The forfeit is a forfeit for IT services
06/07/2016
Forfeit:
- contract in which a global price is fixed in advance,
- atrocious crime.
Those who had an unhappy childhood (condemned to go skiing every year) undoubtedly discovered the notion of "forfeit" as a liberation: immediate and unlimited access to the ski lift as an alternative to the multiple tickets to be laboriously taken from the tedious stock of a perforated paper ribbon folded in accordion. With mittens, it was even worse and without it was glacial. In addition, the price of the tickets was so expensive that the calculation was quickly done: a few turns of slopes had quickly "paid off" the forfeit.
On the opposite, the advent of the mobile phone has given a new meaning to the "forfeit": you pay a mandatory fixed price for a limited duration of communications. If you consume less: too bad, it's lost, if you consume more: too bad, you pay an even more exorbitant price for each additional minute from the first second...
In reality in both cases, the usage is bounded: the ski forfeit having a limited validity which implies a necessarily limited number of uses of the ski lifts. In addition, the very large number of skiers and their very different levels leads to a compensation of intensive uses (and little profitable for the ski lift company) by weak uses (and very profitable) of beginner skiers. On a large volume, you necessarily get by.
In a completely other context, laying tiles for example, the repetitive and predictable side of the work to be done allows selling with a good profit margin the service on a forfeit basis according to simple measurements: the surface to cover in this case. Certainly, the edges of a room are not always square and the surface to cover is never a precise multiple of that of each tile, not counting the inevitable small unforeseen such as the few tiles that break when you cut them. But overall, the tiler gets by with a controlled cost price.
And the client is happy because he knows what amount he commits to and he can compare the quotes from the providers more easily.
The context of IT services is much less favorable, even more when it comes to obtaining an original result in an innovative context, not to mention the fuzzy objectives or reviewed as the project progresses.
In computer science, the only reliable way to know how long it will take to achieve an objective is to achieve it. It's also often the only way to precisely define the objective...
Yet, no client wants to commit to a blank check. We understand them. Hence the inevitable conjecture of the quote where we desperately try to imagine the precise charge for a vaguely defined result.
The margin for maneuver is small: too expensive and the client prefers the competition, too optimistic and the provider works at a loss. It's most often the second solution that prevails. Which leads to numerous balance sheet filings and as many clients abandoned by their provider and forced to find another one, with additional costs and an amplifying effect: a work done in haste is often simpler to completely redo than to resume.
For EURL Barme this problem is resolved according to two approaches.
For modest projects, the work is done upfront and an a posteriori quote is proposed to the client. If he refuses it, the loss is limited and therefore does not compromise the future of the company. If the client accepts the a posteriori quote, he makes a good deal since he finances no safety margin and pays the fair price.
For larger projects, the uncertainties of the quote compensate: the underestimated parts are financed by those that are overestimated. We in fact find the principle of the large volume evoked above.
And the best clients, the most loyal, those who know that customer satisfaction is priority over short-term profitability, accept services billed by time spent, those that allow both to save a lot of time and to achieve the best quality / price ratio.