The trouble with learning from experience is that the lesson is delivered just after the knowledge is required.
This, of course, is one of the reasons we turn to others to benefit from the broader, collective experiences whether that be friends and colleagues or suppliers and consultants to a business.
It is far from unusual for VCI to have a client come to us with a problem with which he has been wrestling for a significant part of the day. Often we are able to resolve the issue within a comparatively short space of time and sometimes receive a response along the lines of, “Is that all I needed to do?” On such occasions I have to resist the urge to respond with, “Yes, just that…and the twenty plus years of experience which has taught me to try that first.”
Sometimes the fix isn’t all that complicated but the skill is in recognising the problem and having the knowledge to apply the correct solution. In reality all the client needs to do is call us at the outset, rather than a couple of hours in, to benefit from our experience.
In April I completed some work for a new client at a very nice restaurant in Kensington. In our early conversations the request made was that we supply a wireless storage device for the network. I followed up with a visit and it took me precious little time to determine that wireless storage was not required. A quick audit of the setup and short discussion to establish what the site wanted to achieve allowed me to demonstrate how they already had all the hardware in place – all that was needed was our knowledge and experience to put it together and configure it correctly to meet the business needs.
Left to their own devices or, indeed, left in the hands of a supplier who wanted the hardware sale, they would have found themselves spending money unnecessarily. They may have not even achieved their true objectives or, at best, over-complicated the solution.
At the time of writing, our three-strong consultancy team gives your company over 70 years of industry experience upon which you can draw so that you don’t have to puzzle over the unknown.
Save yourself time and save yourself the cost of that lost time; come to us right from the start.