All businesses must ultimately consider the assistance of a software professional if they wish to remain efficient and competitive. As part of such assistance, companies usually seek consultative services, which are often unfamiliar to them. Nevertheless, consulting is an important step which can help an organization improve its software initiative, while saving time and money.
The following article by our Senior Digitalization Consultant, Kris Honkola, explains the benefits that our client has gained thanks to a consultative project with Espeo Software.
Make sure to check out all the articles from the consulting series:
- How to identify what digital technologies to invest in [Part 1]
- Identifying the best digital investments: Use Cases [Part 2]
- How to use business value to your company’s advantage [Part 3]
Consulting with Espeo: helping you identify the often overlooked aspects of your business
In our recent sales meeting with a client, we had a clear agenda of topics to discuss. The client needed a better way to monitor their internal customer service processes, so a development team was created to code a software solution. All they needed from us was additional experienced developers.
We agreed on a profile of the developer resources and discussed other topics after the actual agenda items.
However, one comment from the client caught my attention as we were about to leave. They had dismissed the importance of some of the legal requirements for the business process. Not in the European Union where the company had traditionally mostly operated, but in the United States as well as in Great Britain, which was one of their largest customer bases, and are now not subject to EU and EU rules.
Following some research on the topic, I contacted the client, and we changed the model of our engagement. Rather than just adding two developers to their team, we agreed on bringing on an actual project team with the responsibility of a project which was part of their overall software solution.
The advantages of the consulting for the client
Listed below are the benefits our customer has realized:
- We were responsible for the quality and the execution of our part of the project. Making sure that everything was finalized on time, and on budget. Also with quality functional code.
- With our experienced development team, combined experience in developing applications of over 80 years, we brought mature development practices to their organization. Their own team is mostly young developers with limited experience so our cooperation was a great learning experience for them.
- As our developers and project managers have worked developing different software solutions over the years, they got familiar with dozens of business processes. As part of our daily meetings with the client, Espeo’s team was highly active advising and incorporating the best ways of automating the business process. This helped the parts of the project we were not in charge of.
- In the course of the project, we touched many business processes of the client which were not directly impacting our project but had some integration points. As we discussed those, we noted a few improvements that could be done to the data that those processes affect, or created to further improve the processes.
The client collected a list of items they are evaluating as bases for new improvements and projects. This is typical with the project-based approach we take. We, as senior consultants, often notice other things that could be improved, and we use our experience to give advice when possible.
What did the client think of our cooperation?
We received a following comment from the customer after the closing meeting:
“I was very skeptical about turning part of the project over to Espeo. I did not think that we could integrate your team with our developers. But looking at it now afterwards it was the best decision we made during the whole project. Not just the component Espeo delivered but the whole project is much better now. Thank you for sharing your experience along the way.”
