‘Whatever the Client Wants:’ An Infallible Strategy?

“Whatever the client wants.” This widely known phrase, often regarded as a nugget of business wisdom, seems almost impossible to refute. Clearly, in any business endeavor aiming for success, the consumer’s needs and requests must always be treated as top priorities.

But what should a company do when a client request, from the provider’s perspective, lacks sound judgment?

If the client is unwilling to hear any advice regarding their request — and even reacts negatively to any questioning — the provider may end up launching a project that it knows is unlikely to succeed. In turn, when the initiative fails to deliver the expected results, the client will have no hesitation in placing the blame on the provider’s performance.

Such situations can often arise in the field of technological innovation. For instance, a company may be convinced that artificial intelligence is exactly what it needs to improve its business outcomes — a perfectly reasonable belief.

However, the company might be unaware of the challenges that come with implementing AI, such as ensuring the quality of corporate data, analyzing and redesigning internal processes, strengthening various aspects of its current technological infrastructure, and developing new skills among its workforce. These are all critical aspects that the technology provider must clearly communicate. In its eagerness to embrace innovation, the company may overlook these challenges and ask the provider to begin implementation right away.

Without a clear and objective understanding of the implications involved, the project will struggle to deliver the desired results — or will only do so partially — while costs and timelines exceed initial estimates.

It’s worth noting that, globally, according to research by the del Project Management Institute, 70% of corporate projects, including those focused on implementing innovative technologies, fail due to three primary causes, each of which can stem from poor handling of a client request: inaccurate requirements from the client organization, faulty initiative design estimates, and constant shifts in project goals. Additionally, according to these studies, 37% of initiatives fail specifically due to poor management of client requirements.

In the example above, the “whatever the client wants” mindset does not lead to an ideal outcome. To avoid such pitfalls, especially in the implementation of innovative solutions, companies and providers must strengthen the concepts of collaboration and communication, fostering open dialogue where the expertise of both parties — client and technology partner — can truly come together.

A Better Approach to Driving Projects

In building a better space for collaboration and communication, companies and technology providers must make mutual commitments, which require new perspectives when approaching innovation-related projects.

On the client’s side, a key step is to strengthen the criteria used to adopt technologies — in other words, to improve the way it formulates project requests.

In the innovation space, it’s easy to become enamored with the capabilities of advanced technological tools. However, companies must prioritize analysis over excitement. They need to reflect on the challenges and opportunities within their operations and, based on that reflection, determine whether an innovative solution might be a viable alternative.

This calls for a different way of formulating technology requests, shifting from statements like “we need to implement Machine Learning and a 5G network in our production plant” to more strategic framing, such as “our factory needs greater automation and more reliable communications — what technology can meet this need?” For a client organization, this perspective requires a willingness to listen to the provider rather than impose its own assumptions — and an openness to the provider’s diagnosis and recommendations.

While the notion that technology choices should be driven by business needs rather than tech trends has been emphasized for years, the reality is that many companies still focus more on specific innovations than on solving actual business challenges.

On the other hand, providers of innovative solutions can also improve the way they approach consulting. When responding to a client request, these companies should not propose a tool immediately. Instead, they must first gain a deep understanding of the client’s business environment — a level of knowledge that should go far beyond just the user company’s operations. It must encompass the characteristics and challenges of the entire ecosystem: the markets it operates in, consumer profiles, key industry trends and concepts, regulatory context, performance indicators, and more.

When a provider has this depth of knowledge, it can engage in a far more productive dialogue with the client. Both parties can focus on the topics that truly impact the company’s performance, which facilitates the design and implementation of a project with a strong chance of success. Without this level of collaboration and communication, the client organization will end up spending time and resources simply trying to explain its business to the technology partner.

Clearly, this level of consulting commitment requires providers of innovative solutions to invest in the development of their consultants. Their technological knowledge must be complemented by deep expertise in specific industries and business processes.

Meeting client expectations will always be a sound business principle. However, in the field of innovation, satisfaction cannot be reduced to “delivering exactly what was asked.” A better alternative is to create a space for collaboration and communication — between client organizations and technology providers — focused on delivering an innovative solution that genuinely contributes to the company’s success.