Not understanding the client requirement

[former_member183690]

HI All i have some weakness much depress i am some times i dont understand client requirement , for that client will become very harsh and he will complaint to our boss , i was end user before joining to consulting  i had never face such insult  in my career  is consultants has no value nor respect ? did i find wrong way by joining this role 1 year over joining this role before as end user i  have experience of 4 years please advice please advice me how to understand the client requirement .

[former_member182378]

Hidyath,

Being harsh, misbehaving all these are unacceptable in today's work place. If this persists unfairly, then you need to find a different job or work with some other client.

Understanding client requirements is not easy! and sometimes there can be a misunderstanding. Even the best and most experienced consultants, do not get the 100% understanding of the client requirements always.

Don't worry about occasional lapse, or post implementation rework. The key is perseverance.

You need to take these specific cases and think what action and when if you could have taken, to get better results.

Describe these in detail and clearly to yourself and evaluate, with a goal to improve in future.

Discussing, paraphrasing, prototyping, showing with drawings on excel, all these help in explaining your understanding and getting the clients approval / sign off.

The key is evaluate if this behavior is because of some valid reasons, if it is unfair, consistent, disruptive, then you need to think of informing your manager and if nothing changes, then change projects or jobs. Another key is perseverance and preparation, you need to think in long term. You have to keep improving technically and in communication skills throughout your career as an SAP analyst.

Keep positive and wish you the best.

TW

Message was edited by: TW Typewriter

[Colleen]

Hi Hidyath

I'm sorry to hear you are having such challenges. I'm going to ask some open questions here but also provide some constructive feedback. Please take this how it's intended: to give you an opportunity to reflect and improve. I'm going to call out some stuff with topics as they hit my mind...

Leadership from you side

• Has your manager/team leader been clear in what the issues are and what you can specifically do to improve? Without facts you don't know what to target as key areas.
• Is this a cultural/challenging project or your work ethic in question? If it's a difficult client then TW has made job hunting. Also, consider it might be a temporary challenge on this client but you'll learn a lot on the emotional side of working (how to separate the emotion and persevere)
• Do you thing your manager has KPI/bonus opportunities that are not being met and your team is being blamed (bad leadership)? You are kind of stuck on this one unless someone calls them on it which is highly unlikely
• Does your team have the right resourcing, time and skill to meet the customer requirements? Does your company need to upskill your team?

Overall Client Relationship

• What is the general relationship between your company and the client?
• Is there a lot of distrust and quality issues? Why do you think some of them are happening? How do you think you can control/improve things on your end?
• Is the project behind schedule? Recognise there is problem a commercial/cost issue at play and management are probably fighting it out behind closed door

Offshore/Outsource Model

This part is out of your control but reason why you might question how you are being treated. Yes it is unprofessional but sometimes human (poor) nature. Customers engage service provides/consultancies for their expertise. They get sick of poorly produced work, bad communication and lack of understanding their requirements. They question why so much rework when after all  "it's a service they paid for".

These clients may have previously had an onsite person or really skilled in house team but have made cost-cutting measures to send work external. They may not be used to providing requirements in the outsource model and don't want to get caught up in a debate of "this is not standard", "this is a change request", "that wasn't in the functional spec" or silence. They have no idea what level of management and additional hurdles you have to follow to get things through and delivered.

They don't know how bad the VPN connection was and how slow it was. They are frustrated that quality is not there and it's impacting their ability to do their job.

What can you do

so after a few random put yourself in other's shoes you might be able to see where some hostility comes from. But really, how can you make things better for yourself? This is where my constructive criticism comes into play

COMMUNICATION!!!

You can make a massive difference in how you communicate with someone. Have a look at what you wrote in your question to this community. It is brain dump of run on sentences, poorly thought out ideas, lack of proper grammar and also spelling. I'm not trying to be grammar police (I still make heaps of errors) but you can take some time for professionalism and write something clear.

I'm not sure how you communicate to your clients but can you have a look and see how it could be better?

Other things to now think through:

• written communication - do you have templates that you can follow to get items done? Are there any situations where they client did not understand what you meant? Are you using their terminology?
• spoken communication - if you have conference calls, have you made sure you are talking slow and very clearly. You need to consider that your accent and pronunciation may be different to your customer and add a phone line without reading someone's body language can be hard to comprehend meaning.
• audience - have you considered your audience in anything that you do? When communicating, are you remembering if you are talking to a technical or business person so you can adjust?
• requirements gathering - how are you gathering requirements? Are you showing initiative and explaining to the customer what the business impact is or are you expecting them to complete  a template that makes no sense to them? Are you making yourself available to the customer for follow up?
• workshops and meetings
  • Have you adequately prepared for any meetings that you hold when capturing business requirements? Your client's time is very valuable to them. People hate being in meetings that are a waste of time as they have had to sacrifice that time for you when they could have been working on something else
  • Do you have an agenda that has been sent out earlier so the attendees know what to expect?
  • Chairing of meeting - is someone managing the scope of the meeting to address the agenda, taking minutes, identifying and assigning meeting action items and parking/deferring items that are out of scope
  • Communicating - is the follow up and communication to let the attendees know the outcome and next steps?
• system knowledge?
  • Are you studying up on the SAP concepts to keep your skill up
  • Do you have a senior colleague to quality check your work and provide feed back?
  • If in doubt, are you going away and thinking through your doubt and trying new steps? In some cases, you might need to do this outside of client time to get up to speed
• business knowledge?
  • are you keeping across what the business is actually trying to achieve?
  • do you know the industry/module/concepts outside of SAP?

I've thrown a lot a random stuff out there as I don't know your specific issue. I'm trying not to read too much into your personal circumstances but I genuinely hope you take on board your writing style. Sorry if this one post is an unfair characterisation of you but this is a professional forum and you have made little effort to your post.

You may not be able to change the client view point as a lot of it could be politics. But ask yourself why is the client being harsh and is any of it justified? You may be working hard but if the customer is not seeing the value, need or benefit then it's a failure.

Regards

Colleen

[former_member182378]

Colleen,

Your post covers several nuances, it will be helpful to many members those who are in difficult situations and/or want to improve the client experience (in general). Thanks!

TW

[Colleen]

Thanks TW

Most of it can be simplified down to managing client expectation and realising that you are providing a service that they are paying for.

[former_member182378]

Colleen,

Another piece is "growth, progression plan of the analyst". How much time, effort, focus is going into managing this client versus how much is the analyst growing technically and w.r.t. people skills?

Taking a rough time span, say 6 months, one needs to evaluate is s/he "better off" engaging with this client or these people representing the client? The result of this evaluation is based on personal goals but evaluate periodically. Life is too short to feel down and low and this greatly impacts work, progress, gathering technical knowledge.

Also the opportunity cost of somewhere in another assignment you could get clients those are great and add to your learning curve...so its about regular evaluation, introspection and then hard work, perseverance with a mental umbrella of positivity.

TW

[Colleen]

Seems like OP has joined the consulting as either an analyst or junior consultant but has been thrown in the deep end by the employer.

st year out consulting and trying to capture business requirements would be a challenge. End user experience is helpful but you really need a senior person mentoring you as you may only know one way (your previous job) of working.

[Jelena_Perfiljeva]

You can make a massive difference in how you communicate with someone. Have a look at what you wrote in your question to this community. It is brain dump of run on sentences, poorly thought out ideas, lack of proper grammar and also spelling. I'm not trying to be grammar police (I still make heaps of errors) but you can take some time for professionalism and write something clear.

Was going to point out the same thing. If this is how you communicate at work then no wonder there are problems.

We can't know what actually transpired in your case, so I can only speak from my own experience on both sides of the fence. Customer is paying for services and does not care at all about your or your employer's challenges. Period. If your employer is "selling" you as a more experienced resource than you really are then it is something you need to discuss with your manager.

Look at the way how you communicate with the customer in order to make their requirements clear. If you have a lot of questions then just pick a phone or Skype and call. Don't send back a long questionnaire by email, this would likely irritate the customer and leave an impression you don't know what you are doing. Also you could just summarize your understanding and ask (politely) to confirm if you got it right. Make sure to respond as quickly as possible. When a consultant takes long time to reply and then completely misunderstands on top of that - that's when the things will fly off the handle.

I'm also not sure if there is some cultural aspect involved. What you might perceive as an insult in the US and other western countries could be just a normal way to communicate professionally. E.g. we sometimes get emails from the European colleagues that sound borderline rude, but they are just being direct and that's how they write. On the other hand, I find some emails from the offshore folks annoyingly "perfumey" and too long. Again, it's just how they are used to do things (and they might find our emails shocking as well). Everyone is different.