A business starts with the single person’s idea and a set of skills of his or her team. Expanding through time, your business will always need some kind of support or services, that your team do not deal with. Whether it is a single case or services you need from time to time, or you just want to expand to the new sphere. Here we come to the point when it’s time to deal with the partnership and transfer of responsibility.
How to save your time and money searching for the partnership in the digital world, is an interesting question for everyone. Perhaps, the first thing you need to know, that there is no ultimate scheme or advice to avoid all the pitfalls on your way. But there are also some things vital to detect the menace from the far-range.
It is a partnership
Get ready to be as precise as you want your potential partner to be. It is easy to build a relationship of trust if both sides are willing to do so. Even inside your own company, it is quite important for a head, to be able to hand over the responsibilities. Imagine that searching for an outside partner is the same thing. You have to trust your partners fully. In some cases, the absence of relation to trust may ruin the working process and cause unnecessary disputes over the simplest questions. Dealing with the real professional, you have to listen first. It is not a rare thing when clients competence in the issue is smaller than his or her wish to get the accurate result. You might get a lot of suggestions and options to complete these or those tasks in various variants. And if they do not correlate with your vision, don’t get in the rush trying to find another executor. That what we have experienced in our own practice.
Here, in CrispWP, we are trying to minimize the risks and work with doubts of our clients. We understand, that work in the partnership implies the responsibility and professionalism from both sides. That is why we are trying to keep clear all our processes, letting the client be involved in the process of work, knowing what is done for him.
Search for the partner as if you were searching for your own technician. Remember all the criteria you want to see in a person to provide the services for you. The true professional knows his work, and he will love doing his work for you. Got that feeling?
Risks
Okay, so you are looking for a professional outside your company to complete some tasks. Today’s digital world is rapidly developing, companies are learning to be efficient in their communication, solving tasks quickly and delivering the expected result. But, you should be aware of the companies who do not chase aims mentioned above. Learn about the risks you can probably face during the search and working process with the partner:
- The doubtful quality and endless bugfix.
You may get the product of a bad quality. The functions are not working and the code is messed up. Or it may happen that some minor bug fixing is turning to the endless fuss and feeding you with promises day after day.
How to solve: try to ensure that you hire professionals: check the portfolio, ask for the references, discuss the approach to solve your tasks. It is almost the same way as you choose the guys to renovate your house. The real specialists will easily explain you the process they follow, the means they use to assure the quality, and, of course, they have warranty statement in their service agreement template. But, you know, no signed contract will save your time and money when you get the quality issues – only trusted relations work above any paper. And, please, don’t panic when you find the first error – we are all people and sometimes we make mistakes, the difference is in how we react and fix the errors.
- The requirements were understood wrong due to the language/communication difficulties, lack of experience or skills, incompetence, lack of logical or critical thinking.
The communication troubles are difficult to solve, so that is better avoid them at all. And the process of communication might suffer not only from some linguistic issues, it is also hugely influenced by the technical understanding of the project by the executor. You as a client should be extremely precise explaining your business needs, so the executor can get the correct understanding of the task.
How to solve: Communicative issues are connected with various factors. Qualitative professionals are extremely good at understanding your needs. If you feel, that your executor has a different understanding of what you want (and if you don’t feel, better do it as well), always ask the executor to explain back what he understood. That way you would be able to see the project’s aim from the executor’s standpoint.
- Not efficient money usage.
You could have experienced it in the other spheres of your life. Have you ever choose a less expensive service and then paid for additional refinements? That’s right, in a digital world it is also possible. Beside the incompetence, the waste of budget can appear because of cheating. So that some companies are over complicating the task in a way to cause the waste of budget on the unnecessary things.
How to solve: Ask for the quote in different companies. Consider the differences in the rates. Get the explanations on the expected duration and the works to be done. That will give you a clear understanding of when the project is going far beyond the limits.
- The unclear process of work.
The work is all about time and control. For you as a customer, it is important to see how the work going on. Firstly, it gives a feeling of calmness, because the result appears right before your eyes. And it gives you a clear understanding which status does the project have. You may face the problem when the status is not clear, all the process is going without your interaction, and, as the result, the deadline is not met.
How to solve: Discuss the way how you can do the tracking of the working process. Usually, the mature agencies use the tracking tools to provide such a possibility to their clients and guarantee the clear status availability any moment.
What should you do?
If you are afraid of the risks mentioned above, here are the recommendations to pass by all those unpleasant moments:
- Check the websites of your executor. If the company or agency offers services in development, look at what they did for themselves. It’s obvious, that a poor old website working like a war-time tractor isn’t a good choice.
- Learn the history of the company. It is not the main factor, but, the duration of existence of the company probably shows, that they have done their work admirably in the past. In some cases, though, there might be the very good freshers and you can be the first to get their service at privilege conditions because they try to get the great references – pay attention to other details and hit the jackpot!
- Check the portfolio of the agency if there is such. You have to clarify for yourself if this company was working for real, whether their clients truly exist, the complexity of the projects and the final result.
- Read the feedback from the previous clients. Of course there will be a grain of loyalty in the comments, but still, you will see how the work of a company looks in the action.
- The talk itself can show the attitude of the executor to the future work. Listen precisely to the style of speech. If the conference is held by the video, the emotional state of the person can tell you a lot. Pay attention to the number of questions the person is asking. If there are no questions and everything is clear, probably nothing is clear.
- Sign a small contract and give them a technical task. This step will show you if it worse working with the company or agency. The thing is, you will pay a little sum of money, but you will get the full impression of executors work. Pay attention to the time spent on work and the result, as well as all the communication you will have in that period. Making such a “check” can save your time and budget. And if it is done well, you won’t lose anything.
- Search for the partnership as if you were searching for a new worker for your own team. The thing is, we can make strict demands for our own workers. But, at the time, we have much more realistic expectations from their work. Keep in mind, we are working with people.
Conclusion
Is it difficult to find a partner? Not at all. Is it difficult to find a good partner to work with, to communicate and understand each other easily in order to get the proper result? Surely, it costs time and requires knowledge, but, it is worth trying! Eventually, most of the companies are interested in their reputation. They improve their ability to work with the different kinds of clients and to solve the complicated tasks. Which makes their proficiency visible. That is why we have no doubts that you will succeed in engaging into the productive partnership!
Have you ever worked with vendors? What difficulties have you met during the search? Tell us about your experience!