Business System Consultation Center - Our Business System ColumnVol.136 2023.02.01 Takahashi Minoru

AI is in the spotlight — but can your company actually use it well?

Thank you for your interest and continued support.
This is Takahashi from the Marketing Plan Research Laboratory.


To be honest, we always struggle when preparing quotes to present to our clients.
Every time, we scramble to calculate the price by adding up costs, overhead, and other expenses.


No matter how many reference indicators, market trends, statistics from past projects,
and intuition based on experience, we still struggle.
That’s because the “quote situation”—that is, “the challenges the client sitting right in front of us is facing”—
is always different from those of any client we’ve dealt with before.


Struggling with quotes!
This is likely a common challenge
but a common challenge for any company in a specialized field.


As far as I know from my colleagues in the IT industry,
“honestly communicating the specific costs associated with each individual client to that client”
companies that couldn’t do this have, without exception, gone out of business or withdrawn from the market.


Since we cannot secure orders at high prices to begin with—which is out of the question—
if we quote a low price or the client’s requested price, we must explain the reasoning and gain their understanding;
we will eventually become unsustainable, and as a result, we will end up causing trouble for our clients.


While I believe our costs are lower than those of other IT vendors,
there is a reason this organization has survived for so many years.
We maintain an attitude of honesty, clearly stating that “what it costs, it costs.”
and having clients who understand our reasoning when we do adjust to fit their budget
It all comes down to these two points.


To our valued customers
we would like to express our sincere gratitude
for your patience with the challenges we face time and again,
I would like to take this opportunity to express my apologies and gratitude.


That's all, Thank you for reading.

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