Design Week (10th Feb) had an interesting article of the above title from John Mathers, UK Chief Exec of Enterprise IG and president of the DBA – The article went through the scary activity of the arrival of a procurement letter and what as a client you should do. It was interesting for a myriad of reasons – mostly, because their was a belief in the article that all design businesses still work by a process of smoke and mirrors and that open transparency is scary and not something you want to tell the client about – ironically this is just what the clients are after (as the former Head of marketing for The Royal Bank of Scotland - I know this) that you in fact have a process and that you follow it – that is tangible and robust, and defensible and works.
If you have a process and a way of working then show it – when creating wonderful pieces for clients designers often wax lyrical about the great tools in a production process or the special fermentation to create a wonderful food or beverage – alas design businesses don’t sell themselves currently with the same gusto.
About 6 months ago when I was talking with one of our clients on the benefits of Traffic, Sohnar’s Design Management system they said that they had added the use of Traffic to their credentials pitch (and they – being Kino Design – already have some great credentials – namely the designers behind the 2012 London Olympic bid logo). It helped clients to feel comfortable that there was a process; there was consistency, time management, project procedures and checks that all followed to ensure the best result was achieved. It’s not smoke and mirrors.
The other thing that John Mathers focused on was the apparent lack of understanding of design and design process from client side procurement people – its true people cannot be aware of the design process but education is the solution to the problem and if you can define it you can defend it. They simply want to know that you have processes and procedures and ways of working and being managed that they will have in their businesses. Most importantly, John mentions the need for building relationships – all business is about relationships whether it’s with the client, the procurement team the customer, the supplier – all need to be managed and all need to have one point for holding all correspondence, reports, and information. Key is to get a database that manages all of your contacts and all of their vital communication. Design businesses are no longer an anomaly they are expected to be top notch customer focused businesses that mange, manage and manage.