How Gold Plating Can Undermine Your Goals

by David Taylor

Are you trying too hard to capture your customer’s loyalty? You could be undermining your success if you’re engaging in gold plating.

The term isn’t new. It stems from the 1950s when manufacturers wanted to outdo the competition, but instead of offering a better product, they added features, updates, or elements that were unnecessary. Those features made the product seem more valuable when it really was not.

You may believe every feature, function, and component of the work you do is adding value. However, it’s easier than you think to move toward gold plating, and that’s a costly problem in several ways.

What Does Gold Plating in EdTech Mean?

Across all technology, gold plating refers to the practice of making a project more ambitious or over-the-top than it needs to be. Sure, it seems like you’re doing good for your customers, but gold plating specifically involves trying to deliver more than what the customer needs or wants.

If you engage in work that is outside the project scope, something the customer did not ask for explicitly, then you're going down a slippery slope. Scope creep, a similar aspect, differs because it tends to be unintentional. Gold plating is intentional.?

Why Does Gold Plating Happen?

Why would you put more time, money, effort, and resources into a project for no benefit? There are numerous reasons why this happens in EdTech today.

• You want it to be perfect. Perfectionism is something today’s tech teams often strive for. It’s a badge of honor. You're always working to make your product that much better. Yet, there's no endpoint. It's never-ending.
• Stakeholders expect it. Whether it’s your clients or managers, there are times when they expect you to do more than what’s included. In some situations, they may even ask for additions to a project after the initial agreement. Those added features sure would be nice, but they were not a part of the original agreement.?
• You want to show what you can do. Sometimes, it's not a company-wide concern but a specific developer or person on your team who wants to showcase what they can do. This can easily sidetrack the project, even if it doesn't seem to cause a problem.

Are You Engaging in Gold Plating in Your Company?

Carefully look at what you’re doing and why you are doing it to get a better idea of if it’s beneficial. Throughout our Customer Success Development consulting at Framework, we’ve witnessed many common examples in the industry:

• Over-engineering: There’s that one person on the team who is always trying to find ways to over-engineer something to show off skills. This can happen in numerous areas including too-complex designs that often lead to few tangible benefits and lots of added maintenance and end-user work.
• Implemented non-required customizations: Many EdTech solutions are not customized, but when you are modifying them to meet the customer’s needs, limit the changes to exactly what is agreed upon. If you’re customizing more than agreed upon, that’s costing you time and money.
• Added features: This is a very common situation. Your customer wants more – added integrations that don’t make sense or an upgraded design. When your customer makes requests that don’t enhance the product and are outside of the original goals and agreements, that’s a reason to give pause.

Why You Need to Avoid Gold Plating?

You may be brushing off this conversation, wondering why it matters if you’re still making a profit and you’re better meeting client needs. The answer is setbacks.

One of the most powerful reasons companies come back to their partners is because of a company’s ability to deliver what they say when they say they will. In nearly all situations, these over-complicated additions or changes add no real value to the customer experience. They do put you behind, change up your procedures, and cause havoc on your project management.

This leads to:

• Project delays
• Backups from one project to the next
• Higher costs as you pay your employees more?
• Strain on your company’s finances while you wait for payment?
• Diversion of resources where it’s not really making your product better

Instead, focus on creating a robust change management process that includes very specific steps that people—whether internally or externally—need to take before any changes occur in the project. Ensure that your team is monitoring your projects carefully (project management software can drastically help with this). And most importantly, make sure you get a plan in place from the start that meets your client’s needs so you’re not overinvesting.

To help you build and execute your plan, Framework’s Customer Success Development team brings the skills to shape a solution built just for your business. Learn more at https://frameworkconsulting.com/consult