I changed the solution to Hyderabad

#hyderabad

#ONETeam #SNAPS #SageandNotableAdvisesfromPatrickSalazar

I was relatively new in one of my organizations and Solutions Architecture was one of my roles. There was a major RFP (request for proposal) that arrived which is familiar to me coz I had a very good moment with this logo. Me and the Business Development executive from the US assembled the global Deal Team and we all agreed to position the Philippines as the geography for the solution due to the client's RFP requirements. The top notch solution that we submitted was for end to end contact center work, stabilized transitions, a seasoned seed Team and then transformation.

When the solution defense was scheduled in two weeks, I was able to gather intelligence that all of the competing vendors are proposing the same geo solution (PH). I discovered that the client’s last 3 vendors were all from the Philippines. They did not renew any contract from any of those 3 PH vendors despite slightly lowering price points. I sense it may be an executive sentiment to try a different geography after 3 strikes especially if the price point is significantly lower with the highest levels of quality.

I called an emergency meeting 72 hours before our scheduled solution defense. I changed the solution to Hyderabad and PH was the secondary geography. I told my Solution Architect counterpart from India that we need to revise the entire end-to-end (E2E) solution to Hyderabad within 72 hours.

I had numerous leaders who questioned my last second change of proposal. They also said, the client will be disappointed that we are changing the solution that we submitted 3 weeks ago to the solution we will present during the actual solution defense. I told my Deal Team and executive leadership….

“Our commitment to our clients is to provide a global-best solution to them, NOT a geography.”

We won the deal.

Since then, my global Solutions and Practice Team respected me as a global solutions architect. We won several more deals across geographies because we were One Global Solutions Team without any boundaries.

*About the photo

I had the opportunity to visit the Taj Mahal in Agra during one of my travels to India.