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TECHtonic: Trends in Technology and Services

Technology & Services Industry Association

Join host Thomas Lah as he discusses shifts in the ever-changing technology industry with tech executives, researchers, and thought leaders who share their experience and provide their perspective and data on what companies should do to stay relevant, be profitable, and succeed.

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#135
Friday · 38 min
135. AI on Autopilot: Where Humans Still Belong in the Cockpit
AI is creating a new question for managed services: what happens when the work itself becomes software-driven? On this episode of TSIA’s TECHtonic, Thomas Lah talks with Scott McIsaac, CEO of Helios Core, about the shift from labor-driven IT support to AI-driven operations. Scott brings two decades of managed services experience to the conversation, including leadership roles at Secure-24 and NTT, and shares how customer demand led to the creation of Mira Resolve, an AI-powered platform he describes as an autopilot for IT. The conversation looks at what happens when AI starts doing the work traditionally handled by IT support teams, including how agents can operate across an environment while bringing humans in for the moments that matter. Thomas and Scott also dig into the knowledge-management problem underneath AI adoption, the challenges of pricing AI-driven work, and why buying AI technology alone does not create efficiency. The bigger question is how services organizations adapt their technology, knowledge, and business models when labor is no longer the primary unit of work.
#134
September 4 · 40 min
134. Rewriting the Rules of SaaS Value
AI is forcing technology companies to rethink what customers are actually paying for, and how they prove the value they deliver. On this episode of TSIA’s TECHtonic, Thomas Lah sits down with Michael Speranza, CEO of Kantata, to explore how AI is reshaping the economics of SaaS, professional services, and enterprise technology. As software becomes easier to build and AI accelerates automation, the code itself is becoming less defensible. The real value is shifting toward industry expertise, data, context, and the ability to turn insights into measurable business outcomes. Thomas and Michael unpack why simple AI automation is quickly becoming table stakes, while predictive and agentic capabilities are opening the door to a new level of value creation. They also examine the growing pressure to move beyond seat-based and time-and-materials pricing toward consumption- and outcome-based models—and why both technology providers and their customers are still figuring out what that transition should look like. The conversation also explores the rise of the hybrid workforce, the changing role of technology services, the importance of reducing time to value, and why the future of enterprise software may not be a choice between standardization and customization, but a new model that combines the two. For technology and services leaders navigating AI, the message is clear: the question is no longer simply what your technology can do. It’s what becomes possible for your customer because of it, and whether you can prove it.
#133
August 21 · 33 min
133. Beyond the Blunt Instrument: Why “It Hallucinated” Isn't an Answer
What happens when an AI agent fails, and how can enterprises prove they saw it coming? On this episode of TSIA’s TECHtonic, Thomas Lah takes on one of the most important questions facing organizations moving AI from experimentation into the enterprise: How do you prove that AI is actually delivering the outcomes you promised? Drawing on TSIA’s Five Proofs of Outcome-Based Revenue, Thomas and guest Sekhar Sarukkai unpack why proof of performance and telemetry are becoming essential to proving business value. Sarukkai, a serial entrepreneur who previously founded Skyhigh Networks and Securent, now leads Chatsee.ai, which recently raised $6.5 million to build what he calls a failure intelligence layer for AI agents. The conversation takes a revealing look at what really goes wrong when AI agents enter the real world. After analyzing 10,000 enterprise agent failures, Chatsee identified 157 distinct failure categories, and found that hallucinations account for less than 10% of actual failures. Instead, enterprises are facing bigger and often invisible challenges around resolution, escalation, silent execution, and the growing gap between pre-deployment controls and runtime governance. Thomas and Sekhar also unpack the hidden economics of AI failure, including how a seemingly minor error can quietly spread through downstream systems for weeks. Sekhar introduces a framework for measuring direct loss, propagation, detection delay, and reversibility, while making the case for shared accountability across enterprises, AI platforms, and integrators. If your organization is serious about moving AI agents into production, and proving the value they deliver, this is a conversation you’ll want to hear.
#132
August 7 · 48 min
132. Rerouting Around the Accident to Build a New Revenue Model
Thomas Lah opens the episode by describing TSIA's model-driven revenue engine framework: using AI to monitor every customer touchpoint in real time instead of running revenue off CRM fields and pipeline reviews. His guest, Stephen Messer, has spent three decades living that shift firsthand. Messer co-founded LinkShare in the 1990s, and later co-founded Collective[i], the AI sales intelligence network the Wall Street Journal has compared to Waze for sales. Messer argues that most AI investment in sales, from chatbot-assisted CRM entry to faster email drafting, is being layered onto a system that was never built around the buyer. He explains how Collective[i] models buying committees, introduces sequencing, and maps the hidden relationships driving each deal. The conversation also challenges one of sales' longest-standing practices: forecasting. Messer argues that traditional forecast calls are little more than weekly guesswork that consumes valuable selling time without improving accuracy. In its place, he outlines an AI-first approach that provides a dynamic, daily view of deal health, highlighting what's changed, why it changed, and where sales teams should focus next. Like a navigation app that constantly recalculates the fastest route, AI helps revenue leaders adapt to changing buyer behavior as it happens.
#131
July 24 · 40 min
131. Psychological Safety Is Your AI Strategy
Thomas Lah welcomes social psychologist Sarah DiMuccio to talk about the human side of AI transformation. They dig into why AI adoption triggers anxiety across every role, seniority level, and demographic: it isn't resistance to a task, it's a threat to how people see themselves professionally. Sarah explains that companies are investing heavily in AI technology while investing almost nothing in enablement, treating adoption as something that happens automatically once the tool is switched on rather than a genuine redesign of how people work. That gap shows up as “quiet checkout,” a form of disengagement Sarah argues is more damaging than outright sabotage because it's invisible to leadership and never gets addressed. The conversation turns to what actually builds trust and follow-through: naming the fear directly instead of talking around it, leaders modeling experimentation in front of their teams, and co-creating AI use cases with employees rather than imposing them from the top down. Sarah introduces her framework for future-ready leadership, a Venn diagram of AI fluency, strategic agility, and relational intelligence, arguing that leaders missing the relational piece may retain talent short-term through “golden handcuffs,” but they lose the honesty, experimentation, and judgment that AI-era competitiveness actually depends on.
#130
July 10 · 34 min
130. Beyond Billable Hours in Professional Services with Certinia
In this episode of TECHtonic, Thomas Lah welcomes Deb Ashton, Founder of Certinia, for a conversation about the transformation of professional services in the age of AI. They explore why traditional utilization-based business models are giving way to outcome-driven engagements, how AI is changing pricing, delivery, and workforce strategies, and why customer value must become the foundation of every services organization. Deb shares practical insights from working with technology companies that are embracing AI to streamline delivery while empowering consultants to focus on strategic guidance, governance, and customer relationships. Together, they discuss the rise of Professional Services 2.0, the importance of measuring time-to-value and business outcomes, and what leaders must do today to build more scalable, profitable, and customer-centric services organizations.
#129
June 26 · 43 min
129. The AI Bill Is Coming Due: Making Enterprise AI Profitable
AI is changing everything—but there's one part of the conversation many organizations still aren't having: the economics. As enterprises race to deploy copilots, agents, and generative AI across every department, leaders are discovering that AI costs don't arrive as a single invoice. They show up across GPUs, token consumption, cloud infrastructure, data platforms, and idle compute resources, making it difficult to understand whether AI investments are actually delivering business value. In this episode of TECHtonic, TSIA Executive Director Thomas Lah sits down with Kunal Agarwal, CEO and co-founder of Unravel Data, to discuss why AI FinOps has become one of the most important disciplines for enterprise technology leaders. Kunal explains how organizations can optimize prompts, right-size AI models, eliminate wasted GPU capacity, and gain real-time visibility into the full AI technology stack. Together, they explore why AI should no longer be treated as a science experiment, how leading organizations are creating headroom to fund continued innovation, and why the companies that combine AI ambition with financial discipline will become tomorrow's AI-native market leaders. If you're responsible for AI strategy, cloud operations, infrastructure, finance, or technology investments, this episode offers a practical roadmap for balancing innovation with profitability—and ensuring your AI initiatives deliver measurable business outcomes.
#128
June 12 · 36 min
128. SIGNAL Over Noise: AI, Convergence, and the End of Siloed Service
In this episode of TECHtonic, host Thomas Lah, EVP and Executive Director of TSIA, sits down with Agam Vasani, former SVP of Customer Experience at LeanData, to explore what it actually takes to build an AI-driven post-sale organization. Agam shares how his team was drowning in over 40 fragmented customer health signals, leaving CSMs spending more time assembling data than acting on it. He then reveals how they used AI to consolidate those signals into a single, coherent view that reps could actually use.He also breaks down the SIGNAL framework, a six-part filter he developed to cut through a crowded AI vendor market and evaluate tools on source of truth, intelligence quality, go-to action, workflow fit, team-wide adoption, and continuous learning. Discover how peer-driven "AI jams" drove grassroots adoption where top-down mandates failed, and why most AI tools fall short because they're sold like SaaS when AI behaves nothing like it. Don't miss this candid conversation on what separates AI deployments that move the needle from ones that just add another tool to the stack.
#131
May 29 · 43 min
127. Your Customers Have Been Telling a Story. AI Can Finally Read It.
Your CRM knows what happened. It doesn’t know why—or what’s about to happen next. That gap is costing revenue teams millions in preventable churn, missed expansion, and deals that slip away long before anyone saw it coming. In this episode of TECHtonic, TSIA Executive Director Thomas Lah sits down with Alok Shukla, CEO and co-founder of Funnel Story, to explore a new category of technology: the AI-powered revenue intelligence layer. Unlike traditional CRM dashboards that report on structured activity data in a single point in time, Funnel Story’s patented composite model combines structured data (usage, revenue, activity), unstructured conversational data (calls, emails, notes), and third-party market signals—then reverse-engineers your full historical timeline to train itself from day one. Median deployment time: less than a day. Alok introduces the concept of “needle movers”—AI-detected early warning patterns that surface months before churn or expansion become visible to any human. He shares a compelling real-world example where signals from three different organizational levels (an executive conversation, a support ticket, and a CSM interaction) were silently pointing to competitive risk—patterns that only emerged because of historical churn analysis. Without the intelligence layer connecting those dots, the account would have been marked “healthy” right up until it churned. Drawing on his 20+ years in cybersecurity (McAfee, Intel Security, Imperva), Alok makes a powerful analogy: the Security Operations Center went from 80% people / 20% tech to nearly the inverse over 20 years—and that transformation is now coming for revenue and CS organizations. The leaders who will thrive are those who start thinking now about what it means to manage a fleet of agents rather than a team of reps.
#126
May 15 · 1 hr 2 min
126. Live from the 2026 TSIA Board Summit: Executive Leaders Debate the Future of Services
Recorded live at the May 2026 TSIA Board Summit, this executive panel brings together technology and services leaders to explore how AI is transforming the future of customer engagement, professional services, support, sales, and education services. Moderated by Thomas Lah and George Humphrey, the discussion dives into emerging business model trends shaping the technology industry, including forward-deployed engineers (FDEs), AI-native operating models, value realization frameworks, agentic workflows, outcome-based selling, and the evolving role of services organizations in driving revenue growth. Panelists Kusal DeSilva of AptEdge, Prasad Sular of Certinia, Shari Cravens of HPE Digital Experience, Usman Nasir of Salesforce, Fotini Costopoulos of ServiceNow, and Kurt Kuelz of Siemens Digital Industries Software share real-world examples of how leading organizations are restructuring around customer outcomes, why services teams are playing an increasingly strategic role in the sales cycle, and the evolving skills technology professionals will need to thrive in an AI-first economy. This candid, unscripted live discussion captures how leading companies are navigating one of the fastest technology shifts the services industry has ever experienced.
#125
May 1 · 34 min
125. Outsourcing Impact: A New Playbook for Customer Success Leaders
In this episode of TECHtonic, Thomas Lah of TSIA sits down with Michael Harnum, CEO of ESG Success, to unpack a bold idea reshaping the tech industry: Customer Success as a Service. As companies face mounting pressure to cut costs while still driving retention and growth, traditional customer success models are being pushed to their limits. Michael shares how his experience scaling renewal operations and training services led to a broader, more holistic approach—helping organizations not just execute customer success, but design, optimize, and even outsource it. From building maturity assessments to leveraging AI for scalable success plans, the conversation dives into how companies can transform fragmented, underperforming CS functions into strategic growth engines. If you’re grappling with churn, struggling to prove ROI, or wondering how to scale without adding headcount, this episode delivers practical insights and a fresh perspective on making customer success a true driver of business value.
#124
April 17 · 33 min
124. Science Meets Strategy: Inside Agilent’s Growth Engine
In this episode of TECHtonic, host Thomas Lah sits down with Angelica Riemann, SVP and President of the CrossLab Group at Agilent Technologies, to unpack how a legacy hardware company is transforming into a modern, recurring-revenue powerhouse. From its origins as a spinout of HP to becoming a global leader in lab innovation, Agilent is redefining what it means to deliver value—not just through instruments, but through an integrated ecosystem of services, consumables, software, and digital experiences. Angelica reveals how Agilent is: Building a “flywheel” of recurring revenue across the entire lab lifecycle Navigating increasingly complex buying personas and pricing models Leveraging AI and digital tools to transform both customer support and internal operations Shifting from selling products to delivering outcomes and workflow solutions The conversation also explores the future of enterprise buying—where frictionless digital experiences, self-service support, and even AI-to-AI transactions are reshaping how customers engage. If you're in tech, services, or any industry facing disruption, this episode offers a powerful look at how to evolve your business model for a world that demands more value, speed, and flexibility.
#123
April 3 · 35 min
123. How to Beat Bigger Competitors (Without Bigger Teams)
In this episode of TECHtonic, Thomas Lah sits down with Cormac Whelan, CEO of Nitro Software, to unpack what it really takes to compete, and win, when you’re up against industry heavy weights. As AI reshapes the software landscape, Cormac shares how smaller, more agile companies are using it as a force multiplier, enabling lean teams to innovate faster, deliver smarter products, and “punch above their weight.” But technology alone isn’t the advantage. The real differentiator? Customer intimacy and value realization. Cormac dives into how Nitro leverages deep customer insights to uncover massive efficiency gains, like reducing document redaction from hours to seconds, and turning those insights into scalable, AI-powered solutions. The conversation explores why traditional software models are breaking down, how pricing is shifting toward outcomes, and why proving value is now the ultimate competitive edge. You’ll also hear: Why incumbents still hold power, and where they’re vulnerable How AI is changing product development, pricing, and go-to-market strategies The growing importance of trust, security, and transparency Why the future belongs to companies that deliver outcomes, not just software If you're navigating today’s rapidly evolving tech landscape, this episode offers a clear message: the winners won’t be the biggest—they’ll be the most agile, customer-focused, and value-driven.
#122
March 20 · 39 min
122. Staying Strategic in an AI-Driven Marketing World
What happens when AI can do almost everything marketing teams used to own? In this thought-provoking episode of TECHtonic, Thomas Lah chats with marketing leader Kathy Macchi to unpack a bold AI manifesto that’s challenging how CMOs think about their role, and their future. As AI rapidly takes over content creation, campaign execution, and analytics, marketing teams face a critical crossroads: evolve into a strategic powerhouse—or risk becoming a commoditized service function. Kathy breaks down: Why most marketing work is quickly becoming “context”, and what remains truly “core” The dangerous trap of over-automation (and how it can quietly erode your brand) How AI is reshaping roles, workflows, and even org structures Why “more content” actually makes it harder to stand out The rise of “Move 37 moments”, when AI forces professionals to rethink their value overnight This isn’t just about marketing. It’s about how professionals stay relevant in a world where AI keeps raising the bar. If you’re a CMO, marketer, or a business leader navigating AI disruption, this episode will challenge how you think about strategy, value, and the future of your role.
#121
March 6 · 44 min
121. Moving Beyond AI Experiments to Real Business Value
AI is everywhere. So where is the real business value? In this episode of TECHtonic, TSIA’s Thomas Lah speaks with Sofi Elfving Hallberg, CEO and co-founder of Substorm and a machine learning pioneer who has worked in the field since the early 2000s. Sofi shares how the AI landscape has evolved from the early days of limited data and computing power to today’s generative AI boom, and why many companies are still struggling to move beyond experimentation. They discuss why much of today’s AI investment may be chasing hype rather than solving meaningful problems. According to Sofi, the biggest opportunities lie not in generic generative AI tools, but in vertical, industry-specific solutions that tackle complex operational challenges—like quality control, document management, and other “boring” enterprise processes that can deliver massive ROI when optimized. The conversation also dives into what it actually takes to make AI succeed inside organizations. From avoiding endless proof-of-concept projects to prioritizing change management and business ownership over IT-led initiatives, Sofi explains why delivering measurable value from day one is critical. For leaders trying to cut through the noise, this episode offers a practical roadmap for turning AI potential into real results.
#120
February 20 · 46 min
120. AI vs. Renewal vs. Churn: Who Wins in 2026?
Net revenue retention is under pressure. SaaS growth has slowed. Sales and marketing budgets are shrinking. And AI is forcing companies to rethink everything, from seat-based pricing models to how they engage, retain, and grow customers. In this episode of TECHtonic, host Thomas Lah welcomes back Brent Grimes, CEO of Reef.ai, for a direct and timely conversation about what’s actually happening in the AI revenue landscape. Since their last discussion, AI capabilities have advanced rapidly, but the bigger shift isn’t just better models. It’s how companies are using those models to survive and win in a far more demanding market. With declining net revenue retention across public SaaS companies and mounting pressure to “do more with less,” leaders can no longer rely on intuition, last-call sentiment, or broad segmentation strategies. The era of guessing is ending. Thomas and Brent explore the rise of model-driven revenue management, where predictive AI doesn’t just improve forecasting accuracy but identifies churn risk months in advance, pinpoints expansion opportunities with statistical precision, and helps teams prioritize their time where it matters most. They discuss how upsell intelligence may actually unlock more upside than churn reduction alone, and how organizations are beginning to move from dashboards and insights toward autonomous workflows powered by renewal and expansion agents. The conversation also dives into the practical realities of making this shift—from solving data quality challenges to building trust with revenue teams who must learn to work alongside models and agents rather than rely solely on instinct. As AI adoption compounds quarter over quarter, the gap between early adopters and laggards is widening, and 2026 may mark the moment when that divide becomes unmistakable. If you own revenue, lead customer success, or sit in the CRO seat, this episode will challenge how you think about forecasting, expansion, resource allocation, and the future of go-to-market execution.
#119
February 6 · 44 min
119. How Leaders Turn AI Into Compounding Business Value
AI is no longer a distant promise, it’s actively reshaping how work gets done. But the biggest differentiator between companies that thrive and those that fall behind isn’t the technology itself. It’s how leaders guide people through the change. In this episode of TECHtonic, TSIA’s Thomas Lah sits down with 2x best selling author and strategist Alison McCauley to explore what it really takes to move a workforce from fear of replacement to mastery of augmentation. They unpack why early AI gains compound so quickly, how invention, not just efficiency, drives long-term advantage, and why subject matter expertise is more critical than ever in an AI-powered world. The conversation dives into practical realities leaders face today: managing shadow AI, balancing centralized governance with decentralized experimentation, measuring progress beyond ROI, and creating habits that make AI a natural part of daily work. Alison also shares a powerful framework for helping teams break out of “paralysis by possibility” and reimagine what’s newly possible for their business. If you’re a leader wondering how to turn AI from a source of anxiety into a catalyst for growth, this episode offers both clarity and a roadmap.
#118
January 23 · 40 min
118. Are Micro Verticals the Key to AI Profitability?
In the AI era, enterprise technology companies face a hard truth: generic platforms no longer win. Profitable growth now depends on delivering specific business outcomes, and that requires going deeper than ever before. In this episode of TECHtonic, TSIA Executive Director Thomas Lah speaks with Mari Cross, Chief Customer Officer at Infor, to explore how micro-vertical strategies, AI-driven services, and outcome-based solutions are reshaping enterprise software. Mari breaks down what micro verticals really are, and why speaking the customer’s exact language is now table stakes. She shares how Infor invested billions to rebuild its platforms around industry-specific processes, how AI enables faster value realization through packaged use cases, and why “secret sauce” often turns out to be best practice in disguise. The conversation goes deep on: Why AI is forcing a shift from platforms to outcome-based solutions How micro vertical expertise transforms sales, implementation, and customer success The rise of AI-powered service models, and why services are becoming more strategic, not less How Infor uses AI to drive adoption, customer health, and proactive engagement What enterprise leaders must do to govern AI, scale ROI, and prepare their teams for what’s next If you’re navigating AI disruption, rethinking your services model, or wondering how to actually deliver value, not just promise it, this episode is a must-listen.
#117
January 9 · 41 min
117. The AI Economics™ Experts React to What Enterprise Tech Isn’t Saying Out Loud
AI is no longer a technology conversation, it’s an economic reckoning. In this episode of TECHtonic, TSIA’s Thomas Lah is joined by J.B. Wood and George Humphrey to unpack the real-world implications of AI Economics through the headlines shaping enterprise tech right now. From Salesforce’s AI-driven job cuts to Adobe’s competitive pressure, Palantir’s services-led growth, and the collapse of traditional SaaS pricing models, this conversation makes one thing clear: the old rules of technology business models are breaking fast. This isn’t academic theory. It’s a frontline analysis of how AI is reshaping profitability, pricing, org design, customer success, and competitive advantage, right now. The group challenges assumptions around per-user pricing, sales-led growth, and “free” professional services, arguing that outcome-based models, forward-deployed engineers, and value-centric customer engagement are becoming mandatory for survival. If you’re a technology executive wondering how to grow profitably in an AI-first world, or whether your current model will survive the next 24 months, this episode lays out the uncomfortable truths and the strategic shifts you can’t afford to ignore.
#116
Dec 5, 2025 · 46 min
116. The AI Last Mile: How AptEdge Is Redefining Enterprise Support
B2B enterprises are overwhelmed by complexity, and AI is finally promising the breakthrough they’ve been chasing for years. On this episode of TECHtonic, TSIA Executive Director Thomas Lah sits down with AptEdge CEO Kusal De Silva and co-founder Aakrit Prasad for a direct, no-nonsense look at how AI is transforming the most ignored and most mission-critical function in technology: enterprise support. This conversation doesn’t live in the hype. It goes straight to the real last-mile problem every enterprise faces: AI only works when it understands your environment, your data, and your intent. Raw automation isn’t enough. Context + action is what moves the needle. And when you get that right, AI isn’t just assisting support teams, it’s multiplying engineer productivity, collapsing resolution times, and turning support from a cost obligation into a strategic lever. You’ll hear what’s actually happening inside hyperscale product environments, why “data quality is no longer the excuse”, why deflection metrics are the wrong scoreboard, and how AI-driven pricing and services models are evolving faster than the industry is ready for. If you’re a support leader, a product exec, or anyone trying to stay ahead in the AI era, this episode gives you the language, the insights, and the urgency you need to stay relevant, and stay in the race.

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