Building a Third-Party Risk Management Offering That Drove $280K in Expansions

The Challenge

Multiple customers were asking how they could extend our authentication controls to their third-party vendors and contractors who accessed their systems. Third-party credential compromise was a growing attack vector, and customers were spending heavily on separate vendor risk management tools. We did not have a product for this use case, but the demand was clear.

The Approach

I documented the requirements from eight customers and presented a business case to our product team for a third-party access module. While the product team evaluated the opportunity, I worked with our professional services group to create a services-led interim solution: a configuration package that extended our existing platform to third-party users with additional controls like time-limited access, enhanced logging, and mandatory hardware key authentication.

I offered this as a paid professional services engagement to the eight customers who had expressed interest, positioning it as an early-access program that would inform the eventual product development.

The Result

All eight customers purchased the third-party access package, generating $280K in expansion revenue. Their feedback informed the product team's development of a native third-party risk module, which launched six months later. The eight early-access customers were automatically upgraded to the product version, and the module went on to generate $1.2M in new revenue in its first year.

Key Takeaway

Account managers are the closest to customer needs and the best positioned to identify product opportunities. When multiple customers ask for the same capability, there is a product opportunity hiding in the service request. Bridging the gap with a services-led offering generates immediate revenue while validating the product opportunity.