JellyFIT – the story behind how it came about

It was the gym's fault

What if the gym you never go to surprised you with something along these lines: “Dear member, since you're paying your monthly fee but haven't been coming in, why not make use of our other services — a massage at the SPA, for example.” What do you think? Nice of them? Indeed. But it wouldn't just be “nice”, it would actually be a smart strategy that also happens to be nice.

In my case, there were 2 months a year when I went to the gym like a man possessed by the pursuit of fitness (always chasing my losses, it has to be said), followed by 10 long months of morbid inactivity. During that time, every time I saw the monthly fee debited from my bank account I thought about the money I was “throwing away”, about the waste I was allowing month after month, even though it was genuinely my own fault for not using it.

Because of all this, that SPA strategy could have shifted my feelings to something like: “Well… I don't go to the gym, but I can always have the odd massage, which does me a world of good!”. That would probably have been the thing that kept me from cancelling my gym membership, which is what I ended up doing.

The driver behind what would become JellyFIT

I realised later on that, when I started out in this line of work, I brought with me one advantage and one disadvantage. Starting with the disadvantage: I had no knowledge or experience whatsoever of the digital agency business model. And the advantage? I had no knowledge or experience whatsoever of the digital agency business model. No, that's not a mistake. The advantage and the disadvantage are one and the same, and it was that very condition that let me look at this business from the outside, from the client's perspective, without the formatted, comfortable outlook of someone who has been doing this for years and follows the leader without ever asking questions.

Much like gyms, Digital Agencies also sell plans with monthly fees. At most agencies, those plans turn out to be restrictive, punitive, opaque and inflexible. Take a typical support plan, for instance. Imagine that in a given month not all the hours in the plan were needed. What do we do? Do we keep quiet and wait silently for the following month, or do we give the client the chance to use those unused hours (credits) on a completely different service that they actually need — a few simple (but necessary) business cards for their latest hire, for example? If we provide so many different services at our Agency, why limit the client to a single service or package? It makes no sense.

This was the thinking that inspired what would become our (much-loved) JellyFIT multi-service plan, **the plan that changed the service delivery model as we know it. **

The obsolete model of Digital Agencies

It's against this backdrop that, in mid-2014, I found myself worrying about some of the clients who were paying retainers to my agency without ever making use of the services they'd contracted. In other words, we were taking the client's money but not actually delivering any service (the same as paying for a gym you never go to). From the outside it might look like a great deal, but it isn't. It's just a dumb one.

A client who pays and doesn't take advantage of the services they're entitled to (even if the non-use is down to the client) will end up cancelling the plan, and it's the agency that loses out.

The client may well choose not to use services within the plan, but at the very least they should be given that opportunity freely and without restrictions. Then there was another rule that bothered me… The fact that if a client needed to use hours outside the contracted plan, those hours cost more than the plan's unit price.

At heart, it's the same principle used in mobile phone tariffs. Even if I understand the economics of the model, it isn't client-friendly and we needed to change that.

My view is that if I already have a plan with a company (in most cases with a lock-in period, no less) and I need to use more than I've contracted in a given month, that additional usage should be charged at least at the same unit price as the base plan, not more. In effect, I'm being penalised for using more, when I should be rewarded! At the end of the day, we all agree we don't agree with this model, but we put up with it. Complaining about the unfairness while living with it.

And that was exactly the challenge: to step over to the client's side and work out what had to change in our model, and how, so that it would be fair and genuinely make sense for our clients. It was through this exercise that I came to the conclusion that the agency service delivery model is obsolete.

Obsolete because:

1. it's inflexible (it doesn't adapt to the client's real, current needs);
2. It isn't clear (clients don't really understand what the agency is actually doing);
3. it's restrictive (limited to the package of services and hours contracted and, if you need another service, you pay an extra fee);
4. it's unfair (typically, in an hours-based plan, whatever service is actually delivered, the hourly price is the same, whether it's 1 hour of support or of development);

And those are just a few of the issues.

It needs to be brought into line with the reality of businesses, and reality in business is highly dynamic. Needs arise and change from one minute to the next. The stand has to be designed for that trade fair we're attending in 2 weeks' time; some content on the company website needs updating; new business cards are needed for the salesperson who started this morning; among many other things that crop up in the normal day-to-day running of a company.

JellyFIT starts to take shape as the new plan model

It became clear to me that we had an opportunity to create a service plan model that genuinely made sense for the Client, both functionally and financially. Essentially, the model I would want to be offered as a client of other services. That model would therefore have to guarantee the client the right to / access to

1. Availability – every service the agency offers, in a single plan at a single price
2. Fairness – differentiated pricing, matched to the type of service delivered
3. Visibility – the ability to see, clearly, every task we carry out (my.jellyfit.pt app)
4. Simplicity – in the operational process (delivery of work) and the financial one (units debited from the plan)

To deliver on all of these qualities, we had to redesign our model and, to guarantee simplicity for the client (and for the agency), we had to take money out of the equation and start working in credit units. In other words, each service corresponds to a given number of units per hour, which are debited from the plan according to the services used and the number of hours consumed. Good. The principle was there, but how would the client see all of this happening? Exactly… We had to build an app that would let them see all the activity on their plan. Enter MyJellyFIT, the plan's web and mobile app.

The MyJellyFIT app – a kind of SaaS (Service as a Software)

Once again you might think I've got the heading wrong, but I haven't. It really is “Service as a software” and not the far better-known term “software as a Service”. The client has a plan that lets them use services as though they were software. MyJellyFIT is the app that lets our client see everything to do with their plan:

• account statement: hours and units used
• operations: tasks in progress and completed
• analytics: usage rates, most-used services, etc.
• Submitting task requests

Conclusion

The JellyFIT plan, right down to its name, came out of a mindset in which companies, just like people, should stay in good shape by actively using services, with no “fat” and therefore no waste.

JellyFIT was created on the premise of offering the market a service plan that aims to be highly visual, flexible and functional. Just as we order a pizza online, JellyFIT lets you “order” any service Jellycode offers through a single subscription.

As I said earlier: the service delivery model as you know it has changed, and it's called JellyFIT.