In this next post in my series on solution architecture I’m going to discuss the topic of approaching a customer with both a solution proposal and demonstration. In the last post in this series we looked at some of the things you could include in a high-level proposal document. Check that out below if you haven’t already read it.
Now let’s dive into the other part that you can bring to the table when approaching your customer with a solution proposal being a demo of what the experience could look like!
What did we already give the customer?
So we already potentially gave the customer some mockup wireframes to give them an idea of the interfaces users will have to interact with the solution using. This is great, however it doesn’t completely take the customer on the journey that we might implement for them with a solution.
The next thing we can look to do is prepare a demo through high-level development and present this to the customer. Now lets look at some of the things we consider when building out and presenting this.
Using out-the-box or templated demos
A really great tool we can utilise is out-the-box functionality and actually show customers what we can use and build on the spot. This could take various forms such as demoing the some of the high-level capabilities of Power Apps on the spot, it could be demoing an out-the-box Dynamics 365 product, or templated solutions that you’ve built for this purpose in the past.
Building a high-level solution
The next approach we could take is to actually build something which somewhat matches the needs that the customer has approached us with. It’s important here to remember that this is still pre-sales though and this demo may just highlight one or two of the high level features we’d be building for. We may also want to use this as some form of a proof of concept for any functionality we’re unsure of being able to find a solution for.
Tip – Reuse
One tip I can give you friends is have your collaborative workflows streamlined enough so that you can reuse the things you’re building! If you build something in pre-sales make sure if the objects can be utilised in the actual solution you build and implement, that you save time on these things be reusing elements or even knowledge if components aren’t fit to be reused.
Manage expectations
Once your demo is complete, its common that a customer will be happy with what you’ve presented and in their eyes it shouldn’t take much more work to implement your solution for them, after all they just saw it! However, its important to manage expectations in this space explaining why the proof-of-concept isn’t fit for implementation yet, and the areas that need to be worked on end-to-end to see the solution implemented.