There seem to be two kinds of tech companies today: The haves and the have-nots. At least that’s the case when it comes to top-line revenue growth.
Most large tech companies are struggling mightily just to keep the top line flat. Despite doubling down on investments in the traditional growth levers of R&D and sales, the market seems disinclined to respond. At the same time, emerging SaaS, IaaS, and managed service firms are enjoying high double-digit--even triple-digit--revenue growth. Is it just that enterprises are moving to the cloud? Or is it simply that business buyers are wrestling away spending dollars from the IT budget? We would argue these are just symptoms of a much larger and more profound transformation.
In the age of B4B, we believe that the very notion of IT companies as "product businesses" is giving way to IT as a service industry. More importantly, our (very) experienced-based observation is that while many companies now proclaim they offer IT "as a service" they are, in fact, radically sub-optimized to capitalize on the huge opportunity in front of them. That is because how they operate is still deeply rooted in their "product business" DNA. Even many purpose-built SaaS/cloud companies are still internally managed like classic product-based companies clothed in a subscription-based pricing model.
In the opening keynote, TSIA CEO and lead author of B4B J.B. Wood will uncover the top revenue mistakes that tech companies are making in the B4B era and how you can reinvent your thinking to recapture growth. You will learn why tech companies who still operate on the classic "product company" management model may be:
- Misappropriating up to half of R&D resources.
- Missing out on two-thirds of the revenue opportunities available to them with more modern, outcome-based portfolio thinking.
- Overspending on "big game" sales people while underspending on the new drivers of customer spending.
- Hiring service people with the wrong kinds of skills and organizing them in the wrong ways to do the wrong kinds of jobs.
- Shying away from investing in the critical success factors of the B4B era in the belief that they don’t scale.
This session, backed by facts and case studies, is a must-attend for executives who are responsible for growing top-line revenues in subscription businesses like SaaS or IaaS, managed service offers, or anyone who wants to offer their products or services based on customer business outcomes. It is also essential for those who are responsible for delivering customer outcomes so that they can understand WHAT their role should be, WHY it is linked so directly to corporate revenue growth and HOW they must think and operate differently to realize the potential in front of them.