Can one do their job too well?

We work hard. We do our best. Try to be the best we can be. But can that be a detriment to business. As with most service based industries we are at the mercy of our own successes.

How can that be you say? How often do you pick up the phone and not get a dial tone. You have just come to expect it. It just plain works. You do not think about all the engineering or daily maintenance and upkeep that goes into making that 30 second phone call work. I would go as far as to say that we take for granted that when we pick up the phone, we expect it to be working every time. 

Is that the only thing we take for granted. Look at the postal service. You take the time to write all those Christmas cards, stick a $.47 cent (only that much higher because of the gas prices continueing to rise) stamp on each of them, and somehow, they make their way from point A to point B for less than it costs to buy yourself a package of gum. But you expect that your family photo along with your "Year in Review" letter makes it, without fail.

Why is it that as these service providers continue to operate successfully, but we, the public, expect the price to come down over time rather than stay the same or even worse, go up. After all everything is suceptable to inflation. Cost of doing business increases are on the rise. But service providers who meet and exceed all expectations are being asked to lower their costs while providing the same services.

This is where I believe we are at the mercy of our successes. Let's look at a real world example. Here we find an organization, one that is in total IT dis-array. Their technologies are spread out and they are spending money in the wrong places. Enter an IT plan. One that has merit and substance. One that works with a new vendor. One that shows promise and should allow for growth as well as cut costs. That plan is accepted and put into place. 

Fast forward 3 - 4 years. The IT department is the buzz of the business. Online marketing is going gang-busters and additional IT resources are needed from this new vendor, but more-over these resources will actually be utilized to continue this mission.

The first question from the organization generally starts with this. "We need to increase our platform with you, but... we want to pay less and we want to remove some of these servcies that we do not think we are really utilizing." Why is that? Because the first thought is something like, "Everything has been fine so we no longer need these services."

Did you think the services just run by themselves. Do you think that maybe the work that is being done on a daily basis is one of the reason for the successes that you have experienced. No, these are not usually the first thoughts.

Sometimes and with some vendors, it can be shown that there are things that you pay for that you are not using. Other times and with other vendors, you can show where you may have gotten extra services without seeing any extra charges. Is that where energies should be focused when looking to continue with a vendor? 

I for one know that while I would like to see all of my favorite vendors lower their prices and give me discounted services, that in the end it will only mean that I am just getting a cheaper or less robust service.