FLI

You Cannot Leave Everything to the Professional Services Firm

"There is no such thing as an effective turnkey solution."

That statement deserves to be framed and hung on the office wall as a reminder if you plan to use an outside resource. No outsider can do the whole task for you – unassisted, unmonitored, undirected. (Imagine, for instance, what might happen if you asked someone to select, buy, and deliver an outfit of clothing for your next business meeting without your consultation!)

While you can and should expect at least as high a degree of professionalism from professional services firms as from your own staff, they will still require a degree of supervision and support. The good news is that professional services firms can save your organization both money and total labor effort. The bad news is that you, or some of your key people, may have to expend an increment of extra effort to realize those benefits.

Situations to Avoid

Here are some danger signals – situations to avoid – and some suggestions for realizing the results you expect. Avoid services firms that:

Won't give you a fixed delivery date for services.
Fail to recommend, or skirt the issue of, progress review milestones.
Plan to go away, never to be seen again until the suggested delivery date.
Promise to relieve you and your people of the total burden. ("Leave it up to me. Your CEO will love the video!")
Are reluctant to let you see anything or discuss anything until the job is done.
Are reluctant to discuss evaluation methods and successful performance criteria.

Some Rules for Success

In case you find all that a bit negative or threatening, let's look at some rules for success.

Rule One: Get mutual roles and responsibilities in writing.

Services firm

What services firm personnel will be working on the job? Full time or part time? Usual work hours?
Where will the services firm personnel work – your facilities or theirs?
What are the final deliverables?

Buyer

Who is the internal project coordinator assigned? Does he/she know mutual responsibilities and services firm agreements?
Is the services firm's access to other internal people direct, or through your project coordinator?
Who has authority to make go/no-go decisions as the project progresses? (Ideally it is the buyer's project coordinator.)
Who are the in-house reviewers? Are they committed to timely reviews at each milestone? Are they aware of that commitment and the consequences of slippage?

Mutual

What provisions for revisions do you mutually agree are satisfactory?
What are your mutual agreements and responsibilities for production, testing, reproduction, distribution, implementation, and evaluation?
What are the acceptance criteria at each milestone? Are both parties aware of that commitment and the consequences?

Rule Two: Verify that a quality control process exists.

Professionals expect to discuss and agree upon quality details such as these. They know that, when selling intangible services, the more that is mutually agreed upon up-front and throughout the course of the project, the more satisfactory and timely will be for the end product — for both parties.

The professional services firm should make provisions for a specialist other than the principal author, designer, writer, consultant to quality review each draft deliverable before it is released to your reviewers.
You should have the opportunity for an internal review, at each milestone, of each draft deliverable before acceptance.
You should have the opportunity to jointly review each deliverable at each milestone before authorizing changes and approval to continue.
All final-draft deliverables should be tested with a small, representative sample of the intended user audience, or by some other objective means of evaluating the product.

Some Closing Thoughts

The use of outside resources can be a profitable investment. It can help you reduce labor costs, and avoid overstaffing during periods of peak demand ... which can only lead to the anxiety and stress of laying off talented personnel when their services are no longer needed.

When you use outside resources, you are buying intangible services. Therefore, it is important to define your problems, needs, and expectations clearly. The tool for accomplishing this is a services specification which communicates your business needs - not a pre-defined solution.

A well written specification provides a level of prescreening, thereby reducing demands on your staff to review "mountains of proposals." More important, specifications that communicate will help you select the professional services firm that will produce the results you expect.

Finally, like your own staff, services firms need a level of review and supervision.

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