Digital as a Deliverable

There seems to have been a trend as the rise of digital mediums to accomplish business goals has continued to be saturated, that all a business really needs to be successful in a specific project is deliverables. A website. A logo. A brochure. A platform. It is the fundamental shift away from relationship and problem solving to providing a list of asks that need to be adhered to in order to “succeed”. Internally we call this the “Digital as a Deliverable” conundrum. 

Why is it important? It incorrectly simplifies many of the driving factors that need to be thought of before engaging in a specific plan. While basing a digital project on a deliverable helps to make the output (or expectation of output) clear in a customer’s mind, it makes the process of how to achieve it much murkier. Which in turn often leads to nothing near that output being accomplished. 

Below we discuss briefly the idea of businesses focuses on digital as a deliverable and how to combat that in the initial conversations.

Tony:  So you work with a lot of clients, and a lot of times it seems they’re coming to you with a deliverable as a need for digital.  Talk to me about that.

Rahul:  Yeah, so a portion of the time it’ll be, you know, we’ll get to a point of time where they’re connecting with us through a former request and they’ll come in and they’ll say, “Hey, you know, we’re looking to our website, perhaps.”  Something spurious that way, right? And our question sometimes in that sense will be, “Well, why?” You know? It’s very evident that it definitely could use a lift, right? But the questions that we ask from more of a strategic standpoint is past them just getting a new deliverable.  Because their expectations are sometimes, “Okay, our strategic growth plan for this year is getting a new website.” But we need to understand a little bit about why. What is the website’s function? What are you looking to get out of it? Has the business strategy changed over the last decade, or over the last few years?  What does the structure look like for the next decade for yourselves? You know? So instead of treating it as a deliverable that will get done in sixteen weeks, or twenty weeks, or whatnot, it’s more about taking a step back and answering that question of the “why” and the reason behind it, and what are the expectations that you’re looking to have this present for you company.