- We were referred to several ‘so called’ enterprise agencies... >
We were referred to several ‘so called’ enterprise agencies. I have to say that most of the advice we got from these was bad advice. But when you’re just starting out, fresh faced and a bit naïve, you don’t know any better. You end up taking what they’re saying as the truth.
Unfortunately there’s a lot of people who work in enterprise agencies who aren’t necessarily in it to help you and your business. I’ve found a lot of people had a ‘you scratch my back I’ll scratch yours’ agreement with their friends and colleagues of other businesses.
One agency we went to referred us onto a web design agency. Following their recommendation we took them on to design our actual website. These people ended up being a bunch of cowboys- they didn’t know what they were doing, they said they could do everything we asked them for but they couldn’t.
They ended up sub contracting all the work out again to the point where it got contracted out to students. It looked good on the surface, but it was a really botched job and didn’t function the way we wanted it to at all. It didn’t even enable us to interact with our users which was, of course, the whole point!
That really affected things. A lot of money and time went over budget; it was just a complete and utter nightmare. That’s one of the lessons that we’ve learnt though: you’ve got to get things put down in contracts. I guess I should have known that being an architect: things get overpriced all the time! Also, you need to research your idea thoroughly so that when you get bad advice, you know well enough to ignore it! That’s something I’ve learned over time.
Sarah TaylorU Digger Media
