For those of you that are currently leveraging IAM services or have in the past, how has the engagement gone? Was the initial engagement process difficult and somewhat constraining?
Being in this business for over two decades, I am perplexed at how services organizations attempt to box their clients into engagement contracts that work for themselves, taking little into consideration of what their customer might be faced with. Does this sound familiar?
Working with hundreds of clients over the years, while the end objectives may be similar, it’s clear that each client has unique circumstances to face while working with Professional Services organizations.These situations can vary from which budget pool they are able to access, who’s funding the project, what the procurement rules may be, to how might this impact current employees’ perception of their job security, limitations on how head count is allocated, etc.
When starting Nyedis, my partner and I considered a multitude of things, recognizing that there are many IAM related elements that require proficiency and a high level of competence. Our goal was, and still is, differentiating ourselves from the “standard” Professional Services firm. On the top of the list was to make it easy, and a pleasant experience for our clients to do business with us, to truly partner for success.
To achieve this, we agreed, first and foremost that we need to be open to what works best for our client from a contracting and procurement process. This is a list of what we came up with:
- Reduce the complexity of agreements and contracts
- Work through third parties if client is limited to only a few direct consulting contracts
- Transact through our software partners, eliminating the need for multi-vendor contracts for software & services
- Be open to Fixed bid, T&M, and milestone-based contracts
- Support project/program and staff augmentation delivery models
- Provide support modules (essentially a block of hours to be utilized when needed)
- Work in an advisory capacity, supporting current state assessments or health checks, future state roadmap & design, assist with vendor selection, and project recovery
- Management of client IAM teams, consultants, and third parties
- Provide full support of outsourced services and/or managed services
- Keep an open line of communications to our clients at all times
IAM initiatives can be complex, and as you can see, we’ve established adaptable service options to minimize services engagement stress. While we have tried to capture and address most of these challenges, I am sure there are other circumstances you may be faced with.
When considering IAM services, reach out to us and let us know what works best for you, I assure you we can adapt to meet your needs.