My wife Anne is a Road Warrior —
not of
the Dennis Hopper/Easy Rider variety, or even
Thelma & Louise. She's more like Charles
Kuralt, "On
the Road," by herself, in search of Americana. I
join
her for segments of these road trips, stretching my
weekends to catch up with her anywhere in the U.S.
or Canada.
Most recently, Annie left in her trusty 2000 BMW
in mid-September. I've flown out to join her in
Detroit and Chicago, and just returned on Monday
from Seattle. She expects to be on the move
until
Thanksgiving, except for a seven-day return (by
plane) next week to maintain her local
relationships.
Critical to Annie's ability to navigate her
favored "blue highways" successfully is a reliable
vehicle. And critical to that reliability is our
long-time mechanic Vahe Melkessetian who,
with his
brother Joe, runs J & V Auto Repair in Watertown,
MA. For almost 20 years Vahe has maintained and
repaired our cars and our kids' cars to a point at
which we take reliability for granted, even after
150–200,000 miles per vehicle.
This kind of service, of course, comes at a
price.
Vahe is a specialist and a craftsman. He anticipates
mechanical problems and takes pride in our cars'
longevity (single-vehicle Howe Family record to
date: 275,000 miles). The peace of mind that he
provides is worth every cent of the $1,173.50 that
we paid him in September to make sure that Annie's
car would navigate the projected 12–14,000
miles without a problem.
I didn't come easily to this conclusion. In the
early days of our relationship, I questioned the
timeliness (and cost) of every oil filter and brake pad
in Vahe's preventive maintenance program.
Even
now, son Will regularly reminds me that I'm paying
too much: "I can get this part off the Web and
install it myself for half of what you're paying Vahe,"
he says.
"No doubt you can," I respond, "but I'm paying
Vahe for much more than his time and materials.
I
pay a premium for his experience, his expertise, his
knowledge of how your mother and I use our cars,
and for his responsiveness to even our smallest
problems. Besides, I appreciate the fact that he has
overhead to cover."
In establishing an effective economic model for
service providers, I cited a situation in the last issue
of Howe's Bayou (Sitting in the Banker's Seat) in
which my former client proposed to lie about his
time
in order to break even on a project that was
misestimated and underwater. The article
produced
a number of responses, best articulated by Allen
Falcon, President of Horizon Information Group,
as follows:
I see similar issues in my
field. Software
and web developers often underestimate project
scope or allow too many free changes into the
project. This is understandable because estimating
software projects is as much an art as a science and
companies tend to want to please customers with
small, incremental requests. The problem begins,
though, when the vendor realizes that they have lost
their margin, that the project is "upside
down".
Some vendors take the approach of going "all
out" to wrap up what is now a money losing project
as quickly as possible. Too many, however, tend to
avoid working on the project unless resources are
otherwise idle, resulting in a spiral of missed
deadlines and payments. Too few vendors approach
their clients honestly and admit that they have erred
in either the original estimate or by allowing too many
changes without additional
funds.
The client, of course, has a role to play in
this as
well. One of my client companies has for two
years
been developing a next-generation successor to its
core medical device product. Having completed most
of the work in-house, they farmed out the remaining
mechanical design and the software
code-writing to an outside specialist, who got
them 90% of
the rest of the way before he got stalled.
Taking the project to another vendor, my client
realized that the uncompleted portion was more like
30% than 10%, and the new vendor also is now
approaching "upside down" status. This, despite
the
weekly project review meetings, the regular
submission (and payment) of detailed invoices, and a
continuing update of the project flow chart.
In both of these cases, the vendors simply
haven't been honest with my client — and
perhaps not even honest with themselves — in
determining the full scope of the project and their
abilities to respond. On my client's part, there
has
probably been too much patience and more trust
than was justified in a new relationship.
My client is willing to acknowledge that the
scope of the project may have been greater than
anticipated. He's even willing to pay for some of the
vendor's learning curve to supplement
his "established expertise." But the vendor,
like my
now good friend Vahe, has to earn that trust by
his
performance and by a candid up-front approach,
which includes acknowledging his occasional
limitations.
As Allen points out:
In my experience, most
businesses
understand that if you force your vendor to lose
money, you end up losing more in the long run.
These businesses appreciate the honesty and are
most often willing to cancel or pay for small scope
changes and, in many cases, adjust the overall cost
for the project.
As a consultant, one of the most difficult and
most rewarding successes is to prevent a project
failure and save a good working relationship between
a client and a vendor.
Amen.
