Your team has an urgent requirement for improved Privileged Access Management (PAM) and has developed a new PAM business case centered on addressing that specific need. Sound familiar? This focused approach seems logical, but here's the problem: business cases built around a single team's needs typically fail to secure the broader organizational support that PAM programs require for long-term success.
These narrow business cases create 'tunnel vision' that executives are hesitant to back and wider impacted teams are resistant to adopt. This leads to underfunded, fragmented programs that struggle to deliver results. Meanwhile, opportunities to maximize capabilities and extend return on investment across multiple departments are completely missed.
Many different groups and departments within modern businesses can benefit from an effective Privileged Access Management program. Each of them has different priorities and ideas of success from a program, however, making it essential that any PAM investment considers all those needs. As this blog demonstrates, addressing multiple stakeholders upfront actually makes implementation smoother. When everyone sees their value, you get stronger support and fewer roadblocks.
Understanding your stakeholder landscape
To build a compelling PAM business case, the first essential step is identifying all the relevant stakeholders that the program could serve. Typically, these can be divided into four categories:
Compliance-Focused Stakeholders (CFOs, internal audit)
Compliance-focused stakeholders generally include CFOs and internal audit teams who are normally driven by external requirements and risk mitigation. They’ll be looking for PAM with built-in compliance capabilities that can reduce manual audit administration and maximize productivity visibility through monitoring. This will help them meet Segregation of Duties and the Principle of Least Privilege requirements; maintain a trail of information across audit, reporting, and risk reduction; and drive PAM ROI through improved productivity.
Operational Stakeholders (Identity teams, IT departments)
Dedicated identity teams, as well as wider IT departments that need effective PAM for their day-to-day duties, are usually looking for seamless Active Directory integration with existing user management systems and cloud directories like EntraID; faster user onboarding for immediate employee productivity; and in more mature environments, Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) integration for automated access provisioning workflows. All this can reduce their daily administrative burden and minimize the time lost to routine tasks like credential management.
Innovation-Focused Stakeholders (Cloud teams, DevOps teams)
As cloud adoption has increased, cloud-specific teams and DevOps departments also increasingly need PAM for secret management across multiple cloud platforms. Each platform tends to come with its own native credential 'safe', and PAM can bring these credentials together into one centralized vault to reduce vulnerability and complexity. This fits in well with these stakeholders' demands for solutions that align with their agile working methods, their Infrastructure-as-Code capabilities, and secret injection for development pipelines.
Business Users (Finance teams, HR)
Like their peers in operational roles, Finance and HR teams benefit from PAM through the reduction of manual processes, including onboarding employees and reporting. Subject to organizational directives to consolidate and optimize costs, expedite productivity, and prepare documentation for business expansion through activities like mergers and acquisitions, PAM can enable these teams to better support respective executives (CFOs, COOs) and the organization as a whole while also streamlining everyday tasks.
Security-focused stakeholders (CISOs, Security teams)
Forward-thinking security will recognize that PAM ROI can extend far beyond credential storage, and reach into session recording and monitoring, reducing attack vectors, and enhancing security without introducing operational friction. They’ll want PAM programs that help them in their strategic thinking around the wider security architecture of the organization and understand how PAM fits into the security ecosystem in general.
Five key steps to building your PAM business case
Once you’ve taken all your stakeholders into account, you can then start building your PAM business case. These five steps can put you on the right track:
Assess your organization’s risk appetite
Your approach to risk will depend on your industry's regulatory requirements: organizations operating under strict compliance frameworks like SOX or GxP will emphasize different PAM capabilities. Understanding this context is vital because it affects program priorities and where the emphasis should be placed within the PAM business case, which in turn can impact how stakeholders engage with your plans.
Start with core requirements but think broadly
While the ‘must have’ of your PAM program should be the foundation of the business case, you should go on to expand the scope through strategic requirements gathering. Drilling down into core requirements often uncovers more use cases and other important needs, which can then be incorporated into the PAM strategy as it’s developed.
Apply organizational context for C-suite engagement
Establishing organizational context is vital for engaging key executives and decision-makers. They’ll want to understand how the business can benefit from the investment, whether you’re a retailer ensuring password rotation never falls on busy bank holidays, or a pharma company protecting sensitive intellectual property. This is the best way to quantify and ‘sell’ the idea of PAM ROI and convince the C-suite to actively champion the program with finance, HR, and other areas of the business.
Identify use cases and controls to guide implementation
Prioritization frameworks can help balance immediate needs with long-term value creation and ensure the right areas are addressed in the right order. Most often, this means starting by identifying use cases and controls that demonstrate how a PAM program solves the original problem, then showcasing the additional capabilities that deliver enhanced ROI that will impress stakeholders and senior leaders.
Include measurable outcomes beyond compliance
Incorporating the likes of satisfaction metrics into a PAM program can quantify the difference that it makes to user experience and focus stakeholders and design programs in the right areas from the outset. This can have a knock-on effect of driving wider organizational adoption through “word of mouth”, helping to shift the perception of PAM from a compliance-driven tick-box exercise into a business service that drives tangible, measurable user value.
Conclusion: Your next steps to cross-functional buy-in
From our experience, the organizations that achieve the biggest success with their PAM programs are those that recognize its ability to address multiple needs through a collaborative, inclusive framework. Ensuring stakeholders understand the full scope and potential of a PAM investment, and how a structured program can maximize that potential, can be just as important as the technology itself.
At Turnkey, our role is to help organizations like yours bridge that gap between what your team thinks it needs from PAM, and what it can deliver for your entire organization. We achieve this through cross-industry understanding that helps you identify opportunities you might otherwise miss; early stakeholder engagement and comprehensive requirements gathering; and customized demonstrations developed with leading PAM technology providers to encourage wider buy-in.
To find out more on how we can make your PAM program a strategic, multi-stakeholder asset for your organization, get in touch with our team today.
