The FAQS of CPQ
Advisor Relations
I hope everyone enjoyed the holiday season!
As part of my 2022 resolutions, I’ve decided to write more often about the advisor relations function and successful strategies for engaging with ISG. I plan to reach out with my advice and insights once a month, in the hope that together we can get some dialogue going within the advisor relations community on important topics!
I thought I’d start with the ISG CPQ (Candidate Provider Qualification) process—I get a lot of questions about how it works and how providers can position themselves for consideration in the best-fit deals. The number one thing I tell them is that how you’re represented in our CPQ process depends on how you share data with us.
Let me start with how we define the objective of the CPQ process:
“To determine which providers are qualified to provide in-scope services for the client, and to enable strong conversations between the ISG advisor and their client regarding which providers should be selected for inclusion in the ISG FutureSource™ process.”
So how does the process work? After obtaining an understanding of the client’s objectives, the project team meets with the CPQ team to gather information and develop a long-list of providers; they are looking for data that informs what the client is trying to do, which providers must be included (e.g., incumbent providers), which must be excluded, and more.
The CPQ team then strives to answer three key questions:
- Capabilities—Who has the capabilities to deliver for my client?
- Market experience—How often and where have they delivered similar service?
- Client satisfaction—How well have they performed when delivering similar services?
As you consider how you can best position your firm for success in the CPQ process, here are a few recommendations:
- Participate in the ISG Provider Lens (IPL) studies where your firm competes. When you participate, be sure you’re providing data at the most granular level. For example, providing country data is better than only providing global data.
- Think of it this way—if there is a deal in DACH and the advisors are only working with global capabilities insights, your firm may not compare well to competitors who have provided DACH-specific data.
- Participate in the quarterly data exchange program run by Bret Breeding. This data is critical for us to understand your market experience.
- Consider—the client wants to know how often each provider has delivered similar services. For example, if that client is a U.S. bank looking for workplace services, our team will run a filter on which providers have experience with U.S. banks. Where we have data that is publicly available (e.g., the Contract KnowledgeBase) we list specific named accounts as examples; you want to be sure ISG is aware of all active contracts, and, where possible, include the name of the client.
- Share your case studies with ISG! This can be done through the IPL process, the Digital Case Study research initiative, or by sharing directly with the CPQ team.
- The CPQ team has a database of case studies and will pull the most relevant ones when preparing their results. They attempt to include a case study for every provider, but if your case studies are missing, we obviously cannot include one!
The CPQ team uses all the data we are able to share to prepare a client-facing deliverable and start a thorough discussion with the client. Those discussions determine which providers move from the long-list to the short-list. This is where the awareness framework data kicks in—how well your company does in these discussions depends on how well the ISG team understands your capabilities, and feels comfortable recommending your firm.
Our Momentum data shows that advisors are more likely to recommend providers to their clients if they have had four or more interactions with that provider over the course of a year. This is why I preach the importance of programmatic engagement (something I hope to get into more detail on in a future note).
I hope this helps you understand our process a little better, and makes you think about your internal processes for sharing data with ISG. The start of the year is probably a good time to do a quick assessment of how effective your organization is at data sharing and programmatic engagement.
I'm interested in your comments, so please reply to this email or give me a call! Even if it is just to let me know you’d rather not receive any more notes, or to recommend a colleague you think would be in interested in hearing more from me.
No matter what, I want this email to be the start of a larger conversation about advisor relations between us.
Happy New Year!
Paul
