Whether you run $50M IAM programs or live and breathe boutique IGA work, discovery is the phase that decides what the engagement costs you. It is the same phase in both cases — and a different problem.
01
Identity CoAnalyst is sold to firms that deliver identity work, not to the platforms they deliver it on. Within that, two kinds of firm buy it for opposite reasons, and the pitch that lands with one is close to irrelevant to the other.
A global integrator is managing a portfolio. Its problem is that discovery is scoped by expensive architects before anyone has been paid, and that the phase blocks a staffed delivery team after award. The saving is in utilization and pre-sales cost, measured across many pursuits.
A specialist firm is managing a margin. Its problem is that discovery is largely unbillable, that only two or three people can run it well, and that the same work is rebuilt from scratch on every engagement. The saving is in the gap between what a fixed fee pays and what the engagement costs to produce.
Both problems sit in the same phase. Neither is solved by working faster.
02
Upstream of implementation, and deliberately not competing with it. Identity CoAnalyst does not provision, certify or govern anything. It produces the requirements baseline that SailPoint, Saviynt, Okta or CyberArk then get configured against — which is why it stays platform-agnostic, and why it does not put an alliance relationship at risk.
In practice it replaces the workshop-and-spreadsheet phase: an AI expert delivers each question to the right stakeholder as a guided conversation, probes vague answers, and generates the requirements document from what was actually said. Twelve weeks of discovery becomes under ten days, and the output carries who answered, when, and where two answers conflicted.
03
| Global system integrators | Boutique IAM firms | |
|---|---|---|
| The pressure | Pre-sales cost, time to proposal, bench utilization | Margin on fixed fee, key-person dependency |
| Programs | $5M–$50M+, multi-vertical | Identity-only, deep specialism |
| What ICA changes | Scoping cost per pursuit; dead time after award | Unbillable hours per engagement; who can run discovery |
| Commercial shape | Firm-wide license, alliance-aligned | Firm-wide license, pilot on a live engagement |
| Read this | For global system integrators → | For boutique IAM firms → |
04
One license covers every client. There is no per-project purchase and no procurement cycle between qualifying an opportunity and using it on a live pursuit. Each client's stakeholders, answers and documents are isolated at the tenant boundary — which is the question a regulated client's security review actually asks.
The deliverable is the proof. A generated requirements document carries its own audit trail: which stakeholder answered, when, and what they said. That is a differentiator in a competitive bid and evidence in a security review.
It is platform-agnostic. The questions that matter are the same regardless of which product wins the selection, which is what makes the output usable before the platform decision is final.
Onboarding is direct. Access is invitation-based and handled personally — no partner portal, no tier to qualify for, no alliance manager between you and an answer.
05
It does not reduce license cost, connector development, or the certification effort that continues after go-live, and it does not make an access model correct — it makes the decisions behind one explicit and traceable.
It is also a poor fit where discovery is genuinely small. A single-application rollout with three stakeholders does not need structure, and the overhead will exceed the saving. The economics work where discovery is a phase rather than a meeting.
Identity CoAnalyst is built for firms that deliver identity work rather than for the end client. A firm-wide license covers every engagement with each client walled off, the requirements document is produced under your brand, and there is no per-project purchase. It is the assessment and discovery layer of a delivery practice, not a product your client buys separately.
Design the questionnaire once for the engagement type — role mining, PAM requirements, certification scoping — then let the platform deliver it to each stakeholder as a guided conversation rather than a form or a workshop. Answers are captured with attribution, follow-ups are asked automatically where a response is vague, and the requirements document generates from the result. The consultant reviews and decides instead of scheduling and transcribing.
Not in the formal sense. Access is invitation-based and licensed firm-wide, and onboarding is handled directly rather than through a portal or an alliance track. Firms working at global-integrator scale and specialist firms buy the same thing; what differs is the problem it solves, not the commercial construct.
Identity CoAnalyst is generally available and running on live engagements. Access is invitation-based — Bill Leonard handles onboarding personally.
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