POCs, or proofs of concept, are necessary when we are trying to mimic the problem and the solution. We’re not going to do it at a very large scale. The proof of concept is just trying to see if the solution is possible, or what solutions will fit this problem, without going full head-on and spending a lot of money on software tools. The proof of concept is that we are testing, on a very small scale, how people would use the tool, how it would fit the business problem, the solution, the team size, and all those other things. We’re looking at whether certain requirements are possible, if certain priorities that this business has for their tools are possible in that environment. The proof of concept helps with that. As I said, we’re not trying to create the whole solution, but we want to mimic their environment and that solution.
Therefore, a proof of concept simply is a way to mimic a solution or an environment without spending so much on tools or getting tied into a subscription because you’re looking for a certain feature. So if you’re working with someone, or you can even do this yourself, create a proof of concept, which is an ideal environment or something that mimics your entire processes or your workflows. It tells you how your team would function in this environment if you were to use that tool or that platform. We’re not going to go full head-on and create a very extravagant or a very large-scale setup unless that is what we are trying to mimic. I’ve had situations where I’ve created a large setup because we were going to work with a large database. So we wanted to see how this tool would handle a large database, how it would handle multiple people working on it at the same time. So we went ahead to create an environment, tested it, look at it. If you’re looking for something to reduce manual work, you’re going to be testing your automations. If you’re looking for great integrations, you’ll be testing the integrations. If you’re looking at something that would reduce friction or something that would even increase friction, you’re going to test all of that. It could be through using forms, it could be through using pre-qualifying questions so you can get the right responses from your team members or when they are making requests. All of these are things you have to test. Look at the roadmap, what the client wants to achieve, the goals they want to meet, how we’re going to meet these goals, how we’re going to create an environment for that business, and how we are going to fit business operations or the team’s operations into that tool.