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.