This is my first blog (Technical Blog). I don't think there could be a better way to start with blogging than sharing my journey in functional consulting so far.

Functional Consulting?

For those of you who don't know who functional consultants are - Imagine you got a SaaS product. You and your team of DevOps, owners, and stakeholders know exactly how your software functions and how you can manipulate the features and customizations to bend the software according to users' needs. You got yourself a handful of clients in the beginning. You feel like wow we got this. Customers love our product. But what next? What about when you have a ton of clients or so many projects that you fall short of people who help customers towards the implementation side? Also, at the same time you need to focus on bringing in new versions of the software, new Add-ons, new customizations and essentially upgrading your software towards the best potential. You won't be able to manage your clients, roll in the updates, help in customer success, resolve clients' queries, and do several such tasks. That's when the functional consultants come in.

SaaS consultants or Functional consultants essentially act as a bridge between software and the clients who use the software. Their job is to make clients' and users' life easier.

Software and websites do make people's lives easier but that happens only when the users are aware of the capabilities that the software has to offer.

To conclude, a functional consultant's job is to ensure that users' and clients' requirements are met to the core of their satisfaction.

My Journey

The software that I work on is called Icertis Contract Intelligence. It is a CLM platform. CLM stands for Contracts Lifecycle Management. It handles and allows users to manage workflows associated with contracts signed between companies: right from drafting a new contract to reporting and tracking various contract clauses after the contract is signed between both parties. When it comes to workflows and automation, many customizations can be required so that the software aligns itself with the customer's needs.

Now you might be wondering what could possibly become a challenge here, as there is not much coding involved on the functional end, all we need to do is understand the functional needs and establish the dependencies. But the overall picture has much more depth to it. Consultants need to factor in all the possibilities like:

1. Do the customizations apply to all the units within an organization?

2. What about secrecy and confidentiality as the same software needs to be shared throughout the organization?

3. Should there be any groups of users to have the same type of access to the system?

4. What are the implicit needs and use cases which are not explicitly mentioned by the clients?

Even I had a thought in my mind that this process seems pretty straightforward and not much complexity is involved once you understand the system thoroughly. But, the action began when the customers started using the software and they discovered limitations at certain levels like:

1. Users not being able to modify the attributes once the contract is executed.

2. A certain set of agreements needs to be confidential and should be accessible only to a certain group of users.

3. The users were accustomed to different software that they used for CLM. A migration to completely new software with a new UI and functionalities overwhelmed the users, who were reluctant to accept the new software.

4. There will always be a prospect that would be unknown to the team and especially this being my first project, I was unaware of the auto-renewal functionality that the system offered for expiring contracts.

And many more such complexities are involved wherever consulting comes into the picture. My team worked the hardest to get the users familiar with the system and make the software homely. Within my organization level, my team got recognized as one of the best-performing teams in the Americas 1 execution hub. And on an individual level, I was given the recognition of best-performing fresher from CLM Implementation in Americas 1 execution hub. Congratulations again to my team!

Key Takeaways

Customers don't know what they want until you show them what they want

This seems to be the highlight of my entire 1 year of experience. The work never stops. There is always scope for improvement, some functionality to change, some customization to bend and optimize the overall workflow time, and many other things.

I think the teams need to just take a break at some point in time and introspect into the system to analyze what has been done so far, and what additional things we can do to bring in the best practices and utmost customer satisfaction.

The next most important thing I learnt from my Manager and Team Lead was about corporate communication. Me being an introvert, I not only lack socialization skills but I also found out that corporate communication plays just as important a role in your career as the work you do. And through the passing months, I was privileged to handle multiple KT (Knowledge Transfer) Sessions for the customers and I got over the introverted side of me (at least in terms of formal communication)

Now my prime focus this year will be upskilling myself in the technical sides like Integrations, APIs, development, etc. Will keep my journey updated here.

Happy Reading!