Project “Foot-in-Door” – Open Source Workday Consulting

One of the things that became evident to us when getting involved in our first few Workday sales cycles was that the real selling is done by the Solution Architects and Lead Consultants, not the sales team. In short, the product experts sell, not the person talking over the Power Point. Because of this seemingly obvious reality, we have always been of the opinion there doesn’t need to be a sales division or large marketing presence to win new clients, and more importantly, retain those clients once you do have your foot in the door.

The concept of “keeping your foot in the door” is one of the pillars on which Kognitiv Inc. is built. Furthermore, unlike many Workday Partners, or consultancies in general, we are not only willing to take on small contracts and pieces of work others might pass over, we thrive on these “breadcrumb” contracts. After all, if you get enough crumbs together you eventually wind up with a full loaf of bread.

Why does this work so well for us?

The answer to that is really very simple…we hire amazing people. Where most professional services companies focus on the clients, we focus on our employees. After all, in consulting, our product is the people we send onto the battle field, and if they are happy, engaged, and rewarded for their work, the client satisfaction takes care of itself. A-players do quality work because they know good vs. bad, even if the client might not. If you have a team of only A-players, once your foot is in the door, the rest of the body is soon to follow.

This leads to why we are writing this post today.

We have decided to open our ticketing system to the entire Workday community, rather than just our existing client base. We are calling this the “Functional Marketplace” aka “Project Foot-in-Door”. You may have seen our previous post on the “Integrations Marketplace” which is a tool for requesting information and proposals related to brand new integration builds. The purpose of the “Functional Marketplace” is to allow users to log Questions, Break-fix, or Enhancement related requests directly to the team of experts here at Kognitiv.

The number of reasons we love this simple tool is hard to summarize in a short blog post. We relish the ideals it represents in terms of a shift in the traditional consulting culture, making it easier for clients to find and procure quality professional services without the hassle of negotiating an MSA/SOW for 3 months just to get someone on the phone for a quick question. There is simply no reason for it. The way Kognitiv delivers quality support, at fair prices, while providing top notch quality is actually not rocket science; it just requires running the company differently than most “traditional” consulting practices. Allowing people to wear multiple hats and play multiple roles. In some organizations this is frowned upon, as though things must be wrong if someone is asked to step outside their job description. In today’s world this is not how things work, especially in the ever changing tech world we live in. People enjoy breaking up the monotony of doing the same task over and over, with the responsibility of challenging themselves as well as those around them to do something different.

Why would we be willing to get on the phone and help with someone who is not one of our customers?

No sales pitch first?

We can’t bill them?

Who cares!

In our experience, customers who have been live with Workday for a year, 2, 3, or 7, are all looking for more or less the same thing. Workday users generally just want to get a consultant who has done this before and seen it work (in production, not impl), preferably more ways than one. It’s very simple. We know we have the best and brightest, therefore we are happy to allow a little test drive. As a matter of fact, we dare people to try and test that statement. Give us a hard question, something stumping your current implementation or production support team…we might just have a good answer…