TSIA World INTERACT 2023 Recap: Growth, Renewals, & Tiger Tails

Another year, another TSIA World conference in Orlando—where some of the brightest minds in digital transformation gather to share their perspectives on unifying organizations, leveraging data, and unlocking annual recurring revenue. For those lucky enough to attend, the wealth of knowledge was invaluable. For those that weren’t, you’re in luck—because I jotted down some of my favorite insights and takeaways below!

You Might Be Wondering: Who is TSIA?

TSIA (Technology & Services Industry Association) is the world’s leading research organization dedicated to helping technology companies achieve profitable growth and solve their top business challenges. Services, Sales, Customer Success, Product, and Channel organizations at tech companies large and small look to TSIA for world-class business frameworks, best practices based on real-world results, detailed performance benchmarking, and exceptional peer networking opportunities.

MODintelechy + Dell Technologies Presentation: “Grabbing the Tiger by the Long-Tail”

Highlight of this conference for us? Speaking with Dell Technologies about our 10+ year partnership and how we stood up and scaled an automated, data-driven renewals program—targeting the long-tail of consumer, small business, and certain commercial segments. It all started with Dell needing an automated solution to influence and drive Support + Renewals Sales growth in business areas with fewer resources and coverage. What it boiled down to was this: They lacked a solution that connected their data, end users, and renewal opportunity. The main objectives were to create an integrated, automated program with global reach, while also minimizing OpEx (operational expense). With the parameters set, we jumped at the opportunity. They chose us because:

1. We were able to transform insights into action.
2. We were able to create and scale a measurable renewals program.
3. We were and still are a trusted advisor to their revenue teams.

Hot Takes

One of my favorite new traditions at the conference is a “hot takes” panel that gives room for more controversial, unpopular opinions on industry topics. TSIA is all about big ideas, and this year’s takes got the brain thinking (to say the least):

• If your CRO (Chief Revenue Officer) can’t spell “data”, they are not a CRO.
• NPS (net-promotor score) is dead.
• Customer success (CS) just became the new sales organization.
• Layoffs are becoming a feature, not a bug.
• Service revenue, not adoption, is becoming the new corporate currency.
• It doesn’t really matter where CS reports.
• Offer management at the service line level is a problem.
• Sales should never be in the offer management business.

Dive into the “Hot Takes” panel here!

You Can’t Cut Your Way to Success

The theme of this conference was “Path to Profitable XaaS”. As we continue to see higher interest rates, higher inflation, and slowing demand, tech investors pivoted from rewarding “growth at all costs” to requiring tech companies to prove they have a viable, profitable business model. The reaction from the industry has been to slash costs, and the greatest expense of any tech company is labor. By the first month of 2023, tech had eliminated over 150,000 positions. But is that the winning formula? Can you simply cut your way to success? This talk shares research on why SaaS business models are proving to be unprofitable.

Learn more about profitable paths here!

The Opportunities and Threats of AI

ChatGPT has made AI the hottest topic in business today. It has also had the effect of placing AI in the hands of anyone who wants to try it. TSIA examined the potential of both constructive and dangerous uses of AI across the B2B customer lifecycle, how AI should (and should not) be adopted in the short-term in sales and services, and what it might mean to customers’ ever-growing base of knowledge and subsequent demands of organizations.

Interested in how to win with AI? Jump in here!

Create a Unified Experience for Your Customer – The Time for Convergence is Now!

Different service disciplines have different behind-the-scenes operations, processes, and systems. All too often, that is plainly apparent to customers—whose disjointed experiences reflect your org chart more than their needs. The time is now to create a unified, integrated experience for all the services your customers need throughout their lifecycle. By converging customer success, customer support, and education services into one super discipline, Salesforce has created a more integrated customer experience while also implementing operational synergies that will make any CFO happy.

Learn more about unifying your customer experience!

The More You Know

All in all, TSIA World brought an abundance of ideas to chew on. And in the spirit of removing friction from both organizational workflows and customer experiences, the future looks bright for companies that invest in digital transformation. Something that stuck out to me across all the thought leadership—every brand has different challenges, opportunities, and efficiencies to implement. Having the right minds to lead this change can be the difference between digital prosperity and organizational confusion. Need some help charting your path to value? Reach out to us today, we’d be happy to help.