Catherine Manarolis, Sales Director, ISM
Why this feels heavier than it should
I’ve been in enterprise technology for more than 20 years. First with the largest vendors in the industry, now with a delivery team that gets called in when things need to actually work.
If I’ve learned anything, it’s this: what slows most teams down is rarely a lack of effort or talent. It’s the accumulated weight of systems, choices, and exceptions that nobody’s had time to properly untangle. Or the simple reality that people take care of their own roles, and rarely does anyone step back to look at the data underneath all the teams and see where it’s started to fray.
The silver lining? You’re probably closer than you think.
When the foundation holds, everything after it gets easier
This series walked through what happens when a few fundamentals are in place. Nothing extravagant. A data flow that behaves the way it should. Privacy built in. Approvals you can prove. A catalogue that people actually use. Data that downstream systems can lean on without a full-time babysitter.
That’s the foundation: know what you have, define it clearly, mask sensitive data outside production, trace lineage to the edge, and use usage contracts so integrations are predictable. These are the kinds of changes that make teams breathe easier.
The returns are real, and they compound
When the foundation is solid, every project that follows has support underneath it. Nothing starts from zero. A Forrester study on Microsoft 365 E5 found a 190% 3-year ROI and 40% savings in audit and compliance management for the composite enterprise (Microsoft). That’s what happens when the basics are in place and tools can do what they were built for.
On the identity side, Forrester’s analysis of Microsoft Entra found a 240% ROI and a 50% efficiency lift for IAM teams in the composite case (Microsoft). Less waiting, fewer dead ends, and more time for the work that matters.
Microsoft’s Work Trend Index reports that 75% of knowledge workers already use AI at work, and early Copilot studies found 70% felt more productive (Microsoft). That’s not hype. That’s what it feels like when the plumbing is right and the tools have clean data to work with.
Kyndryl’s research on modernising core platforms shows leaders using generative AI to deliver measurable improvements in customer experience, not as a side experiment, but as part of how operations run (Kyndryl).
How we show up
When our teams join a project, we start by looking for the bottleneck. It might be a stalled pilot, a handful of legacy systems nobody knows how to retire, or a risk that leadership finally wants to close. We don’t show up with a product pitch. We show up to make progress for Canadian organisations that are tired of starting over, without slowing down what’s already in motion.
The next step can be a simple one
If any of this series resonated, I’m happy to talk. You’ll leave the conversation with a clear sense of where you are, what’s possible, and how to get there without burning out the team that’s already giving you everything they have.
That’s not a sales line. That’s just how I prefer to work.
