At Cube Creative, we welcome establishing mutually beneficial partnerships with other businesses. Over the years, we have discovered a few insights that make our partnerships work better.
Have direct access to the client
Cube Creative needs to have direct access to the client versus working through a “middle man” from the beginning of a project through completion. Otherwise, getting through the entire project becomes a giant game of “telephone tag,” causing it to suffers, both in time and extra work.
Let Cube Creative do the designs
We can best serve our clients when Cube Creative handles a project in its entirety, including the design. Recently, a client hired a friend to complete the design work of a project. The friend was a great designer for print projects; his design was beautiful and perfect for a high-end ad in Our State magazine. Unfortunately, it did not work for a website. Therefor, we had to take this existing design and recreate it into something that would work as a responsive site. This created extra costs for the client.
Avoid scope creep
Scope creep relates to the telephone tag game mentioned above. Cube Creative needs to have a clear scope of what a client wants before a project begins. One client hired us to provide project design and website development. The client did not have a clear picture of what was needed nor knew what questions to ask. Cube began the project, implementing ideas and changes along the way. Because “the customer is always right,” it was difficult for us to ask the hard questions and advise the client when their requests were not suited to a great outcome. In the end, the client came to realize our recommendations (based on many years of experience) resulted in the best outcome. The client’s lack of scope caused the bill to be much higher than was necessary.
The bottom line is this: Like a marriage, a great partnership boils down to mutual trust and open communication.
