We listen
First and foremost, we listen to our customers. This might sound obvious but we frequently inherit failed projects where the previous contractors basically didn’t listen and tried to impose solutions.
We co-construct the solution
We know what technologies exist and how to apply them and at what cost, but we are not experts in our customers’ businesses. They know what they need, they know their domain. We co-construct our solutions together, based on our respective expertise.
We think ahead
Most of the time, when our customers ask us to solve a problem, it is only the tip of the iceberg. With our experience and knowledge, we can help our customers find the real pain points.
We systematically think about scaling our solutions and about reducing their costs. Basically we treat our customers’ problems as if they were our own. The solutions we propose are the solutions we would apply ourselves.
We reassure
We don’t jump into big projects that take months or even years. We find the bottlenecks and use the Pareto principle:
The Pareto principle (also known as the 80/20 rule, the law of the vital few, or the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.
We cut the problem into sub-problems and always agree with our customers on a feasible schedule that reassures them (and us).
We are honest
We know exactly what is possible or not with the new technologies. If we don’t master some technologies that are better suited to solve our customers’ problems, we do tell them so. Either we find the right partners with such knowledge, or we redirect our customers to our competitors and tell them the pros and cons of working with them.
Some customers have their own preconceived ideas about solutions and/or technologies. If we have a good reason not to follow their directives, we inform them and try to convince them with rational arguments why we think so.
We don’t necessarily need state-of-the-art solutions
While we always keep ourselves up to date with the latest technologies (often inventing them ourselves!), we perfectly understand that our customers don’t necessarily need them. Sometimes a rule of three is better than a neural network.
We don’t necessarily need data or heavy infrastructure
Because we also use operations research, we can propose solutions right away even if the data is scarce or not exploitable. If there is data, we’ll use it, but we can also help our customers gather data the right way.
In the same vein, we adapt our solutions to our customers’ infrastructures.
We think maintenance
Solutions in operations research, machine learning — and even more when both fields are combined — are very effective but come with a certain level of complexity. Any solution needs to evolve and to be maintained. From the beginning, we discuss with our customers how this maintenance can and should be done, whether internally or by us.
We are solution driven
When we accept a project, we don’t accept failure as an option. We give it our 110%! Sometimes there is a risk associated with the project. We assess this risk with our customers and find ways to mitigate it.
We don’t reinvent the wheel when it is not needed
While we always research the state of the art to solve a problem, we often reuse known and well-tested solutions. Sometimes it might be worth reinventing the wheel, but not without a very good reason.
The human in the loop
Our solutions are very effective, but often the employees who need to use them don’t see the big picture and are lost. This is normal. Two examples:
- We optimized delivery routes for a company. While the overall solution was effective globally (it cost less and could be delivered by a reduced fleet), local routes looked suspiciously strange to the individual drivers. This is normal, and actually the reason why such a solution is so effective. We explained to the drivers why our solution was better than theirs, and once they were convinced they easily followed them.
- In another project, we had to reduce the effectiveness of our solutions and provide suboptimal ones to accommodate employees in restaurants. Their habits were so strong that our client didn’t want to disturb them.
We know that good solutions can only be effective if the people using them are convinced of their relevance.
Improving constantly
Nowadays, the trend is to construct solutions that constantly improve themselves. We provide several such improvement mechanisms. The more our customers use our solutions, the better they become.