Sunday, March 23, 2008

Perfect Customer, Perfect Vendor - Hand in Glove

Do you know what gets us at Ishi Systems excited? The opportunity to work with our perfect customer. The perfect customer provides us with the ability to excel in what we do while adding the most value. Here are a few characteristics that we have observed in our perfect customers.

Transparency and Expectations
We are free to communicate not only our strengths but also our weaknesses to the customer. Our strengths are appreciated and leveraged while our weaknesses are understood and we are expected to perform extremely well within the constraints of our capabilities.

Open Communication
The perfect customer communicates all assumptions and constraints to us in a timely fashion. They provide us with critical information regarding budget constraints, organizational issues (predominantly in the case of outsourced projects), quality requirements etc. which helps us manage the engagement effectively handling any risks.

Educative and Knowledgeable
The perfect customer is very knowledgeable about the problem area and makes all efforts to communicate and educate the project team. We in turn share our knowledge with customers on technology improvements, new products, development & project management techniques, market information etc. This communication improves the quality of partnership helping us understand each other better.

Separation of Concerns
Customer maintains clear separation of concerns carefully avoiding micromanagement. However they are very aware regarding the project progress, anticipating and communicating risks as well as issues proactively. This promotes a sense of ownership within us driving us to constantly improve the quality of our deliverable.

Feedback
Customer provides continuous and comprehensive feedback pertaining to service quality and issues. This contributes considerably towards the improvement of our delivery.

Vendor Management Interaction
Customer periodically connects with our management to communicate the future direction of the relationship. This increases management awareness which impacts the quality of our relationship while contributing to our strategic direction.

Please let us know what you think of our perspective at saju dot thomas at ishisystems.com

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