What is a deliverable? We use this term in Evenflow and in our daily work for clients, but the definition may not be obvious to everyone. Let me define it by first explaining why we need the term.
For most purchases, the customer receives a product; something physical, or at least tangible. Even a digital product like an e-book is represented by a single file that can be moved around and deleted. In the creative services industry, what the customers pays for may not always be so tangible. So instead of calling the things we do products, we call them deliverables. We use this labeling in Evenflow to represent the building blocks of your quote.
Wikipedia defines a “Deliverable” as:
“a tangible or intangible object produced as a result of the project that is intended to be delivered to a customer (either internal or external). A deliverable could be a report, a document, a server upgrade or any other building block of an overall project.”
This is spot-on with how we define a deliverable in Evenflow. A deliverable represents the overall product that you’re delivering to a client. That can be a tangible object, like a chair, or an intangible service like an email design. Deliverables are represented by the green backed bar in the Evenflow quote area.
'Deliverable' (green) inside of a 'category' (blue).
Deliverables are made up of a collection of options, and this is where the real flexibility begins. Options are variations on a product or service (deliverable) that can be exclusive or inclusive to other options. Options are represented by yellow bars contained within a green ‘deliverable’ bar.
To make it easier to visualize, let’s take our “chair” from above as an example.
A chair can be wood, or metal. It can be any number of colors, have cushions, and those cushions can be made of different materials. All of these ‘options’ have varying costs and should be accounted for differently when it comes to creating them. A fabric cushion will have one cost associated with it whereas a leather cushion may be more expensive.
Evenflow allows you to set up each of these ‘options’ which make it easy to check them off of a list when it comes time to put together a quote for your client.
Options (yellow) 'contained' inside a 'deliverable' (green)
The last layer, the ‘task’ layer is where you truly define the costs to provide your options. Tasks are usually performed by a ‘role’ for a ‘rate’ and take a certain amount of time.
Back to our example, in order to make a wooden chair a carpenter (role) will have to build it; and someone will have to stuff and assemble the leather cushion. The ‘task’ layer allows you to define each of these roles by how many hours they spend performing those tasks, or you can even assign a flat rate for the production of one unit. Evenflow even allows you to add in ‘items’, which would be anything that would require a hard cost that wasn’t attached to a role. This could be the actual cost of the wood or leather and filler on our chair.
'Tasks' (white) are listed underneath each 'option' (yellow)
That should give you a good idea of the flexibility of Evenflow. You can put together a quote for any kind of product or service, by breaking down your deliverables into options which are made up of tasks. Your list can be as detailed and granular as you need to make it.
In an upcoming post we’ll go over deliverables again by walking through an intangible product.