Everyone could see the lead data was a mess. The harder question was what to do about it.

What we did

• —Assessed the leads data in Dynamics 365 Sales and found what was causing the duplicates and poor quality.
• —Set out a strategy for managing leads going forward, rather than a one-time cleanup.
• —Built a prototype so the team could judge the approach by using it.

The economics

A fixed advisory fee, agreed in writing before work began, and a small fraction of the build it was testing. The development team was about to commit 12 weeks to building from a written specification. We tested the approach in 4 weeks first. The team then planned the build around a prototype it had already used, and avoided the rework that follows when a document is read the wrong way.

The outcome

The client left with a lead management strategy, a prototype, and a development plan based on both. The prototype was theirs to keep. Their own development team built the production tool, and moved straight into it.

What we would recommend

A specification describes an idea. A prototype exposes what it actually does.

When the approach is still open to debate, put a prototype in front of the development team before they commit to a build. It sometimes settles questions a document can't.