get a solution for the customer. Once you have the solution, get in touch with the client and communicate the same. Follow this best practice repeatedly and what you will have is a lot of happy customers and a very happy management.

So communicate effectively and communicate smart.

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Business Models

So you have this brilliant business idea which you know has a niche customer base. Now whats important is to get the idea into reality. Its an internet related business so you will require a good development team who can get your idea to realization. If its your first business then getting together a development team will be tough. If you, yourself is not very technical then having a development team in-house does not make sense. As the saying goes, do the best and outsource the rest. Now you need to go to any of the search engines like, Google and Bing to get your potential vendors for development of the web application. You do a thorough research and finally make a firm decision on choosing the company with whom you are comfortable to work with. One important thing that you need to keep in mind after choosing the vendor is in which business model you will engage with the vendor. No body understands your business better than you do, hence, you should have a proper specs document. Be as detailed as possible in your requirements so that the vendor finds no ambiguity and can give you a proper effort estimation.

There are 2 ways of engaging a vendor for your dream project. One is the Fixed Price Model. This is a time tested model but you should have proper specs to go with this model. If your specs are very vague then it becomes very difficult for the vendor to estimate the effort required. This also leads to tension between yourself and the vendor in the UAT stages and it leads to change management and you might end up paying more than what you had budgeted for. One must understand that the vendor company is running a business and when they see very vague requirements then they buffer up their effort and increase their cost but if you have a very well detailed specs document then you can get the estimate in a very scientific way and each module and sub modules will be properly estimated.

If you do not have a proper specs document then its best to first hire a technical writer whom you can explain your concept and who can then prepare the specs document for you. You need to be very careful on this and you should have a thorough read of this document before passing this on to the development team.

If you think that the system is so big that its too tough to estimate and it will evolve over time, then one good option is to hire a team virtually from the vendor. These are known as Full Time Equivalents and you can discuss with the vendor's representative and finalize on the team size. When you decide on the Full Time Equivalent option, you must check the vendor's contract terms properly. There could be a lot of hidden things which the vendor's representative might not tell you. One thing that I can tell you is that in Full Time Equivalent model you become the project manager and you can control the team as you wish, so monitoring and reporting structure should be properly laid out. If you do not do this then you might lose out on non-productive man hours and since you have chosen a FTE model you cannot catch hold of the vendor for mismanagement since you are the manager of the team.

So think properly and lay down all the pros and cons of the 2 models discussed above, before getting into an engagement with your chosen vendor.

Good Luck!

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Google Adwords Vs. Facebook Ads

For a SMEs, Google Adwords is a very economical way of advertising. Today 70% of the search industry is controlled by Google. People comes to Google to search for specific things that they need. For a new business which is in a competitive market, its very difficult to get top rank in Google organically. This is where Google Adwords come to the picture. One can run a PPC campaign on targetted keywords and get the desired traffic. Since people are searching for a specific product or a service the click through ratio will be good. Secondly Google also carries your ad in their network of products like, Gmail, Blogger etc. So by running a PPC campaign in Google, one can drive in a lot of quality traffic to their website. This is where I feel, Facebook Ads lose out to Google. When a person goes to facebook, its generally to socialize. I as a person go to Facebook to meet my old friends to virtually connect with them and chat with them. Generally people do not go to facebook to search for a specific product or service. Hence, the click through ratio in facebook is less. Facebook ofcourse has one great advantage. Using Facebook Ads you can target your visitors to ensure that your Ad is displayed only to the demographic that you choose. Also, since Facebook ads are new the CPC is relatively less than Google. So at a very small budget you can run your campaign. Another advantage that Facebook has is that you can make the visitors come to your facebook page make them your fan and start interacting with them. So, an inquisitive visitor can become your customer in the long run which is never possible with Google adwords.

Its still early days to make a judgement on who is better and only time will tell if Facebook will be able to eat into Google's Ad revenues but at the moment Google is better for conversion whereas Facebook is better for branding. Next couple of years will be interesting to see how these 2 giants fight each other.

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