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Today's IT solutions are more complex than ever, with enterprises navigating how to introduce new capabilities like cloud, mobile and Internet of things to a foundation of traditional technology. Maintaining an open and clear line of communication with an IT partner can make all the difference in this process, assuring the best chance of success for both parties. Also, a good partner should help its client organization bring specific skill sets in-house, becoming more self-sufficient and capable of developing at pace.
For this episode of the CCS Insight podcast, I was joined by IBM's Natalie Denyer, Director of Client Engineering, and Chris Oldacre, Customer Success Director. We also spoke to Clive Howard, chief technology officer at Huozhi, a provider of a humanitarian fintech platform. Clive is also an associate analyst at CCS Insight.
You can also find the episode on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts and Spotify.
Our discussion unpacked the cooperative relationship between IBM's Client Engineering and Client Success teams, and how the company's approach has adapted over the decades to keep up with the demands of the ever-changing IT industry.
The podcast episode explores:
- What a fit-for-purpose customer success operation or programme looks like in today's complex IT environment.
- How best to measure success in a partnership engagement, embracing open and clear communication inside a customer organization, but also between partner and client.
- What are the core tenets of IBM's approach to customer success and the standout features that can address ever-evolving customer demands.
Creators & Guests
What is The CCS Insight Podcast?
Insightful audio from the global tech advisory firm.
Bola Rotibi:
Welcome to CCS Insight's podcast series. My name is Bola Rotibi and I'm the Chief of Enterprise Research here at CCS Insight and your host for today's discussion on achieving customer success in the face of IT complexity and investigating IBM's win–win strategy for doing so. Joining me today from IBM Technology, UK and Ireland are Natalie Denyer, Director of Client Engineering, and Chris Oldacre, Director of Customer Success. I'm also joined by Clive Howard, CTO at Huozhi, a provider of humanitarian fintech platform. Clive is also an Associate Practitioner Analyst with CCS Insight. Welcome to you all.
Chris Oldacre, Clive Howard and Natalie Denyer:
Hi. Good to be here. Thanks so much for having us today.
Bola Rotibi:
I think this is going to be an absolutely great conversation, I'm very excited by it. I'm going to go straight into the questions because I know we've got such a lot to discuss and it's such a great hot topic at the moment. So, when we think about customer engagement, it's a well-publicized term, but what does a fit-for-purpose customer engagement operation or program look like in today's complex IT environment? I'd like to throw that over to you, Chris.
Chris Oldacre:
Thanks, Bola, and thank you for having us and giving us the opportunity to talk about this today because it's something that Natalie and I are incredibly passionate about. And I just want to start on that point of customer engagement — I know we talk a lot in the industry about customer success. We think customer success is really, you measure you measure outcomes when you do customer success, but in order to get to those outcomes, that requires customer engagement. And customer engagement isn't simply a post-sales exercise. It requires lots of work and investment from both parties up-front in order to kind of hypothesize on the minimum viable activity you want to undertake to validate or prove that certain activities with your technology will yield certain returns either in terms of business outcomes or improved customer experience.
And so that's why when we in IBM talk about customer success, we can't talk about that in isolation of customer engagement as a whole, which is why Natalie and I work so closely together in terms of client engineering at the front end of that customer experience and then customer success at the value realization part of that experience. Natalie, is there anything you want to add to that?
Natalie Denyer:
Yeah, no, I think that's really well said. And I think the evolution that we've seen in terms of client engagement is understanding that it doesn't have a start and an end date. It's about that infinity loop almost. So, we're looking at how do we make this a seamless experience for our clients from the first day that we work with them, continuing on, moving forwards, building that trusted relationship and ensuring that whatever we do with them in a pre-sales environment continues on and that experience continues on through to post sales, through implementation, and ensuring that the client is really going on that journey with us and getting maximum return on investment for their solution. So, a real evolution in terms of I think what we mean by client engagement and also how we're working with our clients today.
Chris Oldacre:
Yeah, and I think for us, Bola, it's about that recognition that no client journey is the same and no client journey should start and end at a defined point because the whole point of the technology and the power of the technology working with our clients is you do the first sprint of implementing a product or a platform to achieve an outcome that then unlocks or yields additional opportunities or benefits or use cases, and we come back round. So, we think of it as much more of a loop than an end-to-end linear process.
Bola Rotibi:
Well, that's a good point, actually. And it's also recognizing the partnership that is actually much more of an important aspect of client engagement, isn't it, really? Because a lot of times I think in the past people have tended to provide a solution and maybe not. You've either helped implement it, but you know, companies have either helped implement it and then walked away a little bit to let the client continue their journey.
But in fact, when we think about the complex IT environment that most clients are experiencing both in their infrastructure and also in terms of what they want to achieve and what they want to be doing for their own clients and workforce, it's quite a complex environment. So, in fact you need a lot more hand-holding nowadays, so that whole engagement is much more about a partnership, which is what you both are saying.
Chris Oldacre:
Yeah, and I think there's a perception or possibly there has been a creeping perception that with the explosion of SaaS platforms that the world of IT and business platforms and technology has got simpler and actually I think we recognize and there's a growing acknowledgment now that if anything it's made it more complex. And that's where this notion of the hybrid environment really comes to life.
And that's something that I think we've really thought about to IBM and acknowledged that the traditional kind of model of customer success as a post-sales activity shouldn't really exist in isolation. That's why it's so important to work with what we call "client engineering" in IBM, which really works at the front end very much in that pre-sales, pre-purchase area to make sure that we're identifying, improving use cases before the client enters into that investment and makes that significant commitment to any technology provider.
So for us, we talk a lot about customer success and deployment require in a village of people. It's not just customer success managers, it's not even just IBM, as of course it is a partnership with the client. Maybe Natalie I don't know if you want to talk a little about client engineering's role in that partnership.
Natalie Denyer:
Yeah I do. But just to start with picking up on Bola's point around that partnership, I think it's so critical. And again, when we look at today's IBM and how we are driving innovation together with our clients, that trusted partnership and that partnership relationship needs to be there. That's how we're driving innovation collaboratively.
And I guess to pick up Chris on what you were saying in terms of what client engineering is doing at the front end, we are looking at driving innovative type relationships and partnerships with our clients to truly understand where our clients are at today and go on that journey with them as they move hybrid cloud, data and AI.
A lot of the challenges that we're seeing with our clients today in the marketplace, we're seeing a lot of trends, a lot of themes. And what we're trying to do is, through those partnerships, look at some of the best practice around how can we speed up the types of solutions that we're building with and for our clients.
But yes, on the on the pre-sale side, it's really important that we build that partnership, we build those relationships and that we go on that innovation journey together. So, for me, strong trusted partnerships is what drives the innovation behind the solutions that we deliver.
Chris Oldacre:
Yeah, and I think just one final point, Bola, if I can, because I believe it's an important one. As we talk about partnerships, this is a partnership that comes with investment upfront from IBM. So, when we talk about client engineering and we talk about customer success, they are free at the point of entry programs. I guess there is no charge for a client to enter a relationship with client engineering or customer success.
It's predicated on IBM making that upfront commitment to build in that long term partnership with a client, because we believe that the value we realize from the technology will tell its own story and the client will want to continue that investment with IBM.
Bola Rotibi:
Well, that's great to hear. Clive, as a practitioner and also as a CTO and a customer of using technology and building it for your firm, this must be a really important thing to you, music to your ears, in many respects because to a certain extent how things have changed for you as a customer, not necessarily customer of IBM, but just as a customer who's needing this support. I'd love to hear your points, what you're hearing from Natalie and Chris.
Clive Howard:
Thanks Bola. Just to pick up on a couple of things that have been talked around, which is, first of all, complexity. I think what's important, I talk about this from the client side. We know we have a lot of complexity, but it's important to understand that often partners are not involved in all of that complexity. They're involved in some of it. And so one has to understand that there is a scope from which the partner is operating. And you need to allow for the fact that other things are going on within the organization, within IT, outside of IT, that will have a have an impact that the partners are not part of and can't control. And so you need to factor that into to what you're looking for them to achieve.
And then equally I think related to it the point about a journey which has been mentioned a lot. I think it's important to make sure that everyone understands the destination. And I think it's been a problem often in the past where organizations have sort of one view of the destination, or at least they're not maybe clear enough even to themselves about the destination when they begin. And that obviously can lead to problems later on where the partner is doing everything they possibly can to get you to the destination you outlined, but you have actually decided at some point, "oh, I wasn't quite sure about that, that destination and maybe I'm on, I'm on a different path". And then and then obviously that, you know, that that can be very sort of problematic.
So I think addressing the, you know, acknowledging the complexity, acknowledging where the partner plays a role and where the sort of the limits of that are in that complexity and then making sure that everyone is on the same journey to the same destination and stays on that path as well.
Bola Rotibi:
Okay, those are really good points to raise actually. And in fact it's actually about communication really isn't it. The fact that it's not only just about the engagement side and the partnership aspect, but it's also about communication. And I think that's what you're actually saying, Clive, is that it's important that everybody is there.
It's a great starting point. It's a great foundation for the relationship that needs to happen in this, especially when we have such a complex environment. And it's good that organizations are starting to think about this and move to kind of thinking about customer engagement in that way.
Natalie Denyer:
So I was just going to sort of build, I think, on what you're both saying there around the communication in the relationship. So, within client engineering, we've actually introduced a method that we apply in order to ensure that we're going on the same journey with our clients. Because I think, Clive, you were completely on point. How many times have we embarked on a journey with a client, both sides thinking we're on the same page, we know what we're heading for, and sometimes halfway through or goodness gracious, we actually get to the end of an engagement together and actually realize we were actually on different pages, right? Worst thing we can possibly do on both sides does nothing for the relationship, doesn't address the challenge or the opportunity we have.
So it was really important, I think, for us as a business to really look at how do we go on that journey with our clients. And so, client engineering was formulated in order for us to use standard practices, agile, lean approaches and methodologies to ensure that we're actually on the same page with our clients and our partners as we go on, you know, look at an opportunity together.
And that's been really fruitful and really, really important for us and we've had some great feedback on it, I have to say, from our clients as well in terms of how we ensure we stay together as we go throughout an opportunity, but how we are delivering to the same scope, the same hypothesis, and ensuring that we stay on the same page throughout that journey. So really important point there.
Bola Rotibi:
And that's a really good point to kind of talks to my next point actually, because I think you've hinted there is that, you know, sort of what are the core tenets that differentiate IBM's approach to customer engagement and what do you see are standout features capable of addressing changing customer demand?
And I think we've already started hinting at, well, not hinting at all but we explicitly talked about communication. But is there anything else that you think that is particularly differentiating? Because I'd love to hear more about how both of you work together, because I'm getting the sense that you work in a civil cooperation sort of relationship.
Chris Oldacre:
There's a couple of themes I'd like to draw out there, Bola. The first one is actually just one of practical application of the space of the two teams. So, Natalie's team and my team share the same floor, level nine of IBM's office in York Road. But obviously around other offices around the country, we'll have our client engineering and customer success practices co-located.
And that is because simply sometimes you can't be having people in the same space working together. And sometimes it's very difficult to make the distinction between who's a client engineer and who's a customer success manager, because we really work very closely together.
I think one of the defining themes certainly for customer success when IBM was establishing the practice in its current form was we really wanted to maintain that technical integrity and technical discipline within the team. And so you'll find that our customer success managers are hired from experienced technical backgrounds. And that's really because going back to the complexity we talked about earlier, what we hear from clients is we're not short of business development people or people who come to us with particular points of view. Actually, what we really want and we really value is that technical expertise who can get hands on keys or in the labs with the client's own technical professionals and really make a difference at the platform level because of course we all want to achieve the business outcomes and we're very heavily informed by the business outcomes. But ultimately it does require a degree of practical execution. And so, in IBM, we make no apologies for the fact that we have a technical bias in our customer success team because we hear from clients it's absolutely what they consider to be a really valuable part of that relationship. I think. Natalie, you've got the same in client engineering.
Natalie Denyer:
We absolutely do. And we are a multidisciplinary team. So, we have architects, designers, engineers, consultants all in this pre-sales capacity working to formulate our squads together to really address our client opportunity and challenges. And, another key theme, just picking up on sort of the technical elements and skills that you were talking about there, Chris, is also, I think a real differentiator for us has been the co-creation that we've been doing with our clients.
And I think this has been really critical to all of our successes actually, because when we co-create with our clients, we were talking about the communication, we were talking about the innovation, we're talking about being on the same page together and going on the journey together collaboratively. The co-creation really plays a fundamental element in that because it ensures that we're coming together to formulate the solution, whatever that might be.
And of course, we never start with the technology. We always start with "what's the business challenge, what's the opportunity, what are we looking to address?" And of course, then we go on that journey together using a refined and robust method, co-creating, working together, having all the right stakeholders in the room from business all the way through to IT.
So, if we're working on a security solution, we would be working with the CSO and their team and their community. But where we can have like-for-like, so for example from a client engineering perspective, if I have designers, engineers, architects, where we can also have similar skill sets come from our clients and sit at the table with us to really formulate what the solution should and needs to be, taking into account the client's environment and their specific nature and their uniqueness, we again know that we're going to be going on that same journey together and creating something at the end of it, which is going to deliver real value, right?
Chris Oldacre:
Yeah. And I think just to build on that point and actually go back to a point I made at the start, which on reflection, I think there's an important element to this we think everybody should understand. When we talk about our customer success managers and our client engineers being together on level nine, the really important third part of that is the clients.
And so if you come to level nine, you will see client engineers, but you'll also see clients share in the same space. And that was something that we very deliberately designed. The layout of the building even to consider is that it's not about IBM or any other vendor doing something to a client, it's about doing it with the client.
And I think as Natalie alluded to earlier, the more time we spend together, the more aligned we're going to be on what we're trying to achieve for each other. And so, we found again, that's been an incredibly valuable part of the process for us and for clients because of course, clients get to learn and work with all the expertise we've got in the building, but we're humble enough to appreciate there's also things we can learn from our clients as well, and we find that that model works really well.
Natalie Denyer:
And what's interesting, I guess, just picking up on that and taking it to the next level. When I think about some of the enterprise clients that we've been on a real journey with, right, we've known them for years. But I would say the journey that we've gone on with them over the last couple of years since our teams were formulated and brought to market as it were has really changed the level of relationships that we have with those enterprise accounts now.
To your point, we're co-creating, we're co-located, we sit face to face, talking about the business perhaps on a weekly basis, right? So, it's not about us looking at a specific opportunity that we need to go and work on. We're now on a completely different level in terms of the dialogue that we have on an ongoing basis.
To the point actually you were making earlier where we're all set on level nine, for example, you would be hard pressed to say who's an IBM and who's not, right? It's that delineation almost doesn't exist anymore in our in our current environment. And I think that's a real key to knowing that we're on the right track, as it were, to delivering real value.
Chris Oldacre:
Yeah, I would say so.
Bola Rotibi:
That's a good point, actually, because it's interesting that you mention who's in IBM and who's not, because for a customer, I can imagine that at the end of the day they want help. You know, they've got a solution and they don't want to feel that there's any kind of friction, "oh, you're over there", they want to feel that you're a partner and that you understand where they're coming from, also their environment.
So actually, that's a really important point: not just the co-creation, the co-location, but also that recognition that you understand the journey that they have been on as well as the outcome that you're trying to achieve for them, which I think is actually a really important role. It's a much more symbiotic relationship. I know you talking about how you both work together, but it's actually interesting to hear how actually it's a triangular symbiotic relationship between both of yourselves, but also the customer as well, which is great.
Clive, I want to bring you in on this, because this must be, you must be thinking, "well, this is exactly the kind of relationship that would really power through for a lot of clients". I'd be curious to understand where you see the benefits as well.
Clive Howard:
I think many clients, I'd like to think most at least, many clients. They don't just want to hand something over to somebody anymore and get something back. I think in some cases that may be good, but I think in most cases they want to themselves learn something from the experience of creating something or delivering something that they can then take and they themselves can then use internally.
And I think a lot of what Chris and Natalie have talked about in terms of co-creation and co-location, an important part of that is a skill share and transfer aspect, because it's not just going to be one project, there's going to be a lot more and there's going to be a lot larger implications often and many of the things that are being learned from that project that a client is going to want to take and do for themselves over the long haul.
I think one of the trends we're clearly seen in recent years is organizations wanting to do a lot more themselves. Whether that sort of is seen by some as key to digital transformation or simply the fact that for many they've spent many years sort of outsourcing as much as possible and now come to realize actually a better approach is to do it yourself and to understand the technology yourself, to have the processes yourself and to be a modern IT organization.
And so, this ability to work with someone like, for example, IBM who have an enormous amount of experience, both working with customers, but from the work they do internally for themselves and the change they themselves have been through in recent years. Obviously, you know you're going to get access to a lot of experience, not just actual skills in terms of, "oh, this is how you do DevOps", but just in terms of experience within an industry or within the kind of organizations that I think IBM typically work with.
It has been mentioned a little bit, but IBM has been helping organizations with IT for a long time. And for many of their clients, they will have long relationships. And I think that can have a lot of value when you're looking to work with someone to think, "well, actually these folks, they really understand a lot of the complexity I have because they actually were there through a lot of its creation as well". So, I think finding someone who's got that kind of experience is really important because you know you're not only going to learn, but you're going to learn specifically in the context of you as, as I say, an organization within an industry or a type of organization.
Bola Rotibi:
Some excellent points made there, everyone, and great discussion. Actually, that leads us to the next question, which is what do you consider as good measurement strategies and what challenges have you had to overcome when it comes to measuring success?
Natalie Denyer:
That's a really good question, and I think we've all been on a journey with what do success and good look like for our all of our own individual organizations. But for us, I think from a client engineering perspective, when we look at what success is for us, it's we have worked collaboratively with the client to really address the problem or challenge that they have brought to us.
And I know when we've been successful because the client wants to immediately do something with the solution that we've co-created together. If they want to take that forward and look at how they can productionize it, scale it, implement it and expand upon it, then I know that we truly have been getting to the crux of some of their most pressing and challenging business needs.
So, measurement is quite a broad sort of answer to the question in terms of for me, success and measuring success from our clients perspective is ensuring they want to move forward with the solutions that we have co-created and presented together.
Chris Oldacre:
Yeah, I mean, I think from the customer success side of it, I guess most people familiar with that part of the industry wouldn't be surprised to hear that customer success is very good at metrics and there are lots of well-established metrics in terms of annual recurring revenues or churn rates, renewal rates, incremental deployment rates. And so I think, you know, as a core element of the discipline, it's not hard to find metrics.
So, I think for us, what's important is to go beyond those established kind of practice metrics. And what I really think does differentiate the IBM approach is, of course, we can measure those things internally, but what our clients are achieving externally for their business, that's the important thing. Sometimes that requires us to do some learning about their business, but equally to help them understand how to measure technology business impact.
Natalie Denyer:
Yeah, and looking through all those different themes when we talk about success and joint success, I think another element of that is that our clients actually really enjoy working with today's IBM. And you know, you and I were talking about the evolution of IBM and how it's changed over the last sort of five years, but actually our clients are a real testament to that because we see them coming in and they enjoy working with the teams, they're seeing likeminded individuals. They can probably see themselves in our team, but you're enjoying what you do and you're coming together and you're learning from each other and experimenting, and you feel in a safe environment to sort of try things out and fail, pick them up again, go in a different direction. But you're doing it collaboratively. Really enjoy doing what they're doing together, right? And our clients actually say that to us. And I guess that's why we see them come to our events, speak at public events, and, you know, they'll give us references and talk about what we do together because they truly see this IBM is a very different IBM to perhaps what others perhaps think it was or even is today.
Chris Oldacre:
Yeah, I couldn't put it better myself, Natalie. I think there's no great measure of whether you did the right thing than having clients telling you they enjoy coming in to hang out with you and achieve things. So yeah, we're very lucky to do what we do.
Bola Rotibi:
Actually, to be honest with you, you both sound like you've been very enthused and very enthusiastic in terms of your own engagement, which is really fantastic to hear. This now leads me to my final question of how IBM has evolved considerably over the years and moreso since CEO Arvind Krishna took the helm in early 2020. With that in mind, what myths have been slayed that shine a light on how the company has adapted? I'd be interested to hear about your specific insights on this.
Chris Oldacre:
Yeah, of course. And I think just to put some context around it, I've been with IBM for 12 years now, and so I joined IBM at the kind of the end of the Sam Palmisano era and then was through the Ginni Rometty era and now into the Arvind era. So I've got kind of a good sample size, I think, to answer that question.
I think for me, the biggest change has been one of focus. And so, today's IBM is a very focussed company in terms of when we talk about what is that focus from a technology point of view, it's about hybrid cloud, it's about data and it's about AI. And I think what I've recognized and observed is when you really get a company aligned behind that focussed vision and that focussed value, you really start to get a kind of flywheel effect where that focus means you go faster because you're more focussed, which then means you realize value faster for the company, but more importantly for clients, which then gets people excited about being focussed.
And so, I would say that we've kind of seen this real change in terms of in which we operate the, you know, removing internal roadblocks to get things done. And I think for me as a you know, as an IBMer being able to be part of that change and part of that change in pace and the value we're realizing for the clients is really something quite exciting.
Natalie Denyer:
Yeah, I would agree. And I've been here slightly longer, so I've seen a few more eras, I guess, in that pendulum swing. But for me I think it's experiential or engagement that we do with our clients that perhaps folks who don't really know IBM today would expect from us.
And it certainly wasn't the IBM of 15, 20 years ago. The way we engage with our clients today is just so different. You look into IBM, and equally you said earlier, we're learning from our clients too. So that whole relationship, that vendor-client-partner, all of those boundaries for us are becoming much more blurred, right, in terms of who does what.
Chris Oldacre:
And you know, this is a really interesting point to pick up on there, Natalie. Which is I think, Clive, you might have mentioned earlier, IBM's had lots of longstanding relationships with what people perceive to be a certain kind of client. And I think what clients of all sizes would experience if they engage with IBM today is actually IBM is invested in having relationships with every kind of client.
It's not perhaps the typical ones you might expect us to work with, who of course, are clearly valuable and strategic to IBM, but actually being very thoughtful about how we engage with the whole ecosystem. So how do we work with business partners, with systems integrators, with ISVs to build and service our technology offerings for our clients at scale? So, I guess Natalie and I firmly believe we've got the best jobs in the company really.
Bola Rotibi:
It's really great to hear this because there's obviously been a perception of IBM over the years, but it's good to hear the excitement that you both have along with the messages that you're coming out with in terms of how you engage with clients and how they are perceiving a change in direction.
I think getting insights into the communication that you're having as well as getting insights into some of the projects that you both are involved with highlights to me the broader way that you're actually working with clients. I'm sure that all this will be interesting for the company's partners and customers, while showcasing how IBM as an organization is changing, and perhaps winning on its strategy. But most importantly, it provides the extent to which organizations are having to engage to address the complexity within the IT landscape today and also for the foreseeable future.
It certainly offers insights into what client engagement needs now needs to look like. Clive, this has been a great conversation, do you have any takeaways from this discussion that you have as an IT practitioner and fellow of IBM's business operations and solutions strategies?
Clive Howard:
I think from my side, I think it just highlights the importance of organizations, customers building close relationships with partners and making sure they're as honest and transparent and in sync as possible in order to deliver what can be quite complex solutions against quite a complex background and to measure the success of those outcomes and to make sure that everyone continues to be aligned. As you know, you hopefully, you know, what you're engaging in is something that's long term and not just sort of a kind of a quick win.
Bola Rotibi:
Natalie, is there any last takeaways you'd like to leave with our audience?
Natalie Denyer:
I think it's just so important to really come along and experience today, as we've been saying throughout the podcast, doing things in really quite a different way and the excitement that we're seeing from our clients and our partners in terms of their engagement with us and how we go and co-create and collaborate together is just on a completely different level. So we'd love to work with more of our clients and partners to really drive that experiential experience that we're driving with our clients.
Bola Rotibi:
Okay, well, I feel that this has been a great conversation, guys, with lots of important and interesting insights that I've really enjoyed listening to and engaging with. I'd like to say thank you to Natalie, Chris and Clive for what has been a really insightful podcast. And I want to say to our audience to tune in to our next CCS Insight podcast episode. But until then, goodbye and all the best.
Chris Oldacre, Natalier Denyer and Clive Howard:
Thank you, Bola.