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Meet the FOLIO Flock: Implementation Project Managers (IPMs)
My team totals 52 people across the globe. It's broken up into three separate teams under my umbrella. So we have, kind of customer facing, 30 implementation project managers. We have supporting them 11 SaaS technical operations specialists and four library data integration engineers. My team supports actually the entire SaaS suite under EBSCO that integrate with FOLIO. So my team works with EBSCO Discovery Service, Full Text Finder, our authentication products like OpenAthens and EBSCO Single Sign-On. We also work with Panorama, BiblioGraph and Locate. So the part of the implementation that my team is involved in is typically right from the get-go. Typically from the handoff from sales, we would do a, you know, internal handoff call to kind of gather any existing customer information, and then we would be kicking off with the customer and walking them through the configuration and stand up of whatever their platform was that they purchased from EBSCO. Specifically for FOLIO implementations, Our focus is primarily on the patron interface, so that would mean either EDS or Locate. And at that stage, when the FOLIO team is ready to start working on that user journey, that's when they would pull in our team. So the IPMs get involved post-sale. Once the sale has been closed, a case and a project gets created on our side, and then IPM gets assigned to kind of structure and create the plan for your integrations. At that stage, you know, obviously they work with you throughout that entire initial configuration and standing up the product to the platform, and then it transitions over to long term support at that stage. So it really is during that initial implementation stage that my team gets involved. And when should a customer contact my team? It's during the implementation process. So during that initial setup phase you should be formally introduced to who your project manager is and they'll be your primary contact throughout that initial setup. They may bring in additional technical folks to help support them and have more in-depth conversations on various points, whether it's authentication or linking, and topics like that. But yeah, they will be your central point of contact. If a customer is implementing multiple EBSCO products, which happens quite frequently, they do still get that single IPM that kind of understands all the dependencies between the products and how they fit together and the suite and kind of the ecosystem that you're setting up for your library. So you will still have that single point of contact, and they'll be running around to different teams in the background in order to set up your configuration or bring in other experts to help provide guidance as necessary. Why choose EBSCO? I think it's for the same reason that I've been at EBSCO for ten years, and I think it's the people. We have a great services team who is really dedicated to our customers and supporting them and making sure that they have a clear path forward for success.