TECHtonic: Trends in Technology and Services

Technology & Services Industry Association
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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.

  1. 129. The AI Bill Is Coming Due: Making Enterprise AI Profitable

    3d ago

    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.

    44 min

  2. Jun 12

    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.

    37 min

  3. May 29

    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.

    43 min

  4. May 15

    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.

    1h 2m

  5. May 1

    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.

    35 min

  6. Apr 17

    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.

    33 min

  7. Apr 3

    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.

    35 min

  8. Mar 20

    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.

    40 min
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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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