Deskspace Blog

Untrusted Tradesman or Trusted Advisor?

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Untrusted Tradesman or Trusted Advisor?

Many developers who supply integrated information systems specially configured to suit a specific client are not really selling software, they are selling their expertise in understand how data can be best turned into information, in a wide variety of contexts and the software they supply is merely a means of delivering that expertise.

Thus the developer should in reality act as a professional advisor not a tradesman hawking their wares.

The tradition approach to software sales that I have seen amongst single market competitors is one of "promise everything they ask for" and then cross your fingers that the engineers will deliver.

As a professional advisor the key is to be completely honest about what can and what can't be done.

In my experience professional clients understand appreciate and respect that approach.

As a professional your top priority is of course, provided your client pays their bills, your client, not yourself. This can be hard work, sometimes very hard work, but the reward is a long term b2b relationship.

A Satisfied Client

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In this business you don't generally expect much praise from clients, if you hear nothing it is generally good news.

However much we may be excited about designing smart and easy to use professional information systems one cannot really expect any client to be excited, they just want something that does the job - without fuss and bother.

So it was a real pleasure to receive the following comments from Giles Farley at Pinewood Shepperton plc after they had been using their new Deskspace Post Production Pro System for several months:

“Deskspace have provided us with a truly professional service, they have shown a very good ability to work out what we needed, both for the staff and for the management; they have installed our new system on time and on budget and we have not had to make any significant compromises in order to use our new Post Production Pro Integrated Information System.”

“Commissioning a Deskspace powered system gave us the benefit of Deskspace’s evident skills in developing an understanding of what we wanted combined with the security of knowing that the Filemaker Pro database platform underlies our new system.”

"We were impressed by Deskspace’s wholistic approach. They were not just concerned with the Management Accounting side, the desired outcomes that I had identified as my key requirement as the manager of this Post Production Sound Unit at the Studios. They were concerned to understand how the guys in the editing suites and mixing theatres worked and to work out what would work best for them so that they also got what they wanted. I was impressed by Deskspace’s ability to analysis our business needs and that they understood that we, as managers, do not necessarily have the ability to describe what we actually need. They had the ability to work it out and show us what, in fact, we actually needed – and they were right!”

“Deskspace delivered what they said they would deliver within the time frame that we agreed, at the cost we had agreed and we are very pleased with the result”

“Deskspace delivered the agreed system on budget & on time.”
Giles Farley: Pinewood Shepperton plc

29th August 2007

ENDS ............

A Successful Deployment Strategy

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Successful Deployment of Information Systems

A contract in place, stage payments recieved and the development program under way to deliver to a tight specification is still no guarantee of a successful deployment.

You generally need a strong advocate of the new system on the client side to actually achieve deployment since natural resistance to change amongst staff will otherwise work towards delaying deployment. That person will generally be the person who made the purchase decision, but they will be too senior to be directly involved with deployment, so they need a committed assistant who really wants the project to succeed.

Also don't forget the likely conflict between the client side IT guys' desire to build a system themselves, thus strengthening their position, and senior management's intelligent desire to avoid the in-house builder scenario.

That means you need to be able deploy quickly before your client side advocate, the person who was instrumental in getting the contract signed, moves on somewhere else or otherwise ut of the picture.

This is one reason why so much of our development work has focused on our having the tools available to configure and deploy really very quickly.

Also of course there is a real commercial advantage to being to give our client "what they want, when they want it" which is generally immediately after the final decision has been made.

29th August 2007

Ends.........