Cleveland RFP - How The Refinery is Reinventing the Wheel
In the world of Technology, change is the constant flow, which propels everything in motion. When it comes to software digital implementation there’s innovation in some areas but not all. Because how company’s find partners to help build and implement the custom software is without a doubt behind the times and extremely antiquated.
Why is this? Well, for starters success is measured by being a little better than failure. That’s the current standard. You don’t see these standards in any other walks of life. If you brought your car in to get a brake job done, and it took four months while costing three times the amount of the original quote this would not be considered success. Although in the Tech implementation world it does, because the project got done. The mere fact it completed moves it to a place of success. Pretty depressing if you ask me. This is not just about being held to a higher standard. This is about how the standard is not truly defined, so companies really don't know what’s good or bad.
Let’s make one thing clear: this isn’t about how “stuff happens” in the industry. This is not about how everything has to be perfect to define success. This is more along the lines of creating more indicators of what success looks like. How companies need to have higher standards and the only way you achieve these standards is by taking a twenty thousand foot look above. So you look at the process from beginning to end in a full view perspective and realize that communication is a tool that best serves everyone.
Questions asked at the beginning are a value that is far under valued in the implementation process. “Absolutely we can” might breed confidence in the beginning, but why is saying “no” such a bad thing? But who wants to say no to profit? When it comes to time and materials sure that might make sense in the short term, but what about the relationship afterward? If the client feels taken advantage of then the little you gained will result in future losses. Unfortunately the industry doesn’t look at it this way. It’s conditioned the implementation partner to capitalize on every cent it can make. So saying “no” or asking “why” is not in the vocabulary. The industry standard is to set the wrong expectations in the hopes that you’ll get a chance to later set the wrong expectations again.
The cycle continues to go around and around with no end in sight. But how do you put the brakes on something that everyone wants to ride on? You create a better solution, but many don’t even see that there is a problem in the first place. Change even in a positive way doesn't mean that people will accept it. This is a huge issue in the industry that no one knows that it’s broken let alone what the fix is. Or what the fix should be. If you have a leak in your roof the obvious solution is to plug the hole. If there is a leak in your project and time and materials are spilling out many companies would just accept the loss as normal. What’s more surprising is when companies hear about a better solution.
In their first instinct is to put up a “wall” and think you’re not “shooting” straight with them. They immediately go into “what’s the catch” mode.
The term “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” needs to be erased from any type of technology driven conversation. Everyone knows technology in general is an ever changing solution that evolves from day to day up to minute by minute. This also is true about how we understand it, approach it and implement it. We must evolve too. We should embrace change on all levels of the technology path.
The Refinery has shed its skin and in this case made it evolve to a whole new mind set. We want to give our clients the forward thinking to be in the best position, so whatever their digital implementation needs are they will be in the best position possible.
