TECHtonic: Trends in Technology and Services

Hosted by Technology & Services Industry Association

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Episodes

131

Latest episode

Jun 2026

Language

EN-US

About the show

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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60 recent

July 26, 2024Episode 81507262440 min

TSIA Takes: Gainsight on How to Redefine Customer Success

On this episode of TECHtonic, Thomas asks hard questions about the shifting landscape of customer success with Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight. Inspired by a provocative chapter in Frank Slootman's "Amp It Up" that questions the necessity of customer success, Thomas and Nick explore the current debates and future directions of this critical business function.Nick shares his insights on why customer success is more vital than ever, especially as technology companies face increasing pressure to prove their business value. From the historical context of customer success a decade ago to today's innovative strategies, Nick discusses the integration of AI, the importance of verticalization, and the evolving roles within customer success organizations.Listeners will gain valuable perspectives on how to leverage AI for better customer experiences, early warning systems, and productivity enhancements. Nick and Thomas also tackle the challenge of balancing cost efficiency with maintaining the core capabilities of customer success teams and the necessity of adopting a beginner’s mind in the face of seismic industry shifts.Tune in to receive actionable advice and discover how you can stay ahead in the debate on the value of customer success and prepare your organization for the future.

July 12, 2024Episode 8007122446 min

TSIA Takes: Salesforce and the Customer Success + Support Services Experiment

Join us for the first episode of TSIA Takes, a limited TECHtonic podcast series. During this series, Thomas Lah dives deep into the pivotal question: What is the value of customer success? This pressing question has turned the customer success organization upside down as it navigates what the future of its business looks like. In this episode, Thomas is joined by Jim Roth, President of Customer Success at Salesforce, who discusses Saleforce’s pioneering approach to integrating customer success, support, and training into a seamless, unified experience. They explore the dynamic roles within Salesforce, emphasizing the importance of customer success managers (CSMs) as orchestrators who ensure comprehensive customer support. Jim shares how Salesforce's strategy of merging support, training, and success roles leads to a more streamlined and compelling customer experience. This allows Salesforce to leverage data to drive customer health, adoption, and education and create a unified customer success score that guides its strategies. They also discuss the financial models behind customer success, debating the merits of monetizing versus offering services as part of the overall customer experience. Jim provides a compelling argument for why tech companies should consider customer success a critical investment rather than a cost center.Whether you're a tech industry veteran or new, this episode offers insights to elevate your understanding of customer success. Take advantage of this first episode of our TSIA takes special podcast series, which challenges conventional wisdom and provides a fresh perspective on making your customer success business model successful.

November 3, 2023Episode 202363514 min

Bonus Episode AI Capabilities Integrations: Stay Ahead of the Curve

With a wealth of practical expertise between them, TSIA's Thomas Lah and George Humphrey, Distinguished VP & Managing Director of Offering and Delivery Research, delve into the transformative impact of AI on technology business models. They focus on three pivotal dimensions:Data-Driven Decision-MakingEfficiency and Cost ReductionEnhanced Customer ExperienceEmphasizing the urgency for companies to effectively organize around AI, they discuss the risks of stagnation in the face of rapid technological advancements. They stress the need for proactive strategies and highlight the potential dangers of irrelevance and diminished competitiveness for companies that fail to strategically embrace AI-driven transformations.Take the first step on the Enterprise AI in Technology and Service Operations Research Journey by completing the TSIA Quick Poll: Organizing for AI Success, enabling leaders to remain at the forefront of how AI is reshaping the technology industry. Gain valuable insights, stay informed, and be part of the transformative conversation that is shaping the landscape of technology businesses worldwide.

May 29, 2026Episode 13143 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.

June 12, 2026Episode 12836 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.

May 15, 2026Episode 1261 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.

May 1, 2026Episode 12534 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.

April 17, 2026Episode 12433 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 lifecycleNavigating increasingly complex buying personas and pricing modelsLeveraging AI and digital tools to transform both customer support and internal operationsShifting from selling products to delivering outcomes and workflow solutionsThe 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.

April 3, 2026Episode 12335 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 vulnerableHow AI is changing product development, pricing, and go-to-market strategiesThe growing importance of trust, security, and transparencyWhy the future belongs to companies that deliver outcomes, not just softwareIf 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.

March 20, 2026Episode 12239 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 structuresWhy “more content” actually makes it harder to stand outThe rise of “Move 37 moments”, when AI forces professionals to rethink their value overnightThis 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.

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