If most of our clients have understood this, they don’t always measure the amount of work it implies and, when we present our proposal, we enter the zone of searching for a subtle balance between what the client wants and what he is willing to pay.
Recent case study: an institutional client needs to redo its website (“which is no longer referenced at all and we don’t understand why”) as well as the extra-net that it makes available to its members. A relatively complete specification was established and a budget was planned. By his own admission, the client “doesn’t know much about it”, he has no internal digital skills. In fact, we discovered that the current site was created more than 10 years ago and that it remained in its state (which explains the “referencing problems”).
If the requests for the Internet site do not pose any particular problem, certain functionalities of the extra-net are complex to implement and require development, but the customer does not measure the quantity of work that this implies.
It is thus necessary for us to quantify each request defined in these specifications, then to study together, line by line, the expected benefit for each functionality. This is often the moment of the first disappointments for the customer when he discovers that a functionality he wanted is relatively expensive and does not bring any economic profitability…
As mentioned above, our client is aware that he needs to acquire the necessary knowledge to become autonomous on the main updates of his future website. From the first meeting, he asked us for coaching and training.
During our exchanges, we gradually perceive their low level of use of web tools, as well as their lack of mastery of collaborative tools. There will therefore be a certain number of hours of coaching and training to be included in the proposal. In addition, it’s about being delicate in convincing the client of their need to acquire competence, without the slightest contempt.
In the digital world, everything is measured! Whatever the digital strategy implemented, we can calibrate the cost according to the objectives, optimize the actions in a very short time, and calculate the return on investment. In short, you can mathematically predict the results. This is tremendously reassuring for the client, who knows the precise objective he is committing to.
Nevertheless, this advantage loses its weight when your client probably has no culture of figures, no KPIs set up, his objectives are not even really measured yet…
At the moment, we don’t know if this client will choose to work with us, there is initially a strong mismatch between his expectations and his budget. But one thing is for sure, if he does choose to work with us, it will be exciting to help him discover the multiple possibilities of success that are available to him, because this is a case where we can have a very big impact!
