Solution Engagements

In many other industries, when you have a problem, you go to an expert for a solution. For example, if you’re sick, you go to the doctor. The doctor analyzes your symptoms and gives you a treatment plan to make you well again. Patients don’t go to the doctor with a treatment plan that they think is the right solution. The same can be said for accountants, lawyers, and even contractors. So why is the solution process so different in technology?

When faced with a technology-oriented challenge or opportunity, companies will often attempt to design their own solution before ever consulting an expert. While they are certainly subject matter experts in their core business, not being subject matter experts in technology often leads to less than the optimal solution for their needs. The RFP published for this solution often lacks many important details - details necessary for an implementation partner to be able to accurately estimate and quote the project.

Companies will often rely on implementation partners to fill in the blanks or suggest better solutions, which can introduce numerous issues into the process. Suggestions and assumptions are made from the RFP content, not from a comprehensive understanding of the business and the specific challenge or opportunity, and with the RFP deadline looming. Certainly not the best conditions under which to make decisions critical to the success of a project.

This is the reason that so many outsourced digital projects fail. Not because the implementation partner didn’t do a quality job, but because the solution requested was not the optimal, most efficient way to solve the problem or take advantage of the business opportunity.

3 Levels of Solution Engagements

Solution Discovery Engagement

Solution Refinement Engagement

Solution Partner Engagement

The existing processes in outsourced software development and other digital solution services are broken. There’s good news, though. We have a way to fix it.

Digital solutions, software, and applications, depending on their complexity, can get quite expensive. If your company is going to invest a large amount of capital into a digital solution, wouldn’t you want it to be the most efficient and productive solution for your needs? This is the reason we created the Solution Refinement Engagement.

Our 3 levels of Solution Engagements begin with a discussion focusing on the challenge or opportunity as a whole, not on features and details. It has become standard practice in this industry for discussions between a company and a software development agency to begin with a perceived solution already in mind. When this happens, the opportunity to discover the optimal solution is lost. The conversation focuses on how to implement the presupposed functionality and neglects actually taking a step back to consider if that solution is the best one.

Through a Solution Engagement, we help our clients fully identify, elaborate, break down, and wayfind a solution to a business challenge or market opportunity. Our team completes an exhaustive expert analysis of both the client’s current situation and their desired future state. Bringing to bear our years of experience designing and implementing efficient and effective digital solutions, the team compiles our recommended solution to the challenge or opportunity, and a roadmap towards its implementation.

If you need help finding the best solution for your project or opportunity, contact our team. Although our company is focused primarily on healthcare and advanced manufacturing, we have found that this process is valuable across many other areas. We have extensive experience across numerous industries, which allows us to bring the best ideas for any tech-related problem.