The Dirty Dozen ( Part-2) – My Thirteenth Experiential Sales Story

I will continue to share in this Post, some more schooling from lost deals. The wealth of learning has been extraordinary.

Mission Mode Project: For several years, the Government has been on an accelerated path of leveraging technology to revamp and modernize it’s tax system to help usher in transparency, improve user interfaces and reduce the much needed “face to face” interaction between tax payers and the Government machinery. Whilst the goals have been truly laudable, implementing such an IT system has not been easy.

For decades, the Central and State Governments have locked horns and debated on the need for a simplification of the tax regime. There were endless discussions on the revenue share formula that would be both, just and equitable. Each stake holder has fought for their fair share of the pie. After years of battling, a consensus was thankfully arrived at. The new regime necessitated the deployment of a bullet proof and scalable technology platform. Nothing of such magnitude had been attempted Globally, in the area of tax reform. It would truly be a “made in India” IT platform for the “scale of India.” The Government created a dedicated institution that would take responsibility for building the technology backbone and running it. A team of experienced specialists were brought together to think through the system architecture and design, write the RFP, invite vendors and select the best to deliver on the promise.

Several large Systems Integrators who had deep knowledge of Application Architecture, IT Infrastructure, Cloud, App Development and Maintenance threw their hat in the ring. They started working in right earnest with experts in the specially created entity for the purpose. For over a year the SIs’ worked hand in hand with the customer to understand all aspects of the problem. They went through every element, including the logic of the key algorithms that would need to be built. From an overall architecture point of view, the inclination was towards using open stack technology rather than COTS (standard application platforms). Identification of such elements that could work at scale had to be carefully identified and evaluated. Pilots had to be undertaken and a number of external experts were also brought in to help program manage the process and give shape to the technology options, across the stack. This included networks, hardware, cloud, databases, and applications. These technical experts worked along- side subject matter experts who had a deep understanding of the tax system.  

For many months, our team had been watching the deal from the side-lines. We were quite unsure if we wanted to participate here. Whilst the size of the project was tempting, we were well aware of the implementation risks. We did not want our reputation to get muddied and any mis-step in this project would result in huge escalations and sleepless nights. We had never worked on the technology stack being envisaged, at such a massive scale. It would be brand new for us and experimenting with a project of National Importance gave us the jitters. As the deal progressed, we continued to keep a tab. We often discussed the project in our internal meetings and each time came to the same conclusion, that we did not have the expertise and the risk on account of even a minor hiccup would be too high. We decided to spend our time on other projects. 

One day, I got a WhatsApp message from my boss. He was at an Industry Body meeting where this project was discussed and the project manager had made an animated presentation on the scope, size and impact of what they were attempting. He shared that the funding was in place and that the project was progressing well on schedule. My Boss wanted us to revisit our decision, basis what he had just heard “ from the horse”. We quickly convened a meeting and decided to meet the customer to get a first hand update of the project, understand the progress they had made and estimate our chances of winning. To our surprise, the customer was very welcoming. He shared that whilst we were late and some other bidders had been working with them for a year, there was no harm in putting in a serious attempt and make up for lost time by expending extra effort. The customer’s encouragement gave us a glimmer of hope and we decided to bite the bullet and pursue the deal.

Over the next few months, we met the customer several dozen times. We undertook a gap analysis and figured out quickly that we needed a subject matter expert. We tied up with a Consulting Firm who had the right set of experts and understood the subject very well. Our technical teams were reasonably confident that they could put a credible solution together. We knew the Cloud and Infrastructure piece well. We took some help on the application sizing and technology stack, through a third party and started to put the bid together. Many of us, burnt the mid night oil, toiling for days. We finally submitted our response to the RFP. A few days later, the first shortlist was announced. We were elated that we had been shortlisted for the next round. We would now have to present our Solution to an eminent panel and then a final shortlist would be announced. We knew that we had put up a strong bid, which was highly optimized. The market was abuzz with the news that though we had come in late, we could not be “written off.” Market intelligence told us that if we were shortlisted for the final commercial round, we could walk away with the deal. We kept our nerve and decided to just focus on doing our best in the presentation round. We prepared well as a team. We knew that this would be a tough round.

On the fateful day, the customer took a combative approach. From the very beginning, we knew that it would be a tough ride. The customer grilled us on the choice of our elements of the stack. We were “skinned” on the logic we had suggested for a critical part of the application. We had to show a demo during the presentation. The customer wanted us to get into a lot of technicalities, which we were not prepared for. During our prior meetings, the level of minutiae was never articulated. Had we got played out? We realized towards the end of the presentation that we had a hundred-in-a-one shot of moving to the next round. As we trooped out of the building, we decided to huddle outside and do a quick de-brief. As each one of us animatedly shared our perception of what went well and what did not, it was evident that there were certain factoids that we were browbeaten on, though we knew we were on the right track. We decided to send a detailed letter and explain our point of view. It was not surprising that we never received an acknowledgement or ever got a response. 

A week later, we were informed that we were not shortlisted for the next round- which was the commercial one. A few days later the Tender was awarded to our competitor. Had our bid been opened, we would have saved the exchequer a whopping 40%!  

Jumping late into the deal demanded huge effort at our end. We were clearly playing a catch up game, which we were well aware of right from the very start. The customer encouraged us and we mis-interpreted it as a “false positive” signal. They were not sure if they would get the requisite number of bidders for the project. Since they did not want egg on their face, they decided to encourage whoever showed up, evincing even half an interest in bidding. We helped them achieve that goal. Maybe I should have pushed my boss back when he nudged us to bid and saved all of us the time, effort, money and energy.

When you lose deals, there is always a silver lining. For us, it was the educative process of deepening our understanding of the components of an Open Stack, something that would come in extremely handy in future deals. But for now, we had to eat humble pie and wait for the next big game.

I look forward to sharing more learnings through my other deal losses in future Posts!