Driving Business Outcomes with Identity Solutions: Insights from SailPoint and IDMWorks

[00:00:02] Identity Management. Let's get a sense of what that market is looking like and

[00:00:07] who's doing interesting stuff. Dave Schwartz, SVP of Global Partnerships at

[00:00:11] SailPoint and Paul Betty, he's the founder and CEO of IDM Works, join me on

[00:00:16] this bonus episode of the Business of Tech. Are you ready to spot opportunities

[00:00:23] by aligning IT with your clients business strategies? Get in Sync equips

[00:00:28] MSPs and IT professionals with the tools, methods and training to deeply

[00:00:32] understand client strategies, ensuring IT investments directly support key

[00:00:38] business objectives for tangible outcomes. With Get in Sync, you gain

[00:00:42] critical insights that empower decisive actions, enhancing your competitive

[00:00:47] offering. This solidifies your role as a trusted advisor and supports your

[00:00:51] clients strategic needs, bringing greater success. Test your readiness to become a

[00:00:57] certified Get in Sync trusted business advisor with our free online assessment.

[00:01:01] Accept the challenge to discover if you have what it takes to become an

[00:01:05] indispensable strategic partner for your clients. Begin your journey with Get in

[00:01:10] Sync. Visit getinsync.ca slash MSP Radio to learn more.

[00:01:18] Well, Paul, Dave, thanks for joining me today. Thanks very much for having us.

[00:01:23] Happy to be here. So Paul, I'm gonna start with you. Talk to me about what the

[00:01:28] identity problem you were focused on solving for customers that really

[00:01:33] started this. So look, what happened I think is that folks were confused in the

[00:01:41] market. They didn't know where to go, what to do and how to do it. Basically, they

[00:01:47] had too many username passwords. They had timeliness of access issues, whether it

[00:01:53] was adding them to systems, changing around when they change jobs or leaving

[00:01:57] systems. And they just didn't know where to go as organizations. And that's where

[00:02:01] we came in and really advised them, guided folks towards the the SalesPoint

[00:02:07] products fleet and the MSP program. So help me, I'm gonna follow up there, Paul,

[00:02:14] is get a little bit more concrete with me for the effort, what the problem is.

[00:02:17] Because there's a certain element of saying like, look, just customer identity

[00:02:21] is just a thing, right? Like how can we make this better? What's the pain point

[00:02:26] that the customer was complaining about? The pain point typically is timeliness

[00:02:30] of access and removal of access. Because that's the first thing that auditors are

[00:02:34] looking at in an organization is when somebody leaves an organization, did you

[00:02:40] remove their access in a timely fashion or not? Gotcha. So Dave, when

[00:02:47] SalesPoint was putting together their partner program and the way they've

[00:02:50] engaged, what do you consider really the unique value of what you're offering in

[00:02:55] this case? Yeah, so if you think about our partner program, a lot of partner

[00:02:59] programs out there are aimed at the benefit of the partner. And that's really

[00:03:02] where they try to add value to the partner. How do they make money out of it?

[00:03:05] What's the value? When we've rebuilt our partner program, it's really what's the

[00:03:10] value to our end customers? How do we make sure our end customer gets the best

[00:03:14] benefit from working with our partners they possibly can? So it's a slightly

[00:03:19] different take on the value proposition and that's how we built out our partner

[00:03:23] program from this side. Now Paul, I'm sure you've got a particular kind of case

[00:03:28] study that you think about. Walk me through a particular customer example

[00:03:31] where you've been really successful here. Right, so there's a

[00:03:36] healthcare organization that we did some work for and they were struggling

[00:03:41] deploying the solution in its entirety and didn't know where to start. So what

[00:03:46] our process is is to come in and do an advisory engagement to take a look at

[00:03:51] people, process and technology and give them a roadmap. And what we were able to

[00:03:55] do is take their legacy on-prem, SailPoint solution, post it for them in

[00:04:02] the cloud and then also add on the SailPoint ISC, Identity Security Cloud,

[00:04:08] which is the SaaS solution and bring those solutions together with

[00:04:11] identity proofing to allow them to be able to onboard folks in a timely

[00:04:16] fashion. So they went from three to four weeks to days and hours, like very, very

[00:04:22] quick. They also were able to allow for auto enrollment so folks who come in

[00:04:27] enter their own information, go through a series of checks where they would hold

[00:04:31] their driver's license up to the screen and it would validate that driver's

[00:04:35] license against public databases and then actually allow them to self and auto

[00:04:39] enroll. I would say these particular problems caused them to

[00:04:45] actually slow their revenue growth. They weren't able to commoditize and bring

[00:04:51] in those folks in a timely fashion to put them in health care facilities to

[00:04:55] then realize the revenue of those folks. So we helped them turn all of that

[00:04:59] around in a very timely fashion. Okay, so now in order to give some context for

[00:05:04] Lister's, we're going to baseline your organization. Give me some of the

[00:05:07] numbers, revenue, staff, like give me a sense of who your organization is. Sure,

[00:05:12] we're about 150 people. We're in the US and India and we typically are supporting

[00:05:18] our customers on a 24 by 7 basis. In terms of revenue, we're obviously a

[00:05:22] private company. We don't share those numbers but our typical customer is

[00:05:26] somewhere in the fortune 5,000. Okay, gotcha. So you're paid in a case of beer?

[00:05:32] Because if no one gives me a number, you're paid in a case of beer. I replace it with that.

[00:05:35] I wish. As we call it in Canada, a 2-4 which is a 24 case of beer. Fair, I always

[00:05:41] replace when people won't give me a number. I just say case of beer and then

[00:05:44] now put it in perspective. So what I want to actually then translate is

[00:05:49] give me a sense then of who buyers for this are because there's an... my instinct

[00:05:55] was this isn't for everyone. There's got to be... if there's a threshold of size and

[00:06:00] complexity where an identity solution makes sense. Where do you put that at?

[00:06:05] It's a multifaceted answer unfortunately, Dave. It's not easy. The internal use

[00:06:11] cases typically around 1,500 employees or more and that's the complexity that we

[00:06:18] typically see and that's the buyer that persona that we usually see. However,

[00:06:22] there are cases where they have a few employees like a hundred but they have

[00:06:27] millions of consumers. They're also a customer for us and for the solution.

[00:06:33] And Dave, talk to me when you look at your partner base like is how much wider

[00:06:38] is it than that? I mean I'm guessing you're not recruiting million... single

[00:06:43] million dollar MSPs with 10 employees that are serving the true

[00:06:48] SMB. Give me a sense of the range of who you're targeting.

[00:06:51] Yeah, if you look at our MSP program that we announced, it's really targeted at

[00:06:56] the mid-enterprise and above. We're not really going after the SMB

[00:07:00] space with our MSP partner community. We actually see a pretty good mid-range at

[00:07:06] the top end of the enterprise so the largest most strategic customers are

[00:07:09] looking at MSPs as well as kind of more into the mid-enterprise space. We're being

[00:07:14] really specific on who we bring on board from a partner ecosystem around that.

[00:07:19] Makes sense. Now, Paul, you said something I want to ask about now. So you tie... you

[00:07:24] were able to tie back to revenue growth at this healthcare customer. Talk to me a

[00:07:27] little bit about the way that conversation goes that ties back to

[00:07:32] business outcomes. So part of our people process technology analysis and our

[00:07:38] advisory engagement is putting together all of the facts and figures, right, on

[00:07:42] what you're going to spend and what you're going to realize if we make these

[00:07:46] changes and some of it is baselining based off data that they already have

[00:07:50] and some of it is baselining off of data that we have for that particular vertical.

[00:07:55] So we bring that value proposition typically that's presented to the CIO

[00:07:59] that takes it to the board and that's how we receive funding for our further

[00:08:03] initiatives within these projects. So what are the numbers that you've

[00:08:09] really got to get into with the customer in order to make that connection? Like

[00:08:12] how deep are you getting into the P&L? That's a good question and I don't have a

[00:08:18] specific answer for you on how deep we go in the P&L but I can tell you that

[00:08:22] we're putting together the opportunity cost numbers for them. What the

[00:08:28] opportunity cost is if you continue doing it the way you're doing it today

[00:08:31] or if we accelerate those processes what that will look like and then you know we

[00:08:36] don't know their comms and all of the other details so we don't know where

[00:08:39] that's going to hit the P&L but we obviously can tell them on a top-line

[00:08:43] gross basis what that's going to look like. So in terms of selling security how

[00:08:48] much of this is tied back to business because one of the big challenges around

[00:08:52] security and I say this with a bit of a smile is like look it is a bottomless

[00:08:56] hole that you can throw infinite money into where no security person will ever

[00:09:01] promise anything right? That is the real reality of it right? It says I

[00:09:06] will take all your money yet still guarantee nothing so a savvy CFO

[00:09:12] essentially is gonna look at that and say well no I don't I don't do that I

[00:09:15] need you to tie it to result. Talk to me a little bit about how that conversation

[00:09:19] plays out. Yeah look I think that it can be a bottomless pit there is a trade-off

[00:09:27] and the trade-off is it does the revenue make are you making impact on revenue

[00:09:33] that is significant enough for our business or are you just automating to

[00:09:37] automate and what is the cost of paying off that risk if that you know if we had

[00:09:43] a situation and so there is a cost-benefit analysis definitely that

[00:09:47] happens but we understand that there is a fiduciary duty to have a minimum

[00:09:53] service level and that's and we need to benchmark that against peers because you

[00:09:58] always want to be as popular as your peers or as smart as your peers and

[00:10:01] that's what they're doing and we're providing that data for them and we also

[00:10:05] use the industry analysts and our partner sales plan obviously who has a

[00:10:10] hundred hundreds of more accounts than us to baseline what other folks are doing

[00:10:14] within an industry provide that detail back and then you know they have to

[00:10:19] make that decision whether they want to proceed or not. And Dave I'd add one

[00:10:23] other thing to what Paul was saying I think if you look at it I wouldn't look

[00:10:26] at as a bottomless pit there's actually a cost of doing nothing as well and

[00:10:30] that's really where especially if you look at identity right now and if you

[00:10:33] look at the breaches that are taking place in the marketplace identity is

[00:10:37] access to a lot of a lot of those so if you don't have a better identity program

[00:10:42] we believe identity is core to not just identity security but your

[00:10:47] enterprise security level so it's not just the cost of buying into a service

[00:10:52] like this it's what's the cost of not doing something on this side. Sure I

[00:10:56] again I always say smile is I'm not advocating that businesses do nothing I

[00:11:01] just want to make sure that we're spending the right level because you

[00:11:05] can't go to infinity you literally with any security solution you can go to

[00:11:09] infinity and it is diminishing returns and finding that's key. So Dave I'm gonna

[00:11:13] ask you like Paul alluded to it you that how are you helping partners with some

[00:11:17] of the baseline metrics and market conditions to help them in that engagement?

[00:11:22] And I think that's where we're starting to try to go down that path right now

[00:11:27] is you know sell point from a product perspective and how we've done the

[00:11:31] market historically it's been very much a license sale to an end customer and

[00:11:36] that's still something we do a lot today but to your point customers are not

[00:11:39] looking to buy outcomes and solutions and what however they want to

[00:11:44] purchase those and that's one of the primary reasons we've actually launched

[00:11:48] this MSP program is to allow customers to buy what they're looking for so someone

[00:11:52] like Paul can sell outcome based offerings to his customers it doesn't

[00:11:57] have to be licenses so he can drive very specific outcomes or SLAs tied to those

[00:12:02] customers and it's we're trying to offer some flexibility to the end customer

[00:12:06] that ties back to that piece. So Paul how much of that kind of outcome based

[00:12:11] selling was a shift here or a fit like was this something you were already

[00:12:16] rockstars at doing or was this a process of moving towards that?

[00:12:23] I think it's a little bit of both as a convergence I would say Dave. I do want to

[00:12:28] say that with MSP and sell point what what customers get is a lot better than

[00:12:36] what they would get if they did it themselves right that is a hundred

[00:12:41] percent true because in cases like ours we give them a dashboard that has

[00:12:46] metrics and reporting and it looks at sell point as one of its primary targets

[00:12:50] also other areas of cybersecurity or identity management bringing all of that

[00:12:55] information together you know where to spend your next dollar so there is a

[00:12:59] value proposition inherently but also you get program governance you get all

[00:13:04] sorts of other facets architecture services engineering services and

[00:13:09] operations that then allow you to focus on running your business as opposed to

[00:13:15] running your identity software and operations which which should be just a

[00:13:21] basic service it should be like plumbing at your house you turn on the faucet

[00:13:25] you get water right you turn on the faucet with an MSP you get identity

[00:13:29] services and then you can go focus on selling whatever your widget is whatever

[00:13:33] your health care solution is whatever your FinTech solution or your technology

[00:13:37] solutions so they'll point to really helped push the envelope by going to

[00:13:43] market with us and allowing us to own license resale and a lot of the

[00:13:49] responsibility to push the solution to the customer I think it's a game-changer

[00:13:54] in many respects. So Paul how much of that are you white labeling and how much

[00:13:59] are you exposing to the customer in terms of the branding and the way you're

[00:14:04] engaging with it? Hey the good news is they my customers call me and they say I

[00:14:09] want to buy sell point all right so they're basically handing it to us on a

[00:14:12] platter and that is by the great work of what sell point has done in existing

[00:14:17] customers what they're getting feedback from their their current peers right so

[00:14:22] you'll have folks come to you and say I want sell point because Gary at this

[00:14:28] organization is successful or gray at this organization successful or I've

[00:14:32] done it in my previous life and it was successful so they want the outcome they

[00:14:36] know the solution typically and they sometimes it needs a little bit of

[00:14:39] tweaking as to some of the features but typically that is already there for us

[00:14:45] which is fantastic. Yeah and I would add on top of that currently today all of

[00:14:49] our MSP partners are not white labeling so they're it's branded as sell point

[00:14:53] from a solution offering that doesn't mean they're selling sell point they

[00:14:57] might be selling identity as a service or some type of a cyber you know cyber

[00:15:01] overlay service on top of it and we're part of it but everything that we do

[00:15:06] today is currently is currently branded versus white labeled from that

[00:15:10] perspective but you know in Paul's case IDM works and sell call it whatever they

[00:15:16] want to call it as we're on is we're part of that that component tree. Gotcha

[00:15:20] and Paul just give me a quick sense here is how much of what you're doing is

[00:15:24] security focused and how much is sort of generalist technology focused? 100% of

[00:15:30] what we do is security focused. Okay. And identity in the identity space that's so

[00:15:36] we have a philosophy called just say no and we we say no to everything we're bad

[00:15:40] at we're we're only good at identity access management and so that's all we

[00:15:45] do 100% of it. Gotcha so this is definitely uniquely focused well guys

[00:15:49] this has been super interesting Dave Schwartz is the SVP of global

[00:15:52] partnerships at sale point and Paul Betty is the founder and CEO of IDM works

[00:15:57] who's a sell point MSP partner guys thanks for joining me today.

[00:16:02] Today's episode is supported by Huntress you want to focus on your clients and

[00:16:11] are always looking for ways to get more time use Huntress's fully managed

[00:16:16] cybersecurity platform to fight off cyber threats Huntress is more than

[00:16:21] cybersecurity software for endpoints and identities it's a 24 by 7 security

[00:16:26] operations center it's security awareness training community engagement

[00:16:30] and dedicated partner support with an average CSAT score of 99.3% technology

[00:16:37] can only get you so far human expertise is what's needed to truly elevate and

[00:16:42] protect small businesses and you get that with Huntress. Secure your clients

[00:16:48] and help them thrive with the number one rated EDR for SMBs on G2 visit

[00:16:53] huntress.com slash MSP radio to find out more. The Business of Tech is written and

[00:17:00] produced by me Dave Sobel under ethics guidelines posted at businessof.tech

[00:17:05] if you like the content please make sure to hit that like button and follow or

[00:17:10] subscribe it's free and easy and the best way to support the show and help us

[00:17:15] grow you can also check out our patreon where you can join the business of tech

[00:17:20] community at patreon.com slash MSP radio or buy our why do we care merch at

[00:17:27] businessof.tech finally if you're interested in advertising on this show

[00:17:31] visit MSP radio.com slash engage once again thanks for listening to me I will

[00:17:38] talk to you again on our next episode of the business of tech

[00:17:44] part of the MSP radio network