Customer roles
Every customer has their own stakeholders that you might encounter on a project who might or might not use the same vocabulary that’s listed in this section. Review the following definitions and then keep them in mind as you meet your customer’s team and discover their vocabulary.
Business owner – The person or people with the final say in which Microsoft services their organization will purchase and whether to invest in new technologies.
Project sponsor – A senior business stakeholder who champions the project at the leadership level, secures budget, time, and people, and helps prioritize objectives so that they align with the business strategy. Projects where senior stakeholders are passive or distant face greater risk.
Steering committee – A group of senior stakeholders with the authority to keep the project aligned with its key performance indicators (KPIs). As they monitor progress, they make decisions that affect the overall strategy, including budget, costs, and expected business functionality.
Process owner – The person who is accountable for a business process end to end. Their engagement is critical so that the team fully understands the process, and their input is required whenever a process changes to align with built-in features.
Implementation project manager – In charge of making sure that a company’s implementation goes smoothly.
Business experts – People who participate in implementation projects as experts for their teams. Sometimes, they’re referred to as subject matter experts (SMEs).
Business analyst – A person, typically employed by the customer, who analyzes business processes and requirements. The role covers many different names and job titles.
Business users – People who use the system after deployment. You might have different groups of users. For example, you could have Finance, Commerce, Marketing, Sales, and Service users, each doing different types of work on the overall solution.
Developers – People who write code to integrate with other data sources, extend core system functionality, or build a complex application.
Administrator – People who provide administrative support to a manager and team.
Compliance – Depending on the organization, this role could be related to the customer’s industry, or it could be more generic, such as privacy and legal. Their involvement can be critical to ensure that your project stays compliant and doesn’t have last-minute blockers. These groups are business experts in the organization’s compliance requirements.
Influencer - People who are on every project but might not be an actual named project team member. Occasionally, you’ll encounter a negative influencer, someone who has a reason that’s unrelated to your project to be a distraction to the success of the team. Often, you’ll have an influencer for good reasons, a champion. The champion can help drive the success of the project; they're eager to observe the successful implementation and excited to share that success with others.