Ever tried assembling IKEA furniture without the instructions?
That’s what scoping a tech advisory project will feel like without the right information upfront. Missing details, hidden risks, and overlooked requirements can turn a straightforward project into a chaotic puzzle where nothing seems to fit and everything runs over budget.
In this article, we’ll cover the importance of requirements gathering, common risks for tech advisory projects, and how AppVentory helps make the tech advisory process easier and faster.
(NOTE: This is part 5 of our ongoing series about tech advisory. Please see part 1 for finding the right clients, part 2 for ways to streamline the discovery phase, part 3 for how much to charge, and part 4 for how to analyze tech stacks and get info from users.)
The Importance of Requirements Gathering
In order to make the right decisions, you need the right data. This is where requirements gathering comes in, which is the critical part of tech advisory where you identify and document your clients’ needs, expectations, and goals.
But that’s usually easier said than done because tech advisors are often dealing with multiple data sources, incomplete info, and numerous communication barriers. Not to mention, the requirements can change with the more you discover!
Navigating through the chaos can be intimidating, but a systematic approach to requirements gathering is a godsend in helping tech advisors organize and make sense of it all. Not only does a structured process set boundaries that help reign in potential scope creep, but it also helps clients by giving them a better idea of what to expect from the process and how long it will take.
The 4 most popular methods for requirements gathering are:
- Surveys
- Interviews
- Usage tracking
- Experienced gained by experts who have completed dozens of similar projects
Using these 3 methods, tech advisors are able to obtain a mix of qualitative and quantitative data to get a better idea of their clients’ tech stacks and what’s working and what isn’t. (See part 4 for more on how tech advisors collect info from clients)
Requirements Gathering: It’s Required Because Your Setup to Fail if You Don’t
Tech advisors, be warned — skip this step at your own risk! Because here’s what can happen if you overlook the importance of requirements gathering:
- Tech solutions that are misaligned with client needs
- Never-ending scope creep
- Budget overruns
- Client dissatisfaction and reduced retention rates
Recommending misaligned tech solutions is single-handedly the biggest risk of skipping out on the requirements-gathering stage and it’s every tech advisor’s worst nightmare because it can potentially undermine the entire project.
In order to prevent that from happening, here’s what you should do…
Focus on these 4 Requirements
To set up your tech advisory project for success, here are 3 requirements that deserve some extra attention:
1. Client Goals
Whatever you do, you must pay attention to your clients’ goals. It’s the reason they hired a tech advisor, after all, and when they tell you what they want, you should listen — especially if it’s in their own words.
2. App Compatibility
There’s nothing worse than recommending an app, only to have it be incompatible with the client’s tech stack. Clients rely on tech advisors for their expertise and incompatible apps can make clients second-guess your attention to detail and credentials in general.
3. Data Flow
Much like a river, the data must keep flowing! Clients especially love the tech advisors who can streamline data collection and consolidate it in one place.
4. System Simplicity and Elegance
Experienced tech advisors know that when it comes to apps, less is often more. So, they push for simplicity of overall system design by using elegant or intelligent combinations of applications, commonly called app stacks. (Check out StackPlan for some app stack examples)
Now that we’ve gone over the importance of requirements gathering, let’s explore the next step — tech risks.
5 Common Tech Risks to Watch Out For
Much like any project, risk management is an important part of the tech advisory process. But the better you know the risks, the better you can identify and manage them before they become an issue.
That’s why this section will explore some of the most common risks that you may encounter as a tech advisor.
1. Data Security and Data Migration
As tech advisors often handle sensitive data — whether it’s proprietary info, customer data, or other confidential details — ensuring that data remains secure must be a top priority, especially for maintaining client trust. It’s a big ask for many clients, and so getting a peek behind the curtain should be treated with the seriousness it deserves.
Data migration, where data is moved from one platform or app to another, is another data risk because firms are often more vulnerable during this time — kind of like how a crab is most vulnerable right after breaking out of its old shell but it’s worth it in the long run.
It should also be noted that data migration happens all the time in tech advisory projects, often as part of the key recommendations, which can involve transferring large amounts of data when you’re replacing legacy systems or consolidating different data sources within a unified platform.
2. Compatibility and Integration Issues
We already touched on app compatibility as a requirement that needs some extra focus, but it’s important enough that it warrants going into further detail.
The biggest risk for tech advisors is selecting the wrong apps and tech, although this can be avoided with a thorough and documented process of requirements gathering and info collection.
But keep in mind that your tech solutions can’t be one-size-fits-all. Just because something worked for one client doesn’t mean it will work for all of your clients due to the unique complexities of their respective tech stacks.
3. User Adoption and Change Management
Your client could have the best, most efficient tech stack full of effective tools that make everything easier and smoother. But it doesn’t matter if nobody is using it — and that’s why user adoption is so important.
We all know change can be hard, especially if you’re trying to change things on an organizational level. And while you need to get the managers and leaders on board, you can’t forget about the end users, either, since they’re the ones who will be using your tech solutions on a day-to-day basis. Which means your tech advisory project cannot succeed without that buy-in and user adoption.
Tech advisors can overcome these risks with a more collaborative approach that involves the key stakeholders from the start. This includes the discovery and requirements gathering phases but it also extends post-implementation where tech advisors can provide further training and support to ensure clients can hit the ground running.
4. Budget Overrun and Scope Creep
Scope creep and budget overrun are risks that often go hand in hand and they stem from a gap or flaw in the discovery, requirements gathering, or scoping phase and indicates something was missed or otherwise unaccounted for.
These risks underline how important it is to clearly define the project scope beforehand to ensure everyone is on the same page before the project begins. When it comes to preventing scope creep, remember, documentation is your friend! Use it as a source of truth and for reference.
And as the project goes on, it can help to revisit the scope periodically to ensure you and the client are still aligned.
5. Failure to Learn From the Successes of Similar Businesses
Tech advisors can make their jobs so much easier by realizing they don’t have to reinvent the wheel with every new client they get. Instead, we highly recommend tech advisors research what solutions have worked for other, similar businesses — including which apps were included in their tech stack solutions — and then modifying it based on their clients’ unique needs.
For example, many accounting firms have similar tech stacks with apps such as Xero, QuickBooks, Stripe, Hubspot, and Dext, to name a few, which already gives tech advisors a range of potential apps to incorporate in their own tech solutions.
Even better, there are platforms like StackPlan that make it easy to research tech stacks by industry, software, business size, and more.
Simplify Requirements Gathering and Risk Management with AppVentory
In tech advisory, it can be so easy to get caught up your client’s tech stack and tech recommendations that you forget to look for solutions and tools that can make your job easier.
AppVentory helps tech advisors automate the way they collect information, whether it’s part of the discovery or requirements gathering process, as it seamlessly integrates with some of the most popular accounting tools out there like Xero and Quickbooks.
It also improves data flow by centralizing data collection under a unified dashboard, and makes requirements gathering simple with automated surveys for user feedback that help you quickly get to the heart of the issue.
Lastly, AppVentory helps you quickly identify missing or underutilized apps within a client’s tech stack, which helps with compatibility and avoids other integration issues.
Want to see it in action? Then join our Early Access list to get a firsthand look at how AppVentory can improve your tech advisory process from the get-go.
