In or Out?

Choose the RIGHT Contract Design firm to save money, supersize ideas, and bring your product to market fast!

By: Keir Hart

I had been staring at the quotes for almost an hour. One seemed reasonable, but did they really understand our needs? The other two were with reputable design firms, but the budget was outrageous. Why was design so expensive? We could easily do this in house if my people weren’t in meetings all day long. Maybe I should hire instead? Too bad we don’t have the budget. What am I supposed to do?

Sound familiar? I was working for a large medical device manufacturer at the time, trying to pick a design house for our next project. My design team had been bogged down in meetings for weeks and it didn’t look like things were going to change anytime soon. So, we all decided to outsource the design work. We sent out the RFQs and within a couple of days all the firms had contacted us to setup a conference call to discuss our needs. Firm A was popular and had a reputation for being at the top of their industry. The meeting started off well, but they quickly morphed into divas, extolling their virtues and detailing why we would be stupid to go with anyone else. We went to the next contractor call with Firm B a little down.

Things didn’t improve. Not only did they not know anything about our company, but we weren’t even sure they knew their own business. We kept at it and eventually whittled the list down to three potential candidates, none of them wonderful. It would come down to price. The three candidates sent in their quotes and only one was even remotely close to reasonable. We went with them.

Unfortunately, the work product was not…shall we say…useful. There were a handful of ideas that were new to us, but so complicated as to be either too expensive to be practical or just plain wouldn’t work. It was a quarter million dollar bust. What a waste.

Hopefully, you don’t have to burn through your budget and have nothing to show for it. The best practices below should help you pick the wheat from the chaff. Take a look and please let us know what you think. We love to hear back from our readers!

Before Submitting Your RFQ

 

1. Assemble a detailed design package: Put together all the documentation that you currently have.  If you don’t have a list of requirements, now is the time to start one.  They don’t need to be super detailed and shouldn’t be.  Leave room for creativity.  Instead, capture the high-level requirements and absolute must-dos.  Don’t worry, your design team will elaborate on these. 
2. Do your homework: Use Google, colleagues, and past experience to put together a laundry list of potential vendors.  Check their websites.  Ask around.  Who are the star players?  What company name do you keep hearing? Is there anyone you should definitely NOT use?
3. Make sure you have executive buy-in: While seemingly a small thing, having management buy-in prior to speaking with potential firms is a must.  There’s nothing worse than ruining a potentially great business relationship because your boss decided “no” simply because they didn’t get to weigh in. 
4. Budget: Know your budget and provide a range to the design firm.  A competent firm will use that range to help scale their services appropriately. 
5. Get NDAs: Get an NDA in place before sharing any specifics.  You can talk generally about your company, but you’ll want protection before you show them any patents, trade secrets, etc. 

 

During the Quoting Process

 

1. Meet in person: If you can, do it live and in person.  Being able to read body language can tell you much more than an email or phone call ever could. 
2. See them in action: Work examples are great but see if you can bring a miniproject for you all to do together at the meeting.  This tells you two big things.  First, can you all work together?  Second, are they creative and competent?  Just a word of caution, don’t bring anything too crazy or that requires special knowledge of your products. 
3. Ask questions: lots of them.  It’s better to ask now than to be surprised later. 

 

Vendor Selection

 

1. Listen to that little voice: your brain works in mysterious ways.  It is a powerful tool that can sort through all those nearly imperceptible signals you received throughout the process and send up the red flag.  Maybe it’s not real, but certainly further investigation is warranted.   
2. Don’t just pick the first one: Small business owners and managers under pressure can sometimes just pick the first business they find.  You don’t need a warm body; you need the right firm.  Look farther than the tip of your nose. 
3. Check referrals and references: Ask for references during the quoting process and check them.  The fact that they have references says a lot but verify that the references agree. 

 

Working with Vendors

 

1. Use a single point of contact: It’s easy on a big project to want to have the engineers speak to engineers directly (or marketing, etc.).  However, details can get lost and decisions made that impact the bigger picture.  Here at Flying Pig Designs, we advocate using a single point of contact for all communications.  If the engineers have to talk, be sure that your contact person is cc’d and give them the authority to intervene if needed.  The contact person doesn’t need to be a project manager, but they should have high-level visibility on the project.
2. Maintain regular weekly communication: Communicate.  Often.  At a minimum the entire team should be talking on a weekly basis.  Daily is best.  It is much easier to course-correct after 24 hours than 24 days.  That being said, keep the meetings short.  15-30 minutes should be plenty of time to provide a status update and plan next steps. 
3. Give approvals quickly: Deadlines rarely move.  And if you and your team are taking up valuable time waiting to approve a document, you are increasing the pressure on your design firm.  More pressure usually means more mistakes.  Don’t expect them to work late nights and weekends to make up for your delay. 

 

After the Project

 

1. Postmortem: For short projects of roughly 90 days or less, perform a postmortem after the work is complete.  Be sure that the design firm hears both the good and the bad feedback, and give them a chance to do the same to you.  In addition, if the project is longer than 90 days, consider holding interim postmortems.  It can be hard to remember the beginning of a project at the end, and sometimes difficult events are remembered differently than as they actually happened.  Meeting to review the project on a regular basis prior to completion can help get you back on track and avoid a costly derailment. 
2. Referrals: If you like the company, offer to be a referral for them.  It can be great for both their business and yours. 

 

Hopefully, this checklist captures some of the best practices for identifying, selecting, and working with a contract design house.  Having these experts on your team can provide additional hands, as well as inject some fresh ideas into your company.  Listen to them.  Be open and honest, and you’ll be sure to have a great experience. 

 

If you would like to learn more, please check us out at Flying Pig Designs and let us know how we can help.

 

Keir Hart is a mechanical engineer and product development coach with 15 years of experience in consumer and medical device design. Keir is on a mission to grow a passionate, high-performing, human centered design company focused on improving the world around us and delivering clean, quality, manufacturable designs to our customers.  If you need design assistance, be sure to look us up at www.flyingpigdesingsllc.com or on LinkedIn.