What if your Prime Contractor actually could identify issues with your requirements before you did? Would that help build confidence, help streamline communication, help complete a project on time, and most importantly, adhere to budget?

Governments are facing tough economic challenges; budgets are tighter with more controls than ever. If errors can be spotted earlier, then everyone wins.

Ravenflow can help customers and their suppliers communicate more efficiently and effectively. Of course, it all starts at the top during the requirements gathering (elicitation) phase. The responses to RFIs or RFPs from third-party suppliers (supply chain) need to be more thorough, more precise, with a guarantee that the cost will not overrun the budget. Conducting interviews, with sign-off along the way, should also be done as a best practice.

So why do so many projects still disappoint the customer? Where is the problem? Our customers experience a breakdown in the chain; all of the stakeholders haven’t been interviewed, dozens of meetings are held, with volumes of documents distributed to be read. The result is confusion, missing gaps, and missing requirements.

In order to improve, both the customer and supplier must change the way they are doing business today, but change is usually perceived as a "negative" instead of a positive. Change requires upfront commitment, perhaps in training and mentoring, which could cause an initial delay in project deliverables. This could be perceived as a short-term problem, when in fact it is just the opposite—a short-term delay can end up being a long-term win.

Ravenflow’s philosophy is to take the time to get it right—the customer should be more clear in their requirements, and the supplier should be double-checking those requirements before starting to perform the work. Even though change may delay the upfront process a little bit, the outcome is much better; a satisfied customer, an accountable position for the supplier of proven value against cost, and the opportunity to be known as a supplier who truly understands what needs to be done, thus allowing for future awards to occur.

We can help through our best practices methodology to make this a win/win for you as a customer, and for your supplier. Reach out to one of our best practices webinars to learn more about how to write better requirements through Use Cases, and how to perform elicitation with your customer to produce quality specifications.

Need a GSA vehicle for ordering? We are proud to have our GSA Schedule serviced by Bay State Computers. For more information, contact them at www.bayst.com.