It doesn’t make immediate sense for a services company to deliver great tools to its clients–it makes sense for the company to keep the good stuff in-house, and charge a healthy premium for its use. This leads to high margins, low overhead and a generally steady stream of work. But there’s a better way.
Here are 5 reasons to avoid this practice and, instead, build yourself out of a job.
- It makes the client happier. From their perspective, it’s definitely better to have good, solid tools, because their employees can interact with the content directly and reliably expect turnarounds (or demand them). It makes sense that the fewer steps there are between the start and finish lines, the quicker the race will be.
- The requests get boring very fast. Software shops aren’t about managing content and shouldn’t be hiring people to do it. The staff of a good services company should be skilled developers who want to spend their time developing, and skilled developers don’t want to be responsible for changing content.
- It’s easier to focus on writing a great tool than it is to anticipate all of the possible software needs. Inevitably, the client requirements will change–most likely, they’ll grow. A well thought out custom tool will do much better at handling changing needs than a one-off on top of an in-house solution.
- Your client saves money. For almost all recurring projects, they’ll undoubtedly spend less on a tool up front than they would repeatedly buying the service or paying maintenance fees. This increases good will, and frees up funds on their end for additional projects, which leads to the next item.
- If you’ve done your job right, there’s bound to be more work. This is the single most important reason to work strategically. There isn’t a company out there that doesn’t have another project waiting in the wings after the one you’re working on is complete, and if you hit a homerun with the current project, guess who they’re going to come back to with the next one? Show them that you can deliver for them, and care about their needs by not nickel and diming them with service requests, and the work will come back to you tenfold.
Rich Ziade Said:
Excellent post Chris. The thing that most consulting shops just can’t get their head around is #5. Less work = less money. This is, in fact, true – if viewed as an isolated incident.
But any consulting shop worth its weight sees the long view. If you’re locked in with clients that are doing well – there will always be more work. Self-obsolescence boosts your credibility, makes your client happier and also leaves you with far more interesting work.