Creating a Killer IAM Business Case

Alright, thank you very much. So, good afternoon everyone. My name is Jonathan Neil. I'm the field CTO at snt. I've been with savian now for seven and a half years, but I've been an identity practitioner for approaching 24 years. So I've been in this space for a long time. I've been really excited by a lot of the content that I've seen over the course of the last couple of days, and I guess you guys have as well. So one of the things we wanted to give you as a takeaway when you go back to your day jobs, is how do I make an action from this?

How do I turn what I've seen and what I wanna deliver for my organization into a business case that's gonna carry me through to, through a proper program. So we are hopefully gonna be talking about some of the, the key points, key considerations of how to approach that as we go through the session. Good morning again, everybody. My name is Ravi Ira, VP Analyst relations and customer advocacy. So in that role I work with industry analysts such as know Cole and also a lot of customers. Been with Savian for five years.

Before that I was at Oracle and then SAP before, prior to that 20 years in the industry throughout, you know, one thing that I call with Jonathan, that technology has changed. You know, we, we spoke a lot about AI and another that will change. One thing that remained common is the people, the processes, the budget, convincing people to get the budget that hasn't changed, right? And then people in this room, we know, you know, that identity is the first line of defense for cybersecurity, but the others who have to actually give us the money to invest in them, you know, how do you convince them?

So let's take a look on how we do do that. But before that, Jonathan, if, and then the way we structured, you know, a pretty simple agenda, why we need it, you know, why we do that, why we need a business case right now, and then how do we actually get to do that. So before that, Jonathan, you know, why do we even need, and then we are focusing on IGA for this session, but it could be anything I am, Pam, anything for that matter. But why do you think IGA transformation?

Yeah, good question. So, you know, why, why IGA transformation, why is that important? I guess?

You know, a lot of people in this room are here because they're looking at finding out ways where they can transform their identity program and make identity different and make identity more important. So obviously there's a lot of things that are happening in the market, which are driving us to look at new capabilities and new platforms to manage your overall identity centric security strategy. And as Ravi mentioned, you know, identity really is that first line of defense. And we use the phrase identity as the new perimeter.

That phrase has been used for probably the last, I dunno, five plus years. But I think never more than before has that message actually resonated, become true. We're also seeing a lot of pressures in the market, certainly from things like increased regulatory compliance. So we're seeing this never ending conveyor belt of new compliance, new regulations n to Dora just being two recent examples that are coming into force.

So from an IGA perspective, organizations are having to reevaluate the tools that they own and the solutions that they operate to find a way to become compliant with these new regulations. And I think that's, you know, one of the key things that's, you know, driving a lot of organizations right now, You know, another thing to add onto that, right? So we've been talking about AI quite a bit and people who are not, you know, pretty soon or at least now who do not get used to ai, they're, they'll be outdated.

And then think of this, if you, if you are still on the old instances or way of doing this, people who are going to join your company think about the perception that they would get as well as the market in general, right? So, and to keep up with the technology and then the, to to keep up with the expectations of people, it's, it's very critical, right? Then. So that all sounds good, but why is it not happening? What are the challenges with it? Yeah. So why is it not happening fast enough? I think that's the real critical question.

What are, what are the things that are hindering us from moving forward with our transformation programs? One of the biggest challenges that I talk to a lot of customers, I talk to a lot of our partners when we are pitching an IJ transformation program is really the fact that we are fighting for a share of budget, which is becoming increasingly small. So how do you make, you know, your IJ program, your transformation program, stand out from all of the other people that are knocking on the door of the CIO saying, I need to spend some money, I need to invest some money.

And why are we not seeing that happen at the rate that we expected or the rate that we'd like to see? I, I think we're still in a, in a situation with a lot of enterprises where they just don't really understand what is the true value of IGA and what IGA can bring to an organization. So first and foremost is what is the value return that the customer gets from not only IGA or an identity program, an identity transformation, which means that I, you know, identities kind of still seen in some enterprises as a back office IT function.

It's not seen as a core principle for your security transformation or your zero trust program, you know, or whatever those corporate sort of strategies are. It's still seen as a, as a it overhead, a necessary evil and something that should live and stay within the, in the back office. Great points. And then a, a quick show of hands, how many of you today are actually dealing with something like this? Or are you in, in the process of getting funding? That's about 90% of you then I'm still jet lagged.

So that shows, but you know, Yeah, so I was gonna say all, all of these kind of challenges, not, not having the understanding of the value that, you know, a robust identity security strategy brings to an organization really just prevents that stakeholder buy-in. So when you are going full budget approval, you're not getting the same levels, level of visibility, so therefore you are unlikely to get the same level of investment that maybe you would if you were doing something a slightly different way.

And one of the other problems I've kind of seen a lot is the way that business cases are structured and put together and presented to digi boards or the boards that are allocating those funds is they're still kind of too technical. These propositions are still full of technical jargon or features and functions and that doesn't really resonate with, you know, a lot of the people that you're trying to convince that this is something we need to invest in and we need to invest in right now. And at the right level There are a lot of stakeholders, right? A lot of different types of stakeholders.

One who is actually paying you one, you who's using your services. So yeah, so you know, how do we actually get there? How do you, you know, create a business? Yes. Yeah. Well there was one point on the last slide actually that I was gonna talk about as well, just very quickly. And that is transformational must be, you know, transformational, transformational must be transformational. Doing things exactly the same if you've done them before in a new tool that's not transformation, that's not doing d you anything kind of different.

So, you know, this is a great opportunity to analyze, to review, to streamline the processes and deliver something new to the business, deliver something that's gonna change, it's gonna create efficiencies, it's gonna reduce cost, it's gonna increase visibility, it's gonna, you know, reduce the amount of manpower that's required to run things like compliance campaigns or internal or external audits. So transformational, it's gotta be transformational. If it's not, it's a lift and shift, right?

And all you're doing is investing in a new tool and doing exactly the same thing as you did always, but in something else. So that requires even more convincing if you really have to, you know, break things and then get, get your state where you really need to be. So let's look at then, you know, how do we actually get there? And I think you just mentioned that there are many different stakeholders, which is really important.

So what I always talk about when I'm talking to my customers or certainly with my partners is, is to identify all of those different stakeholders as early as possible within the process. Not just identify the stakeholders, but I understand from those stakeholders what is important to each of them. What are they looking for? What is the desired outcome? What are the results that they're looking to achieve? Because that's the only way you're gonna start to be able to formulate something which is gonna resonate with the people that are making these buying decisions.

And it's also gotta map to organizational goals. Now that could be anything from a zero trust strategy to maybe audit findings or compliance requirements. So there are many organizational goals that you can align to, which again, would also increase your ability to get funding to take these programs from inception through to transition.

And my favorite thing is actually, you know, how do you, how are you communicating why you are doing this right to different stakeholders but also to the decision makers changing your language on how you're actually showing, whether you're saying that, you know, I want to like, not transformational, but I want to increase my performance or I want to increase the performance of the company and then using those terminology, Yeah.

Whether it's reducing cost, increasing efficiencies, these, this, these are the kind of metrics that somebody is gonna measure the success of any kind, any program by. So again, we've gotta change the language of how we approach a business case, not about technology.

Hey, we've got this great new workflow engine, great, what's that gonna do? You know, the positioning of that proposal should be, we can reduce the amount of time it takes to onboard an employee from, you know, two weeks to three hours that's gonna make them productive quicker in the process. We can reduce our time to execute an audit or a certification campaign from one month to two weeks that reduces the burden from our employees. That increases, you know, stakeholder satisfaction, you know, from a certification perspective.

So like I said, if you could understand who the stakeholders are, what is important to them, what is their desired outcome, then the tool should just be enabler or the enabler for making these things happen. And this is how you need to sort of structure that business case and move that business case forward. So change the language, super important. Don't use a jargon, don't use technology, don't talk features and functions, talk outcomes. You know, as vendors we try to pitch automation saying that if you get onto our tool now you could automate a lot of things.

I think that resonates well with you. But when you are talking to your stakeholders or your decision makers, you know, your sponsors maybe not, right? So instead of using automation, now I want to automate this, I want to automate that, but actually telling them that I'm going to reduce the time it takes after somebody leaves, right?

A day, two days, two 10 seconds, one day, right? Or instant. And then that will now avoid or eliminate these potential tests that we are gonna have, which could then, you know, potentially disrupt your band reputation, right? That is something.

And then, you know, back, back in the days when I, I was at SAP, we used to say that our, we used to recommend our customers to say that, you know, we are doing this to make sure that you are out of jail, right? So that's exactly the language that we used to recommend, but that, that, that will resonate.

Yeah, Definitely. And if you think about what is, who's your biggest internal competitor?

Well, it could be other programs that are fighting for a share of the same amount of funding in each budgetary cycle, but quite often the biggest competitor is the do nothing competition. Why should I invest? We could just stay with what we ever have or what we have, what we've been using for the last five years or whatever. So one of the things that I like to try and get across to, to my, my customers and my partners is that the cost of doing nothing is never, ever nothing. There is always gonna be a cost, a cost in delaying a cost in doing this next year, right?

Because what we are looking to do is how do we get the budget, the approval to be transformational, but do it now, right? Because that's gonna cost us or that's gonna save us, you know, money, you know, in, in the future. So another key takeaway for you guys, cost of doing nothing is never nothing. And there are ways that you can get metrics to be able to present that in a way that, you know, the, the the digi board or whatever that signing off on this will understand. Exactly. Exactly.

But no, is there any help? Are we all by ourself or is there actually any help? One more.

Yeah, so there's absolutely, absolutely a number of, a number of things that we can do in order to be helpful on this transitional journey. First and foremost, what I see a lot of our customers gaining is significant benefits through the implementation of a converged identity platform where traditional organizations would maybe deploy a lot of different capabilities around identity in different silos.

That leads to a lot of complexity in terms of, you know, having to onboard each application five times rather than once having to set up security policies five times in five different tools, you know, five times rather than once having to do patches and upgrades and maintenance in five different platforms rather than one different platform. So looking at how do I bring, how do I get cost synergies, cost savings by bringing something into a single platform that delivers greater levels of functionality and flexibility, but more importantly, visibility.

It's one audit trail, it's one set of intelligence, you know, that can be used across a complete zero trust, you know, architecture. Exactly. Exactly.

And then those of you have attended Jeff's session in the morning about, you know, AI and I am, he brought up a good point that having these with one data layer, if you will, one data store will enable you to create your AI models or whatever it is much more easier because you have the complete visibility and from, again, using the language again, you know, the right language when you're talking to your sponsors, I would actually say because of this I can go show you value within, you know, 10 days, within 15 days or whatever, what what have you. Right? What else?

Yeah, so one of the things that a lot of organizations find the most difficult is how to a, collect metrics, how to, how to analyze those metrics and then how to take those metrics and present them in a way that is meaningful, easy to consume and easy to understand.

So one of the things we do quite a lot with our customers is to run something called a business value assessment or A BVA, which is taking a lot of time to understand a lot of the customer environment from legacy tools, platforms, full-time employees that are looking after environments, how long it time take, how much time it takes to run things like certification campaigns. So not doing this using, you know, industry standard or sort of finger in the air figures.

This is getting the customer to participate in this process and be able to build this business value assessment based on the customer's own metrics. It's their own information, right? So it's very hard for somebody to argue against A BVA that says, are we gonna give you a return on investment or 500 K in six months when it's the customer number, right? It's not a SAV number, it is not a number that belongs to the tool or by something else. So BVAs are really, really important.

They allow us to represent in a meaningful way, in an easy way to consume what are the business benefits, what are the outcomes? So this, along with using business jargon or business language within the proposal backed up by financial metrics, you know, is, you know, is a winner when it comes to sort of creating that killer business case and ensuring that you are getting the right amount of funding from, for that project from the internal board.

And I, I put something in up here now on the slide, why now? So this is going back to this, the cost of doing nothing is never nothing. What happens if I delay by three months? What happens if I delay by six months? What happens if I delay by 12 months? What is the lost opportunity cost? What is the, what are the cost savings that we're not realizing by starting this program now, but starting that in six months time?

So again, getting over that hurdle of beating the competition, the competition of doing nothing. It's really important to be able to understand these metrics from your own numbers, your own figures. And then the, the, the business value that this tool is showing is not just for the cost savings for IAM program, right? It's actually for the overall business. So it it's gonna pay off itself. So in numbers, right? So anything else, anything else which is more neutral, vendor neutral?

Well I was actually gonna ask you, I was gonna turn the tables and ask you a question as you are our VP of analyst relationships, what about the analysts? What, what else, what other tools can customers use in order to help sort of solidify and to back up that business case? And there is a lot of research, right? And then I'm, I'm gonna use Gartner, pardon me for just for this purpose.

I know it, it's, it's easily available right now for me. So I, but if you, if you see the code there, right? Organizations who have not adopted, you know, are going to fall behind, right? And then who have adopted a transformative IG solution will save their cost by 50%, right? So that's the prediction. And then they have also put together, and I, I'm pretty sure Cole will do as well, there's a lot of research there as well is again, a tool, the language that you could use in convincing your organizations similar to how we have the business value assessment tool. So we are almost there.

Jonathan, what are the key takeaways? Again, I think some of the, the key takeaways is I understand your stakeholders change the language that you're using, use real metrics to measure the value, the outcomes that a company can expect from a transformational program. And then leverage the tools, use the assets that you have available to you. And I think we've got a bit of time for some, maybe a question or two.

Well, first of all, can you hear me okay? First of all, thank you very much. This is exactly that kind of presentation. I guess it leaves room for tons of questions, but I guess people have to sleep upon them and come back to you with looking for practical advice. Anyone who needs questions answered, please visit Sian on the stand. Thank you very much and a round of applause for our speakers please. Thank you.