Why is choosing a digital service provider becoming an obstacle course?

Creating a digital project isn't easy. First and foremost, it's an entrepreneurial project, and therefore by its very nature a risk, an adventure in which you invest your energy to offer a digital good or service.

As if the challenge wasn't already enough, to create your digital project you need a team, and naturally you're going to call on so-called "IT" service providers. And that's where the culture shock begins. Welcome to the world of digital.

For over 5 years now, I've been helping project owners design and develop their digital products (website, mobile application, connected object, business software) through the Le Backyard agency.

In particular, we work with key accounts who have the knowledge and experience of digital projects, and are therefore able to choose the right service provider for the right service during the purchasing phase.

Our other customers are START UP structures - VSEs and SMEs, most of whom have little knowledge of digital technology and its environment.

It's towards this clientele that I'm going to focus my sales pitch.

Indeed, faced with such a wide variety of providers, these project leaders often find themselves lost, disappointed and subsequently distrustful. In the digital sector (not IT), there are over twenty different professions.

To better understand the buyer's environment, we need to retrace his or her journey: in UX Design we use the term Customer Journey.

The customer journey of a digital buyer

Step 1: Getting started

Sentiment: Exaltation

First of all, our prospect will identify the contours of his project, imagine a user path and think of some major functionalities according to his target.

"it has to be simple, intuitive. The same as Uber but in a different sector" Great...

Very quickly, he set himself the immense challenge of creating a digital product. To do this, he scoured the Internet for all the information he could find, and sought advice from his network to gather as much input as possible for his project.

Step 2: Finding service providers

Feeling: Adrenaline.

Our prospect says he's ready. He meets with various service providers (agency, freelance, ESN), each with a different approach and culture.

He masters the project's discourse, gradually gathering information to create a "pseudo" functional specification that looks more like three or four guidelines outlining the project's business value.

However, all the lights were on for our prospect, and one meeting followed another with service providers who were all very involved and willing to help him "challenge" the project and quickly make a financial offer to close the deal.

He ends every appointment with "Can you tell me how much it costs and how long it takes?" And most of them will answer "Yes, yes, no worries.

Then the fall begins.

Step 3: Selection

Sentiment: Doubt

Our prospect is going to want to meet as many designers as possible in as little time as possible, varying the profiles of the service providers to get a wide variety of offers.

He receives offers and falls off his chair. "I've got prices ranging from a single to x10, completely different methodologies, unfamiliar terms and schedules that don't correspond at all to what I was expecting".

Here we are. I'm confronted with this kind of customer reaction every day.

How can we explain such a wide range of proposals?

Perimeter/

The biggest problem for each service provider is to define and identify the right scope. However, without precise wording, everything will be open to interpretation, and so service providers will identify previous "use cases" to understand the need and timing. We need to estimate the time needed to create the product, write the documentation, test it and deliver it in the right conditions. But to define the time required, we need precise information.

Prospect < “Pourquoi êtes vous le seul à ne pas me fournir une estimation quand tout vos concurrents le font”>

Wilfried < Redonnez moi le brief

Prospect < “C’est simple mon concept reprend Tinder mais nous l’adaptons à notre marché”>

It's a bit far-fetched, but that's what often happens: a perimeter so blurred that it's risky to make an estimate, or we tend to inflate it for safety's sake...

Advice: You need to define the scope of your project as a whole. Some agencies, such as Le Backyard to name but one, run a half-day card-sorting workshop to review the user journey and detail each feature.

You can also go off on a tangent, such as revealing the budget to your service provider and asking him what scope he can define within that budget.

The deliverable: for us, it's the Backlog (list of functionalities) that reigns supreme.

Methodology/

Secondly, there's the methodology: several service providers can offer a longer, more precise and more reliable process, involving a number of collaborators in important aspects of your project (e.g. UX Designer, DevOps, QA Tester, etc.).

The methodology must be carefully studied to meet your needs precisely, and to guarantee that your digital product will be designed correctly. A project manager or Product Owner is more than recommended to stand back, direct the work on your behalf and control the result for proper delivery. QA testers are the people who will test the product for you, saving you endless round-trips.

Usually, freelance developers, for example, only take into account the tasks they have to carry out, and their job mainly consists of producing code rather than testing, designing,...

Design is often underestimated by more technically oriented service providers, and you may end up with a template or a less accomplished design that could be disappointing for your target or even less ergonomic.

My advice: Go through the methodology around a call or a meeting. However exhaustive it may be, it should at least include a structure (UX - Perimeter - UI - Dev - Test - Acceptance). You also need to study the feasibility and duration of each stage, to get a clear picture of the time allocated by each resource. Never start with an agency if you don't know the framework beforehand (apart from the UX methodology involved).

The deliverable: the proposal with the time allocated to each person.

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Technologies/

Digital is mainly about user experience and technology. All technologies are different, but several can deliver the same result for the same need. Without expertise, it's very difficult to compare them and select the right one, but you should try to understand the logic of each provider and the arguments put forward for each technology.

Ex: ( the number of possible requests per minute, scalability, community documentation, developers' experience with such a technology).

I met with a prospect a few weeks ago for a mobile application project who had met with 15 service providers before (yes, it still happens). I broached the subject of technology versus native applications (Swift and Java) and React Nativ, and discovered that he'd never heard of either of these technologies, and had never discussed the positive aspects of either of them for his project. How can he then make a choice of provider?

Tips: Ask a professional such as AMOA (assistance à Maîtrise d'ouvrage) for a short assistance mission, document yourself and take note of everyone's arguments, and see what has been done with the technology in question.

The deliverable: A small feasibility study if you have an AMOA and a comparison of existing solutions that could meet your needs.

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Quality / Warranty

At the end of the design and development phase, the service provider must set up a "acceptance" phase to check that the mock-ups conform to specifications and that the technical aspects are working properly. A warranty period should always be negotiated with the service provider to avoid obtaining an unreliable product.

Tips: Include a acceptance period and a warranty period in the contract.

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Provider quality

The last element, which for me is as essential as the others, is: Trust.

With your service provider, you need to develop a relationship based on trust, understanding and respect. I'm thinking of writing an article in the near future on trust in the customer/supplier relationship. You have to trust your service provider, give him a dose of autonomy and a good understanding of the technical difficulties he may encounter. Naturally, this must be backed up by "goodwill" on both sides. Both parties want to deliver quickly and to a high standard, but to achieve this, a relationship of trust needs to be established right from the first meeting.  

Tips: Meet the service providers or make several calls, and don't just talk about your project, but also about the service provider's vision. You need to identify whether you see yourself working with them, study their financial soundness and references, imagine a worst case scenario with them and try to anticipate their reactions.

Good advice for service providers: Evangelism

To get a good customer, you have to help him or her develop skills: it's essential.

He needs to take an interest in our business and quickly develop a satisfactory digital culture, otherwise the relationship is one-sided and less relevant to the rest of the project.

I'm delighted when a customer starts using our digital jargon, because it's proof of good communication and the transmission of knowledge necessary in this relationship.

Each digital service provider has its own expertise and its own way of designing and delivering projects, but we need to evangelize about our business because I'm convinced that if we all do it, our prospects will find it easier to choose us, to trust us and to allocate more budget to us, but we need to show transparency and good faith.

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