Witad Awards 2022: EDM professional of the year (vendor)—Natalia Isajenko, S&P Global Market Intelligence

Natalia Isajenko has worked at S&P Global Market Intelligence (until recently IHS Markit) since 2019, and she’s already spearheaded several projects, including standardizing reporting on professional services engagements across a large portfolio of software products.

The global head of professional services for Software Solutions at S&P Global Market Intelligence leads 180 global consultants, who are responsible for implementing and providing follow-up services for customers of products like EDM, thinkFolio, and iLEVEL. Her team’s client engagements range from complex, multi-year enterprise transformation projects to short-term, contained consulting, “and every flavor in between,” Isajenko says.

The Software Solutions group had realized there was a lot of variation in how professional services were delivered for different products within the portfolio, and with more than 200 engagements in an average year, tracking and reporting of projects was difficult. Isajenko’s initiative resulted in a new internal workflow and reporting application, and a consistent set of data points available for 220 engagements across multiple products.

Isajenko says the most challenging part of the project was the first step: gaining consensus on a standardized set of data points to collect and report on. But from working with clients, she has gained an understanding of enterprise data management, and this came in handy. A common model was achieved and extended to the new internal workflow and application.

Phase one of the rollout was completed in early Q4 2021. Isajenko says the Software Solutions team has benefited internally: Reporting is simpler, transparency has improved, and it’s easier to make sure that the right skillsets are being deployed on the right client engagements.

“Our managing consultants and project managers spend less time on getting project reporting right, or double-checking data; it has become a lot easier to deal with those aspects of our deliveries,” she says.

But the most exciting benefits for her are those experienced by customers. “What it means for our customers is that our people just trust that our internal project tracking solution is going to give me a correct report, so they can focus on the project, on solving challenges for the customer. We can really see a difference; people are genuinely focusing more on deliveries,” she says.

Customer experience is, after all, what drives Isajenko, who remains passionate about professional services after two decades in the industry. “It’s about how your project changes the way customers see their jobs. This is what I wake up every morning feeling excited about: when you can see how the project delivery suddenly makes your customers say, ‘What used to take me X number of hours, occasionally days, now takes minutes.’ When we’re able to see how what we do helps to transform our customer organizations, that’s empowering,” she says.