Sometimes, a little bit of risk and some trust can be the start of a great business relationship. In this post, I’d like to show you how that concept helped both LSG Solutions and GET Imaging find a solution to an IT problem.
Taking smart risks
Not every deal is a safe bet, and we all know what a bad relationship is like. Knowing your strengths is the key to choosing the right amount of risk.
GET Imaging’s system was built with Oracle Application Express, or APEX, which is a pretty standard framework. While we didn’t know the full history of the customer’s system, we knew that our experience with APEX qualified us for the job. We knew there was a good chance we wouldn’t see anything we hadn’t seen before in that system, but we didn’t know that for sure.
We weren’t the only ones taking a risk in this scenario. The client had invested 4,000 to 5,000 man hours in their current APEX system, and they had never worked with an outsourced IT solution before. Trusting someone else with their system was a huge step.
Regardless, they were willing to trust us enough to pay up front for 40 hours of work. If they were happy with the business, we could continue working together.
How we helped GET Imaging in 40 hours
With this project, our primary goal wasn’t just fixing a single system. We also wanted to gain enough trust with the client that they’d continue doing business with us.
Using the allotted time, we first focused on gaining a high-level understanding of the APEX system’s role in the client’s business. Then we drilled down into the system’s problematic areas and uncovered some big-picture problems that the client didn’t know about.
Being able to identify fixes to these problems built enough trust with the client that they continued doing business with us.
Just enough trust
One of the primary issues we face with clients is that they have trouble trusting vendors. Sometimes, as in this case, it’s because they were used to working with somebody in-house. In other cases, it’s because they have been burned before by an outsourced vendor, and they don’t want to get burned again.
Productive business relationships require just enough trust. GET Imaging trusted us enough to get a feel for how our services fit their business, and that became the foundation of an ongoing business relationship.
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