The winning pitch

Published by neil on November 26th, 2005

It is always very satisfying to win a pitch, but to win on the basis of successfully assessing the client’s personality and offering a proposal tailored to meet the needs they have expressed, is sweet, delicious icing on the cake.

The project is for a company intranet for a prominent - if not large by comparison - magazine publisher. The primary remit is to enable a mechanism for internal communication within an organisation with a reputation for non-corporate ideology.

One telephone conversation with the project manager and it is clear they want something different here, something unique, something which will reflect their personality and enhance, or more accurately activate, communication between departments and individuals. Nothing about this solution requires anything special with regard to technical specification: a capable webserver on the network will do just fine for access by 350+ staff members.

Yet based on a discussion with the client in our initial meeting yesterday, the majority of pitches I was competing against took the tone of creating the most technically superior and stable hardware/software platform for the application. Technical specifications for the solution at all levels abounded, but little about how that solution might actually integrate with real people.

There is often a distinct advantage genuinely sitting in that no-mans-land (no, perhaps I should call it Eden) between the technical and creative camps. It encourages technical solutions with a creative flair, and creative solutions with a technical underpinning. So many potential problems between the two are solved almost at the point of conception, leaving much calmer waters ahead.

My pitch talked about a growing, organic intranet structure, which could build upon a central foundation to evolve into an environment dictated by the users themselves. An environment with just enough control and moderation to thwart potential chaos, but little enough to allow freedom of expression by the users. A little explanation of how that might be implemented, and bingo! That may all sound like bull-shit hogwash to some, but it is not. It may be more difficult to define than servers, operating systems and processes, but it is critical to this project’s success.

The lesson here is that even with an apparent technical project (application development) it is often necessary to step away from the technical and look at how your solution will enhance your client’s lives. How it is physically delivered is initially almost secondary. Thirst for (often unnecessary) tech can be an infectious and consuming desire, and in this case lost a number of freelancers a very interesting project.

Footnote: We are not quite at commissioning state just yet. The client has to have a budget approved before we begin, but it is ours in principle.

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