Why you should engage the Tech Company that disagrees with you

Let’s assume for a minute you have no mechanical expertise. Your car is making a noise, so you take it to the garage and tell them that you think it may be the brakes. The garage changes the brakes but does no further investigation and the noise is still there. They give the car back to you knowing that. When you complain, they tell you that they did the job you asked them to do. This is the scenario that is being played out in tech consultancy every day and results in very high failure rates.

Clients who have no tech expertise call in tech companies to provide them with the expertise they lack. Instead, too many tech companies insist on a detailed brief, and deliver that without making intelligent recommendations or even highlighting the issues. The project is then a failure. The tech company smugly tells everyone it’s due to a bad brief.

We’ve recently been working with a founder who had exactly that experience. She had a clear business plan and understood exactly what she wanted her tech consultants to deliver. She conveyed that to them. But, knowing her lack of tech expertise, instead of telling her up front that part of her brief was not possible, and then suggesting alternative ways of delivering her objectives, they stuck to the brief and then told her at the end that the application they delivered fitted the brief except where it wasn’t possible. The missing part was core to the company being able to engage customers. The tech consultancy knew that when they were engaged but didn’t bother to tell her or suggest a work around. Their attitude was very much “that’s your problem, we did what you asked us to do.”

At Journi we behave very differently. We see our clients as our partners. A core part of what we do is to ensure we understand what your business is trying to achieve, where the sensitivities are and the business imperatives. If we understand all these drivers, we have a much better chance of applying our expertise to ensure that you get the product or service you need, which may not necessarily be the one you thought you wanted.

Part of our job is to question your brief and even disagree with you. We apply our expertise to find alternative ways of delivering what you need if your brief is not possible, and we may suggest additions or changes to improve the end result (or even to make it more cost effective). Your challenges become our challenges.

One reason we can do this is because of our culture. Tech consultancy has a deserved reputation for long stressful hours and poor work life balance. Research has proven that this has a negative impact on creativity and accuracy. Tired, over-worked employees will usually take the easy option, which is to follow the brief blindly and not consider the wider picture (or even apply common sense). To make a profit, many of the traditional consultancies also get young graduates to do the majority of the work, and they don’t have the experience to understand the business impact.

We set up Journi as an alternative to the above model, which fails both clients and employees. It is important to us that the team at Journi lead balanced lives, where they have time and energy to apply their expertise and creativity to our clients’ challenges. If you want a tech partner that will care about your business, get in touch.