Podcasts about isv

Welcome back to the Ultimate Guide to Partnering® Podcast. AI agents are your next customers. Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX:https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ In this episode, Vince Menzione sits down with SHI leaders Joseph Bellian and Stefanie Dunn, alongside Microsoft's Marcus Jewett, to dissect SHI's massive evolution from a traditional Large Account Reseller (LAR) to a strategic Global Systems Integrator (GSI). They explore the cultural and operational shifts required to move from a transaction-heavy model to a services-led approach, highlighting their alignment with Microsoft's MSEM methodology, the implementation of the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), and their cutting-edge work with AI Labs and Agentic AI. Key Takeaways SHI has evolved from a transactional powerhouse into a Global Systems Integrator (GSI) focused on services and outcomes. The organization implemented the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) to align vision, people, and data across sales and delivery. SHI serves as “Customer Zero” for Microsoft AI, implementing Copilot internally to better guide customers. The partnership mirrors Microsoft's MSEM methodology to ensure seamless co-selling and customer success lifecycles. SHI's AI Labs in New Jersey provides a secure environment for clients to build and test custom AI solutions. The shift requires moving from a “Hulk” (strength/sales) mindset to a “Tony Stark” (brainpower/strategy) mindset. Key Tags: SHI International, global systems integrator, Microsoft services, Joseph Bellian, Stefanie Dunn, Marcus Jewett, AI labs, agentic AI, MSEM methodology, entrepreneurial operating system, digital transformation, customer zero, copilot implementation, solution provider, cloud migration, data governance, services led growth. Ultimate Partner is the independent community for technology leaders navigating the tectonic shifts in cloud, AI, marketplaces, and co-selling. Through live events, UPX membership, advisory, and the Ultimate Guide to Partnering® podcast, we help organizations align with hyperscalers, accelerate growth, and achieve their greatest results through successful partnering. Transcript:Transcript: Joseph Bellian – Stefanie Dunn – Marcus Jewett WORKFILE AUDIO [00:00:00] Vince Menzione: We’ve got it. So it is interesting how these sessions kind of follow each other. Hopefully you’re seeing kind of a flow from marketplaces and the conversation about how to be a really great ISV to how an ISV took and built a channel strategy and how they integrated alliances and channels together. [00:00:16] Vince Menzione: Well, we have an, we have another really great example here to talk through. I have this, uh, incredible like background. Like I’m a hundred years old, basically. I don’t even want to tell anybody that. But, uh, I got to work with this organization way back in my days at Microsoft. They are, they were and are one of the top, I’ll call them, they were classically a reseller company. [00:00:40] Vince Menzione: They one of the largest, we call ’em large account resellers back in the day. Uh, their leader built a multi-billion dollar organization. I’m gonna let them talk through who they are today, but we have an opportunity to talk about transformation. From that lens now too, like how does an organization that’s really good at doing one thing evolve, transform and take advantage of these tectonic shifts we’re seeing? [00:01:03] Vince Menzione: So, uh, we’ve got some incredible leaders. I’m gonna have them come up on stage. And everybody introduced themselves from SHI and also from Microsoft. And we’re gonna have a really great conversation today. Great to have you. [00:01:26] Vince Menzione: So I’m gonna let, I’m gonna let you guys introduce yourselves because, uh, everybody knows you as DJ Marco Polo. So we’re gonna, we’ll start with you over in the far end, Marcus. Okay. Vince, I, [00:01:36] Marcus Jewett: I’ll try to be shy. [00:01:37] Vince Menzione: No, [00:01:37] Marcus Jewett: uh, hi everyone, my name is Marcus Jut, I am the Global Partner Development Manager for the SHI partnership. [00:01:43] Marcus Jewett: Uh, I have been overseeing this partnership for just under 12 years. Wow. So I have seen the evolutional journey of this partner and really proud of where they, uh, have matured their business and the partnership with Microsoft. [00:01:57] Stefanie Dunn: Thank you. Oh. [00:01:58] Marcus Jewett: Is there, is yours on? Oh, [00:02:00] Vince Menzione: mines [00:02:00] Stefanie Dunn: on. Hi, I am Stephanie Dunn, a director of Microsoft Services at SHI. [00:02:07] Stefanie Dunn: And it is an, it’s a pleasure to be here. It’s a pleasure to have Marcus as our PDM and, uh, Joe and Vince, uh, very, very happy to be here. Um, and I lead our Microsoft Services sales, uh, area. So across, uh, cloud AI business transformation and, uh. And, uh, data and ai. [00:02:28] Joseph Bellian: Great, great to have you, Stephanie. Thank you. [00:02:30] Joseph Bellian: Joe. Joe Bellion. I’m the VP of Microsoft Alliances and programs. Uh, I’ve been here at SHI for about eight months now, but been in and around the partner ecosystem for about a decade. Uh, I think of my organization of like kind of two aspects. So leading the charge around alliances, aligning our field sellers and specialists with Microsoft, as well as the, the programs backend incentives and operations. [00:02:51] Joseph Bellian: But, um, the real focus is driving the go to market strategy here at SHI. [00:02:55] Vince Menzione: Yeah. So great. So I started to allude to this earlier about like traditional, one of the top three or four companies actually. And we used to use the term, uh, LSP back in the day, or lar, we’ve got several iterations. Microsoft’s gone through several iterations of that name. [00:03:11] Vince Menzione: Marcus knows all of them probably by heart. Tell us what was the impetus to change the organization? Become more like a ser, a services led company as opposed to a transaction led organization? [00:03:21] Joseph Bellian: Yeah, absolutely. Throw one more acronym. SSP. SSP, that was another one. So, uh, solution provider. Um, but, uh, yeah, I, I’d say probably a couple things. [00:03:29] Joseph Bellian: Um, one, the big one, no news to anybody in the room and online as well. The shift with EAs, director of Microsoft, as well as, uh, the whole CSP hero motion. So we do recognize that opportunity, uh, to have services attached, to engage with our clients as well as our joint partnerships with Microsoft, uh, with services out in the field. [00:03:48] Joseph Bellian: Uh, the second one, probably the biggest one is our clients. Hearing out our clients that shift. Um, we’re talking about ai, ai, everything, AI services. Uh, we’re now in the whole era of agentic ai. What does that mean? How do you take advantage of those offerings? And so we recognize that, that our clients are spending millions of dollars with the Microsoft products, but how do you take advantage of that investment and maximize it in their environment? [00:04:13] Joseph Bellian: And so having services to help navigate those complex solutions, that’s where we’re, we’re leaning in. [00:04:18] Vince Menzione: So what did it take to change? Transformation doesn’t come easy. There’s mindset. There’s all these cultural changes that need to happen. From your perspective, both of your perspectives, what did it take internally for this change to happen? [00:04:31] Joseph Bellian: Yeah. Um, so if you, if you heard of the entrepreneurial operating system EOS Yes. And we’ve adopted that internally. Um, if you’re not familiar, it kind of comprises of six components. So vision, people, data, um, process. Issues and, um, uh, traction. So I apologize, that’s, uh, but take, take that model and put it into our business of what we did. [00:04:57] Joseph Bellian: Um, so two kind of twofold. One, moving our entire services practice organization under one, one operating rhythm, um, under Jordan Ello, our CTO. So pre-sales and delivery. So looking at that, the how we go to market with our services, single vision. Uh, single process. So it’s consistent as we’re engaging not only through our partners, but through our clients, but then also on the other side of the house, our Microsoft practice, having all of our resources under one roof so that it’s a single way we go to market. [00:05:28] Joseph Bellian: Aligning our go to market strategy, one-to-one with Microsoft. Why it, it does two things. One, it allows us to be very clear of how we are going to market to our clients, but it allows us to partner even better with our Microsoft counterparts. Yeah, when, when Microsoft, it’s always ever changing. You’re familiar, every six months to a year solution plays and the go-to-market strategy changes, uh, we’re there at the forefront in ensuring that we have our solutions mapped a hundred percent so that we can just co-sell together. [00:05:58] Joseph Bellian: Break down those walls. Let’s do more together. [00:06:00] Vince Menzione: And, uh, geographically you were sep, your teams were separated. You have a big operation in Texas. You also have a big New Jersey operation, which was where the company was founded, in fact. So I’d love to get the perspective on this, Marcus. From your perspective, like what did it do, what was it like before and what did it become? [00:06:17] Marcus Jewett: Oh yeah, let’s go back in the way back machine to 12 years ago. Um, it was a different partner, a different operating model, uh, in those early days. And this is really when we started to move customers from on-premises to more cloud-based subscription technologies. Uh, SHI was always just an incredible selling machine. [00:06:36] Marcus Jewett: If they could not do anything, they could always sell. And for any of you who are familiar with the Marvel movies, um. I, I, I, I use a reference internally with them. SHI was always like the Hulk root for strength. You know, you tell ’em to go sell something, Hulk Smash, they can knock that out. Well, as we really needed these partners to evolve and really help our customers with their technologies, whether it’s driving adoption, monthly active usage, consumption. [00:07:02] Marcus Jewett: We needed them to be more like Tony Stark, right? We needed the brain power, and so over the last, let’s call it five or six years, SHI has continued to invest in their Microsoft practice. They went from an organization that was really focused on management of EA acquisition of new Microsoft logo. To continuing to develop that muscle, but also investing in ways to help customers through their managed services, through their professional services. [00:07:28] Marcus Jewett: And it’s been a, a journey. Right? SHI is a large organization. For a long time they were Microsoft’s largest partner. And from a transactional build revenue perspective, and they still are in many ways, but we really needed them to demonstrate that they could help our, their customers, our shared customers take full advantage of all of the entitlements and the technology they, that they’ve purchased from us. [00:07:50] Marcus Jewett: And that’s really where the evolution has been with SHI when I first started, uh, this is like, God, 12 years ago, there were 20 people that were Microsoft centric resources that really were focused on. Customer acquisition and net new logos. And today that organization from a sales perspective is over 150 sellers. [00:08:09] Marcus Jewett: Wow. That are just focused on Microsoft. So that CSP, they, they fill the top of the funnel for services to help drive program utilization. And that’s not even talking about the dedicated services resources that works under Stephanie. So it’s been. An incredible journey. Microsoft has invested in SHI and in turn, SHI has invested into Microsoft. [00:08:31] Marcus Jewett: They’ve basically taken their approach in terms of how they go to market with Microsoft, and they’ve mirrored that almost like how Joe and I are wearing the same jacket. That’s really how they’ve aligned their, their go to market strategy, really making it a mirror where they take it. They’ve taken our Microsoft M methodology. [00:08:50] Marcus Jewett: And they’ve essentially adopted it and made it their own. So now when our sellers are talking with SHI sellers, they’re speaking the same language. [00:08:58] Vince Menzione: You’re teeing it up beautifully for your conversation with Stephanie here. Stephanie, I want to hear like how you’ve done all those things. ’cause it’s really your organization that’s focused on this, right? [00:09:06] Stefanie Dunn: Yeah, absolutely. So for us it’s all about shared outcomes. It we’re listening to the. Customer. We’re listening to Microsoft and we’ve really taken that to heart. Uh, the customer is at the center of every single thing that we do. I know all of us as partners. That’s really our vision, likely, and the reason why we’re here is our customers. [00:09:26] Stefanie Dunn: But really understanding how to take advantage of that partnership and build something incredible. And it is transformative. Uh, you know, we started as a licensing powerhouse, as Marcus alluded to, and now we’re going deep into services. So we’re aligning to co-sell motions. We’re aligning to the, the industries. [00:09:46] Stefanie Dunn: Uh, we’re creating marketplace offers. We’ve got our programs, uh, tied to all of our services offerings. And so when we look at the broader ecosystem, we see the vision of Microsoft. Uh, we’ve hired the right people, we’ve put the right processes into place, and we have the technology expertise in-house to really share. [00:10:08] Stefanie Dunn: In the journey with our customers and leading them. [00:10:11] Vince Menzione: And you know, you talk about like solution plays. You talked about industry. People don’t always recognize this when you talk to Microsoft sellers. They’re very focused on the industry they’re in, and you have to have those conversations that, this came up earlier, but we never got into this. [00:10:25] Vince Menzione: But you’re aligning your solution plays, you’re aligning your conversations to be very like healthcare and education, all those different markets, right? [00:10:32] Stefanie Dunn: We are. We are, which is very new for SHI in the services industry, and so you know, we’re taking our CSP plays. Um, our licensing plays and really saying, well, what can you do with that? [00:10:43] Stefanie Dunn: Right. You know, how can we advise you? And then we, we dig into the actual industry verticals to, to get tactical with them. You know, it’s, it’s about providing the strategy. It’s about providing the extra hands. They all need extra hands. They, you know, our, our customers need us. As an extension of their team. [00:11:01] Stefanie Dunn: And so for us it’s really important to dig into that and, and be, and be that, that listening ear and you know, that expert in the room for them, uh, from advisory standpoint. And so all of our se services sellers are advisors as well. They’re not selling a product, they’re not selling, uh, something individual. [00:11:19] Stefanie Dunn: We are selling to. Fill and fulfill their goals and business outcomes, which is extremely unique, I will say, because we do have that end to end. So it does start with the licensing. It starts with assessing what you really have, meeting with those advisors, and then putting together a roadmap to help them. [00:11:37] Stefanie Dunn: Understand. Okay, well this is what it’s gonna take to get you here. Here’s our, uh, we love reverse timelines at SHI and so, um, it’s d minus din and so this is where you wanna go and this is when you wanna get there. So this is how we’re gonna help you, uh, along that roadmap. [00:11:53] Vince Menzione: I am gonna put you on the spot here with m Sem. [00:11:55] Vince Menzione: ’cause I think Microsoft finally laid out a process a couple years ago for you to like line up to, ’cause you were doing one piece of it before. Do you want to talk about m how em plays in here and how SHI is leveraging it? [00:12:07] Marcus Jewett: Right. So, uh, across our SEM stages, there are five different stages, and this is the customer journey from these, you know, pre-sales, scoping, uh, engagements with customers all the way through delivery. [00:12:19] Marcus Jewett: And then of course, like that customer success lifecycle and managed services. Again, this was not a language or a way that SHI really approached their business. Again, it was very much like, let’s. Get the customer to purchase on an EA or let’s renew the customer. And then once that cycle was complete, then it, it was almost like adding fries. [00:12:38] Marcus Jewett: Would you like some services with your ea? Right. And, uh, it took a, it took a while, right? Some very, uh, difficult conversations, but we were able to find, finally get the right people in the room to make the right investments. And now when you think about how SHI goes to market, they don’t necessarily leverage the term SEM internally, but. [00:12:59] Marcus Jewett: All of their customer methodologies or their sales methodologies in terms of how they service their customers aligns perfectly. Even when we get into the descriptive part of building out our, uh, partner business plan, we did that across every stage of the M SEM methodology. So that we can ensure that the teams at SHI are in perfect alignment with the teams at Microsoft. [00:13:20] Marcus Jewett: So, uh, I’m, I’m really excited about how we’ve been able to mature the practice and how SHI is now 100% aligned with Microsoft across all of our solution areas, whether it’s. Security, you know, cloud and infrastructure or AI business solutions. There’s a very mirrored approach to how we support customers. [00:13:39] Marcus Jewett: Yeah. I want [00:13:40] Vince Menzione: to double click on the AI component. You know, we were up here earlier, Irwin and I were up here talking about being a frontier firm, and I’ll open it up to all, all of you to individually answer this. I know, Marcus, you have some insights here about the ai. You mentioned AI already. But also to Stephanie and Joe about how you’re taking AI and modern work and workplace and, and, and, and addressing this market specifically. [00:14:07] Vince Menzione: Where, where, where do we wanna start there? [00:14:09] Joseph Bellian: Yeah. One big one. Um, if you’re not familiar, we have ai, an AI labs, um, onsite, uh, lab, and based out of Jersey, one of our headquarters. So on the forefront of the AI technology, but the real focus there is being able to meet with our clients and obviously joint partnerships, um, to build and develop solutions safe, um, offline in a safe, secure environment. [00:14:33] Joseph Bellian: Because let’s be honest, I mean, ai, it’s moving fast and, and we, we, we need to ensure that our data’s secure. Um, and there’s a lot of risk out there. And so we are partnering, um, um, out there with Nvidia and other other providers, um, but specifically with Microsoft in the cloud, um, and securing that environment. [00:14:51] Joseph Bellian: So AI Labs, bringing our clients in, building custom solutions, the area of a jet AI’s here. It’s [00:14:57] Vince Menzione: there. It is here. Yeah, it is here, Stephanie. [00:15:00] Stefanie Dunn: Thank you. Yes, and I’ll just add, uh, for, for our customers, they need to make sure that their foundation is right. You know, they’re coming from maybe all different other clouds. [00:15:09] Stefanie Dunn: They’ve, you know, got multi-tenant really understanding what their structure looks like, and then. Creating that secure foundation. So we’ve got a lot, you know, we do a lot around, uh, just full M 365 migrations and then into understanding the identity and the security baseline under that, making sure that that’s correct. [00:15:29] Stefanie Dunn: And then we can start journeying into some of these other conversations. Data governance, data engineering, uh, all that is extremely important. We have an entire dedicated team, uh, within services sales. Pre-sales with essays or solution architects and delivery, uh, as well as just the project management. [00:15:48] Stefanie Dunn: And, and it’s just this full life cycle to understand where are you and we need to make sure that, that your structure’s built correctly or else it’s never gonna succeed. So a little bit, we take it back to the foundation level, I’ll just say from a customer, uh, engagement perspective to make sure that what they wanna do, they can do securely. [00:16:06] Marcus Jewett: Very cool. I, I’d like to add one other piece there. Um, you know, obviously to Joe’s point earlier, like if anyone says they know exactly what the AI journey will look like for most customers in six months, they’re probably not telling you the truth. Right? This is, we’re, we’re building the plane in the air. [00:16:22] Marcus Jewett: But, uh, one thing Microsoft has really built a foundation on is looking at our partners. And the ones who have adopted AI internally, especially Microsoft Technologies, and we call it Customer zero, right? Ensuring working with partners who have invested in their internal usage of Microsoft AI technology. [00:16:41] Marcus Jewett: So it’s all the various flavors of copilot. Rolling it out and implementing it across their organizations and building their own internal use cases, which they can go in turn and use to go help drive successful engagements with their end customers. So SHI has also been one of our, uh, brightest partners when it comes to that customer Zero journey. [00:17:01] Marcus Jewett: Uh, and it’s something I’m very, very proud of to see. Uh, we’re leveraging the, the use cases and the learnings our SHI is to really go out there and help customers navigate through their own. Uh, complexities of their AI journey as well. So, uh, my kudos to SHI as customer. Zero. Very proud of you and opera feels great. [00:17:20] Marcus Jewett: And you’re [00:17:20] Vince Menzione: providing support engineering, organ organization that supports this function? [00:17:24] Marcus Jewett: Oh, absolutely. As a globally managed partner, I mean, we’re, we’re gonna always be there to help our partners through the journey, right? So whether they need internal readiness or technical support, uh, whether it’s workshops, however we can help the partners best. [00:17:38] Marcus Jewett: Uh, position and posture themselves to go help customers with these, uh, AI engagements. Uh, we’re, we’re there to invest. Uh, we’ve invested in SHI for the last several years across, uh, ai, and we will continue to do so. [00:17:52] Vince Menzione: So what’s the message for the partner community, Joe, that, that, like, how should they perceive you? [00:17:57] Vince Menzione: How should they think about you? Should they, how should they think about engaging with you? Okay. [00:18:02] Joseph Bellian: Yeah, so I mean, obviously we’re an SSP, we’re never gonna, we’re never gonna, um, lose that, that accreditation with Microsoft. But the, the real focus of what we wanna be recognized as A-G-S-I-A global systems integrator, um, being able to engage our clients jointly, co-selling together and meeting them where they’re at across their digital journey. [00:18:21] Joseph Bellian: Uh, we have the capabilities to handle their licensing and understanding the complex matrix in their environment, their IT infrastructure. But being able to have a solution for every part of the journey of where they’re at, because every client’s in a different situation. Yeah. So, so in reality, it’s A-G-S-I-A global systems integrator, being able to engage across their journey. [00:18:42] Vince Menzione: So that’s a, did everybody hear that? ’cause I, I heard that for the first time. That’s a very different perception of the, of the previous organization and getting there. Uh, and you also, I remember this from the transactional side of the business. You were at the very type, at the top of the pyramid, right? [00:18:56] Vince Menzione: Yeah. You handled some of the largest corporations in the, in the world. Yeah. And you know companies as well as organizations like government, governmental organizations across different markets as well. [00:19:07] Joseph Bellian: Yep. A hundred percent. [00:19:08] Vince Menzione: Yeah. So GS. Yeah. [00:19:11] Marcus Jewett: And it’s really important to, for SHI to, to develop that GSI muscle. [00:19:15] Marcus Jewett: Uh, you mentioned at the beginning, Joe, that Microsoft, uh, we have various routes to market. Uh, one of those routes to market, uh, especially in the enterprise space or in our strategic space, is for customers to procure direct. Uh, SHI has longstanding relationships with those customers, and as these customers renew their agreements into a direct model with Microsoft, the way they stay engaged and add value to these prop, uh, to these customers is through their services, their professional services, their managed services. [00:19:42] Marcus Jewett: So going back to Joe’s Point around really defining themselves as a, uh, A GSI, that is also an SSP has been paramount to their overall transformational journey and their overall success. [00:19:55] Vince Menzione: And you also work, so I would assume you work with some of the ISVs in the room too. Yeah, I would think there’s some really great relationships or synergies. [00:20:01] Vince Menzione: Is that, is that an area of muscle you’ve been building out or, yeah, it’s battle, it’s an opportunity. [00:20:06] Joseph Bellian: I mean, I, I believe you have a segment coming up as well on it, um, around NPO. Um, and so there’s a, there’s a play in every motion from services, play services attached through ISVs, your SaaS offers. Um, we do recognize that that’s an opportunity. [00:20:18] Joseph Bellian: Uh, we’re having great success when you look at the marketplace, um, through the multi private party offers. Um, it allows us to expand our footprint and take, uh, take advantage of those relationships and co-sell together. So, absolutely. Wow. [00:20:30] Vince Menzione: Very cool. So you’re gonna be around most of the day today? Yes. I hope. [00:20:34] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm. So for the partners that are in the room, I think that great conversations with both of you, Stephanie and Joe, and, uh, great conversation. Is there anything else we wanna share with everyone? [00:20:46] Marcus Jewett: Uh, no. It’s just, I would, I would leave you all with the fact that, again, uh, for every partner. Uh, make certain that you, you’re finding a way to differentiate yourself and tell your story. [00:20:57] Marcus Jewett: Uh, you may be doing some amazing work, uh, but if you’re not finding ways to, to tell that story and make certain your customers, and for me, Microsoft, make certain that, that the Microsoft teams you’re working with have very clear understanding of what your capabilities are today, then you may be missing the mark. [00:21:13] Marcus Jewett: I, I, I use this analogy all the time. Uh, the largest retailer on the planet. Who is it? Come on, help me out. I’m sorry. Largest retailer. Box Box. Walmart. Walmart, that’s right. You can turn on a television on any given day and you will still see a Walmart commercial. So yes, tell your story. Yes, very [00:21:34] Joseph Bellian: smart move. [00:21:34] Joseph Bellian: And one more, um, I just wanna make sure I land out there, is the success and where we go from here. Um, it’s this right here in the room. Um, us partnering together, bringing the partner ecosystem together. Um, in reality, we’re not competing together. We should be collaborating together and working together, um, in our client’s joint environments. [00:21:52] Joseph Bellian: Microsoft says it well, it’s that one Microsoft story. It’s that better together story and the more we can work together, the more success we’ll have together. [00:22:00] Vince Menzione: Awesome. I want to thank you so much for your sponsorship and for being here. Uh, big news here, I think it should be like on the front page of the partner ecosystem journal that you’re now, you’re now GSII think that that says quite, that says volumes to, to the community out there. [00:22:15] Joseph Bellian: Yeah. [00:22:15] Vince Menzione: Thank you. [00:22:15] Joseph Bellian: Absolutely. [00:22:16] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you both for joining us. So great to have you both. Thank you. Thank you, Marcus, to have you as well. Thank you. Thank you, Jeff. Thank you very much Stephanie. So great. So great to spend time with you. Thank you. And this.

Straight from re:Invent 2025, technology leaders from C3 AI, nCino, New Relic and Vercel reveal learnings, best practices and predictions for the future of Agentic AI.Topics Include:Four technology executives introduce their companies' AI innovations in fintech, cloud, enterprise software, and observability.Vercel built agents for code reviews, infrastructure optimization, and across finance, sales, and support functions.C3.ai deploys enterprise AI applications from scratch to production in six months for Fortune 500s.New Relic provides observability for AI systems and built agents that resolve infrastructure issues in real-time.Vercel's agents improve code quality by incorporating security and framework best practices into AI-generated output.C3.ai partnered with Department of Defense to autonomously produce mission-critical intelligence assessment reports from data.Industry shifted from copilots everywhere to agents that actually own outcomes and land the plane.New Relic moved beyond natural language translation to agents that execute actions and resolve issues autonomously.Panel debates whether Model Context Protocol or broader ecosystem approaches better enable agent interoperability and communication.Autonomy requires accountability: agent decisions must be explainable with traceable steps and replay capabilities built-in.Governance and security should be prerequisites for acceleration, not impediments—a critical mental model shift needed.Many enterprises struggle with process bottlenecks preventing them from harnessing high-quality agents despite having technology.Financial services must carefully balance where human discretion remains essential versus where agent autonomy justified.Will Jung envisions deeply continuous context enabling banks to deliver truly personalized insights without appearing creepy.Suraj Krishnan predicts agents will own outcomes by 2026, coordinating tools and other agents to achieve goals.Participants:Panelist: Merel Witteveen, SVP of Operations, C3.aiPanelist: Will Jung, Chief Technology Officer, nCinoPanelist: Suraj Krishnan, GVP of Engineering, New RelicPanelist: Aparna Sinha, Senior Vice President, Product, VercelModerator: Olawale Oladehin, Managing Director, NAMER Technology Segments (Enterprise, ISV, DNB, and Model Providers), Amazon Web ServicesSee how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon.com/isv/

Agentforce is everywhere and everything but in speaking to many ISVs, they are still wondering when is the right time to lean into AI with more than just a story. Where in the hype cycle are we is something I wonder about a lot. So I set out to find an ISV that is actually succeeding in the Agentforce world and that journey led me to Igor Stosic, CEO of Quadrix Soft who make Goat Email on the AppExchange, as my next guest on How We Got There. They are actually selling the first Agentforce use cases for customers, which has to be making AEs covering those accounts VERY happy. Igor is based out of Serbia so we touch on the geographical benefits and challenges around being an ISV out of Europe. They've found a lot of success driving leads from the AppExchange from a gtm perspective. We touch on what has been working and mistakes made along the way, sharing transparent feedback about how to build an app that goes wide so you can know what works for customers and lean into those items.But then we dove into the main topic of Agentforce. We touched on various concepts like how they came up with the Agentforce use case, how they monetize the Agentforce element, and much more. A specific example a use case where they use Agentforce is variability of tone based on the location of the customer that you are interacting with - sending an email to someone in the US looks different from sending an email to someone in Germany.If you are curious about Agentforce, this episode is for you. This episode is brought to you by Tequity Advisors . Tequity Advisors is a global sell-side M&A advisory firm with core expertise in SaaS and ISVs, Salesforce, ServiceNow, SAP, Microsoft, all things Data and AI, and the hyper scaler MSP cloud ecosystems with a focus on the Salesforce ecosystem and beyond! #salesforce #isv #gtm #salesforcepartners #appexchange

Welcome back to the Ultimate Guide to Partnering® Podcast. AI agents are your next customers. Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX:https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ Jen Odess, Group Vice President of Partner Excellence at ServiceNow, joins Vince Menzione to discuss the company’s incredible transformation from an IT ticketing solution to a leading AI-native platform for business transformation. Jen dives deep into how ServiceNow has strategically invested in and infused AI into its unified platform over the last decade, enabling over a billion workflows daily. She also outlines the critical role of the partner ecosystem, which executes 87% of all implementations, and reveals the company’s strategic initiatives, including its commitment to the hyperscaler marketplaces, the goal to hit half a billion dollars in annual contract value for its Now Assist AI product, and the push for partners to adopt an ‘AI-native’ methodology to capitalize on the fact that customers still want over 70% of AI buying to be done through partners. Key Takeaways ServiceNow is an ‘AI-native’ company, having invested in and built AI directly into its unified platform for over a decade. The company’s core value today is in its unified AI platform, single data model, and leadership in workflows that connect the entire enterprise. ServiceNow will hit $500 million in annual contract value for its Now Assist AI products by the end of 2025, making it the fastest-growing product in company history. An astonishing 87% of all ServiceNow implementations are done by its global partner ecosystem, highlighting their crucial role. The company is leveraging the half-trillion-dollar opportunity of durable cloud budgets by driving marketplace transactions and helping customers burn down cloud commits using ServiceNow solutions. To win in the AI era, partners must adopt AI internally, co-innovate on the platform, and strategically differentiate themselves to rank higher in the forthcoming agentic matching system. Key Tags: ServiceNow, AI-native platform, Now Assist, Jen Odess, partner excellence, workflow leader, AI platform for business transformation, hyperscalers, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, AWS, marketplace transactions, cloud commits, AIDA model, agentic matching, F-Pattern, Z-Pattern, group vice president, MSP, GSI, co-innovation, autonomous implementation, technical constraints, visual hierarchy, UX, UI, responsive design. Ultimate Partner is the independent community for technology leaders navigating the tectonic shifts in cloud, AI, marketplaces, and co-selling. Through live events, UPX membership, advisory, and the Ultimate Guide to Partnering® podcast, we help organizations align with hyperscalers, accelerate growth, and achieve their greatest results through successful partnering. Transcript: Jen Odess Audio Podcast [00:00:00] Jen Odess: The AI platform for business transformation, and I love to say to people, it sounds like a handful of cliche words that just got stacked together. The AI platform for business transformation. Yeah. We all know these words, so many companies use ’em, but it is such deliberate language and I love to explain why. [00:00:20] Vince Menzione: Welcome to, or welcome back to The Ultimate Guide to Partnering. I’m Vince Menzi on your host, and my mission is to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. Today we have a special leader, Jen Odes is the GVP for Partner Excellence at ServiceNow. And joins me here in the studio in Boca Raton. [00:00:40] Vince Menzione: Jen, welcome to the podcast. Thanks, Vince. It’s so great to be here. I am so thrilled to welcome you. To Boca Raton, Florida. Our podcast home look at this amazing background we have Here is this, and this is where we host our ultimate partner Winter retreat. Actually, in February, we’re gonna give that a plug. [00:00:58] Vince Menzione: Okay. I’d love to have you come back. I’d love to have an invite. And you flew in this morning from Washington DC [00:01:04] Jen Odess: I did. It was 20 degrees when I left my house this morning and this backdrop. Is definitely giving me, island South Florida like vibes. It’s fabulous. [00:01:13] Vince Menzione: And we’re gonna talk about ServiceNow. [00:01:14] Vince Menzione: And you’re also opening an office down here? We [00:01:17] Jen Odess: are [00:01:17] Vince Menzione: in West Palm Beach. Not too far from where we are. Yes. Later 2026. Yeah. I love that. And then so we’ll work on the recruiting year, but let’s dive in. Okay. So thrilled to have ServiceNow and to have you in the room. This has been an incredible time for your organization. [00:01:31] Vince Menzione: I have been watching, obviously I work with Microsoft. We’ve had Google. In the studio, Amazon onboard as well. And other than those three organizations, I can’t think of any other legacy organization that has embraced AI more succinctly than ServiceNow. And I thought we’d start there, but I really wanna spend some time getting to know you and getting to know your role, your mission, and your journey to this incredible. [00:01:57] Vince Menzione: Leadership role as a global vice president. We’ll talk about Or [00:02:01] Jen Odess: group. Group Vice president. I know it doesn’t roll off the tongue. I get it. A group vice president doesn’t roll. [00:02:05] Vince Menzione: G-V-P-G-V-P doesn’t roll off the time. And in some organizations it is global. It is in other organizations, it’s group. So let’s, you’re not [00:02:12] Jen Odess: the first to say global vice president. [00:02:14] Jen Odess: Okay. I’ll take either way. It’s fine. [00:02:15] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Yeah. And might be a promotion. Let’s talk. Let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about you and your career journey and your mission. [00:02:22] Jen Odess: Yeah, so I’ve been at ServiceNow for five years. In fact, January will be like the five year anniversary and then it will be the beginning of my sixth year. [00:02:31] Jen Odess: Amazing. And I actually got hired originally to build out the initial partner enablement function. So it didn’t really exist five years ago. There was certainly enablement that happened to Sure. All individuals that were. Using, consuming, buying ServiceNow, working with ServiceNow. But the partner enablement function from pre to post-sale, that whole life cycle didn’t exist yet. [00:02:54] Jen Odess: So that was my initial job. I got hired to run partner enablement and it before. And how big [00:02:59] Vince Menzione: was your partner organization at that point? It must have been pretty small. [00:03:01] Jen Odess: It was actually not as small as you would think. Gosh, that’s a great question. You’re challenging my memory from five years ago. [00:03:08] Jen Odess: I know that we’re over 2,500 partners today and we add hundreds every year, so it had to have been in the low one thousands. Wow. Is where we were five years ago. But the maturity of the ecosystem is grossly larger today than it was then. I can imagine. So back then there was less than 30,000 individuals that were skilled on ServiceNow to sell or solution or deliver. [00:03:34] Jen Odess: Today there’s almost a hundred thousand. Wow. So yeah that’s like the maturity in the capability within the ecosystem. But before I start on my ServiceNow and my group vice president. Which is a great role, by the way. Group Vice President. Yeah. Partner Excellence group. I’m very proud of it. [00:03:49] Jen Odess: But but let me tell you what brought me here, please. So I actually came from a partner, but not in the ServiceNow ecosystem. Okay. I won’t name the partner, but let’s just say it’s a competitor, a competitive ecosystem. And I worked for a services shop that today I would refer to as multinational. [00:04:11] Jen Odess: Kind of a boutique darling, but with over 1,500 consultants, so Okay. A behemoth as well? Yeah. Privately held. And we were a force to be reckoned with, and it was really fun. I held so many roles. I was a customer success manager. I led the data science practice at one point. I ran global alliances and partnerships. [00:04:35] Jen Odess: At one point I was the chief of staff to the CEO at the time that company was acquired. Big global si. And and then at one point I even spun off for the big global SI and helped run a culture initiative to transform co corporate culture. Wow. Very inside the whole organization. Wow. That is very, yeah. [00:04:54] Jen Odess: Really interesting set of roles. And the whole reason I came to ServiceNow is by the time I was concluding that journey in that ecosystem on the services side, I felt like. I didn’t fully understand what it meant to be on the software product side. And I often felt like I approached friction or moments of frustration and heartache with resentment for the software company. [00:05:20] Jen Odess: Sure. Or maybe just a lack of empathy for what they must be going through as well. It always felt like I was on the kind of [00:05:26] Vince Menzione: negative you were on the other side of the table. Totally. [00:05:27] Jen Odess: Yeah. And, or maybe like the redheaded stepchild kind of a concept as a partner. And so I sought out to. Learn more, which is probably a big piece of my journey is just constant curiosity. [00:05:38] Jen Odess: Nice. And I thought I think the thing I’m missing is seeing what it means firsthand to be on the software product side. And that was what led me to a career at ServiceNow. Five years strong. Yeah. So [00:05:50] Vince Menzione: talk about partner experience for those who don’t know what that means. [00:05:53] Jen Odess: Yeah. Today my role is partner excellence, but it used to be partner experience. [00:05:58] Jen Odess: Okay. And so the don’t. Yeah, that’s normal to say both things. And they actually mean two very different things. [00:06:04] Vince Menzione: Yeah, I would say so. [00:06:05] Jen Odess: And we deliberately changed the title about a year ago. So today, partner Excellence is about really ensuring that we build a vibrant AI led ecosystem. And that’s from the whole life cycle of the partner, from the day they choose to be a partner and onboard, and hopefully to the day they’re just. [00:06:23] Jen Odess: Thriving and growing like crazy, and then across the whole life cycle of the customer pre to post sale. So it’s, we are almost like the underpinning and the infras infrastructure. Someone once said it’s like we’re the insurance policy of all global partnerships and channels. That’s how we operate across global partnerships and channels and service Now. [00:06:42] Vince Menzione: And you have a very intimate relationship with those partners. We’re gonna dive in on that as well. Yes. But let’s talk about this time like no other. I talk about tectonic shifts at all of our events. People that listen to our podcasts know we talk about the acceleration of transformation, and it’s happening so fast. [00:06:58] Vince Menzione: It was happening fast even during COVID. But then. I’ll call this date or time period, the November 20, 22 time period when Chat GPT launched. Oh yeah. And that really changed the world in many respects, right? Yeah. Microsoft had already leaned in with chat, GPT, Google, we talked to Google about this. [00:07:17] Vince Menzione: Even having them in the room was like, they were caught flatfooted in a way, and they had a lot of the technology and they didn’t lean in. But it feels like ServiceNow was one of the first, certainly on the ISV side of the house and refer to the term ISV. Loosely, because hyperscalers are ISVs as well. [00:07:34] Vince Menzione: They were early to lean in and have leaned it in such a way from a business application perspective that I believe we haven’t seen embracing and infusing AI into your platform. I was hoping we could dive in a little bit on ServiceNow from a. Kinda legacy, what the organization was and is today. [00:07:56] Vince Menzione: And then also this infusion of AI into the platform. If you don’t mind, [00:07:59] Jen Odess: I love this topic. Okay. And I feel like it’s such a privilege to talk about ServiceNow on this topic because we really are a leader in the category. I’ll almost rewind back to over 20 years ago when the company was founded. [00:08:11] Jen Odess: Today, fast forward, we are so much more than an IT ticketing company. We are, [00:08:16] Vince Menzione: but that was the legacy. That’s how I knew service now 20 years ago. [00:08:19] Jen Odess: And what a beautiful legacy. Yeah. But we have expanded immensely beyond that. And that’s the beautiful story to tell customers. That’s so fun. [00:08:28] Jen Odess: But what what I love is that. So 20 years ago, that was where we started. And today, do you know that over a billion workflows are put to work every single day for our customers? A billion [00:08:38] Vince Menzione: workflows, over a billion workflows. That’s crazy. [00:08:40] Jen Odess: And 87% of all implementations for ServiceNow were done by partnerships. [00:08:46] Jen Odess: And channels. That’s fantastic. So you think about those billion plus workflows daily, all because of our partner ecosystem. This is my small plug. I’m just very proud 80, proud 86%. [00:08:56] Vince Menzione: Did you hear that? Part’s 86%. [00:08:57] Jen Odess: Amazing. And so that’s like what we’re, that’s what we’re a leader in the category. We are a leader in workflows categorically. [00:09:05] Jen Odess: But then over a decade ago, we started investing in ai. We started building it right into our platform, and this becomes the next kind of notch on our belt, which is we are a unified platform. Nothing is bolted on, nothing is just apid in. Yeah, it is a unified platform. So all of that AI that for the past decade we’ve been building in into our platform. [00:09:28] Jen Odess: Just in our AI platform, which is now what we are calling it, the AI platform. [00:09:34] Vince Menzione: And I would say that unless you were a startup starting up from scratch today and building on an LLM, we were building in a way I don’t think any other organization’s gonna actually state that [00:09:45] Jen Odess: what’s actually why we call ourselves AI native. [00:09:47] Jen Odess: Yeah, beca for that exact reason. And that’s who we’re competing with a lot these days, is the truly AI native startups where they didn’t have, the 20 years. Previously that we had, but that’s what makes us so unique in the situation, is that unified AI platform, a single data model that can connect to anything. [00:10:07] Jen Odess: And then the workflow leader. And when you put all those things together, AI plus data, plus workflows and that’s where the magic happens. Yeah. Across the enterprise. It’s pretty cool. [00:10:17] Vince Menzione: That is very cool. And you start thinking about, and we start talking about agent as a, as an example. Let’s talk about this for a second. [00:10:23] Vince Menzione: You, when what is this bolt-on, we could use the terms co-pilot, we could use Ag Agent ai, but they are generally bolted onto an existing application today. So take us through the 10 years and how it has become a portion or a significant portion. Of ServiceNow. [00:10:41] Jen Odess: When say the question a little bit more. [00:10:43] Jen Odess: Like when you say it’s, yeah, when which examples have bolted on? [00:10:47] Vince Menzione: So exa, we, what we see today is the hyperscalers coming out with their own solution sets, right? They’re taking and they’re offering it up to their ecosystem to infuse it into their product and portfolio. To me, those that look like bolted on in many respects, unless it’s an AI need as a native organization, a startup organization. [00:11:07] Vince Menzione: They’re mostly taking and re-engineering or bolting onto their existing solutions. [00:11:12] Jen Odess: I follow. Yeah. Thank you for giving me a little more context. So I call this our any problem. It’s like one of the best problems to have we can connect into. Anything, any cloud, any ai, any platform, any system, any data, any workflow, and that’s where any hyperscaler, and that’s the part that makes it so incredible. [00:11:32] Jen Odess: So your word is bolt on, and I use the word any the, any problem. Yeah. We’ve got this beautiful kind of stack visual that just, it’s like it just one on top of the other. Any. Any, and no one else can really say that. I gotta see [00:11:45] Vince Menzione: that visual. Yeah. Yeah. So talk about this a little bit more. So you’re uniquely positioned. [00:11:52] Vince Menzione: Let’s talk about how you position, you talked about being AI native. What does that imply and what does that mean in terms of the evolution of the platform? From ticketing to workflows to the business applications? What are the type of applications Yeah. Markets, industries that you’re starting to see. [00:12:08] Jen Odess: So I’ll actually answer this with, taking on a small, maybe marketing or positioning journey. So there was a time when our tagline would be The World Works with ServiceNow. There was a time when it was, we put AI to work for people and today and it, I think it was around Knowledge 2025, this came out. [00:12:28] Jen Odess: It was the AI platform for business transformation. And I love to say to people, it sounds like a handful of. Cliche words that just got stacked together. The AI platform for business transformation. Yeah. We all know these words, so many companies use ’em, but it is such deliberate language and I love to explain why. [00:12:46] Jen Odess: So the first is the AI platform is calling out that we are an AI native platform. We are a unified platform. It’s a chance to say all that goodness I already shared with you. Yeah. And the business transformation is actually telling the story of no longer being a solution. Point or no longer being an individual product that does X. [00:13:06] Jen Odess: It’s about saying. The ServiceNow platform can go north to south and east to west across your entire enterprise. Okay. Up and down the entire tech stack. Any. And then east to west, it can cut across the enterprise, the C-suite, the buying centers, all into one unified AI platform. With one data model. [00:13:26] Jen Odess: I love it. And so I love that AI platform for business transformation actually has so much purpose. [00:13:32] Vince Menzione: It does. So you’re going across the stack, so you’re going all the way from the bottom layer, all the way up to the top from the ue. Ui. And then you’re going across the organization, right? You’re going across the C-suite, you’re going across all the business functions of an organization. [00:13:46] Vince Menzione: Correct. And so the workflows are going across each of those business functions? [00:13:49] Jen Odess: Correct. And then our AI control tower is sitting at the very top, governing over all of it. [00:13:53] Vince Menzione: I love the control tower. [00:13:54] Jen Odess: I know the governance, security risk protocol, managing all the agents interoperability. Yeah. [00:14:01] Vince Menzione: And then data at the very bottom right. [00:14:03] Vince Menzione: Controlling all those elements and the governance of the data and the right, the cleanliness of the data and so on. Yeah. That’s incredible. I we could probably talk about business applications. I know one, in fact, I’ve had a person sit in this, your chair from we’ll call it a large GSIA very significant GSI one of the top five. [00:14:21] Vince Menzione: And they took ServiceNow and they applied it to their business partnering function. And they used, and we, you probably don’t know about this one, but I know that that’s a, an example of taking it and applying it all across all the workflows, across all the geographies of the organization and taking a lot of the process that was all done manually. [00:14:40] Vince Menzione: That was stove pipe business processes that were all stove piped and removing the stove pipe and making for a fluid organizational flow. [00:14:47] Jen Odess: And I’ll bet you the end user didn’t even realize ServiceNow was the backend. That’s some of the greatest examples actually. [00:14:53] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Yeah. So Jen, we work with all the hyperscalers. [00:14:56] Vince Menzione: We have a very strong relationship with Microsoft. Goes back many years, my back to my days at Microsoft and we’ve had Google in the room. We have AWS now as well. We bring them all together because we believe that partners work with, need to work with all three. And I know that you have had an interesting transformation at ServiceNow around the hyperscalers. [00:15:16] Vince Menzione: I was hoping you could dive in a little deeper with us. [00:15:19] Jen Odess: Yeah. We are so proud of our relationships with the hyperscalers, so the same three, so it’s Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and AWS. And really it’s it’s a strategic 360 partnership and our goal is really to drive marketplace transactions. [00:15:34] Jen Odess: So ServiceNow selling in all of their marketplaces and then. Burn down of our customers cloud commits. I love it. It’s really a beautiful story for our customers and for the hyperscalers and for ServiceNow. And so we’ve, it’s brand, it’s a brand new announcement from late in the year 2025. Love it. And we’re really excited about it. [00:15:51] Vince Menzione: Yeah. And then we, and we get all of the marketplace leaders in the room. So we’ve worked with all of those people. And one of the key points about this is there is over a half a trillion dollars in durable cloud budgets with customers that [00:16:08] Vince Menzione: Already committed to, I know, so that tam available, a half a trillion dollars is available to customers to burn down and utilize your solutions and professional services with partners as well in terms of driving a complete solution. [00:16:21] Jen Odess: That’s exactly the motion we’re pushing is to go and leverage those cloud commits to get on ServiceNow and in some cases, maybe even take out other products to go with ServiceNow and actually end up funding the transition to ServiceNow. Yeah. Yeah. [00:16:37] Vince Menzione: So you serve thousands of customers today, thousands of customers. [00:16:42] Vince Menzione: I can’t even. Fathom the exact number, but you have this partner ecosystem that you described, and their reach is even more incredible, like hundreds of thousands. Yeah. So tell us a little bit more about how you think about that, and then how do you drive the partner ecosystem in the right way to drive this partner excellence that you described. [00:17:02] Jen Odess: Yeah, that’s a great question. So yeah, thousands of ServiceNow customers and we’re barely scratching the surface in comparison to our partners customers. So we have over 2,500 partners Wow. In our ecosystem. And today they cut across what I would call five routes to market. That partners can go to market with ServiceNow. [00:17:21] Jen Odess: Okay. The first is consulting and implementation. This will be your classic kind of consulting shop or GSI approach. The second is resell, just like it sounds. Yep. [00:17:30] Vince Menzione: Transactional. [00:17:31] Jen Odess: Yep. The third is managed service provider. [00:17:33] Vince Menzione: Okay. [00:17:34] Jen Odess: The fourth is what we call build, which is. The ISV, strategic Tech partner realm, and then the fifth is hyperscaler. [00:17:43] Jen Odess: Those are the five routes to market. So partners can choose to be in one or all or two. It doesn’t matter. It’s whichever one fits the kind of business they want to go drive. Nice. Where they’re. Expertise lies. And then we’ve got partners that show up globally, partners that show up multinational and partners that show up regionally and then partners that show up locally, in country and that’s it. [00:18:06] Jen Odess: And we really want a diverse set of partners capable of delivering where any of our customers are. So it’s important that we have that dynamic ecosystem where we really push them. We’re actually trying hard to balance this. Yeah, you would’ve heard it from many of your other partners. This direct versus indirect. [00:18:24] Jen Odess: Yes. Motion. For anyone listening that doesn’t know the difference, right? Direct is ServiceNow is selling direct to a customer, there might be a partner involved influencing that will implement. Yeah, likely but ServiceNow is really driving the sale versus indirect where the whole thing routes through the partner. [00:18:39] Jen Odess: Right? Which is your classic reseller or managed service provider and often a an ISV. And you know that balance is never gonna be perfect ’cause we’re not gonna commit to go all direct or all indirect. We’re gonna continue to sit in this space where we’re trying to find a healthy balance. [00:18:56] Jen Odess: So I find a lot of our time trying to figure out how do you set all those parties up for success? Yeah. The parties are the ServiceNow field sellers? And then you’ve also got the partnerships and channels, so the ecosystem, and then you’ve got the people in global partnerships and channels. So my broader organization, and we’re all trying to figure out how to work harmoniously together and it’s a lot of, it is my job to get us there. [00:19:19] Jen Odess: And so we use lots of things like incentives and benefits and we will put in place gated entry, really strategic gated entry. What does [00:19:29] Vince Menzione: gated entry mean? [00:19:30] Jen Odess: Yeah. What I mean is if you want to have a chance at being matched with a customer Yeah. For a very specific deal. Or it’s really one of three to get matched. [00:19:41] Jen Odess: ‘Cause you can never match one-to-one. It has to be three or more. Okay. We have good compliance rules in place. Yeah. But in order to even. Like surface to the top of the list to be matched. There’s a gated entry, which is, you’ve gotta have validated practices. Okay. Which is how, it’s these various ways, as you described, you quantify and qualify the partner’s capabilities. [00:20:00] Vince Menzione: Yeah. So you have to meet these qualifications. Yes. And you could be one of three to enter and be. Potentially matched, considered significant or Yes. Match for this deal? [00:20:08] Jen Odess: Yes, that’s exactly right. So we use, various things like that. And then we try to carve what I would call dance card space reseller in commercial, try to sit here and like carve by geo, by region, by country dance card space as well to help the partners really know exactly where they can unleash versus, hey, this is the process and the rules of engagement. To go and sell alongside the direct org sales organization [00:20:33] Vince Menzione: and you’re gonna have multiple partners in the same opportunities. [00:20:37] Vince Menzione: Absolutely not. Not necessarily competing with each other. There’s three competing each with each other, but also you’re gonna have other partners that provide different capabilities as well. You might have that have some that are just transac. Those are gonna be those channel or reseller partners. [00:20:52] Vince Menzione: You might have an MSP that’s actually delivering, or at least providing some type of managed service on top of the stack. Like supporting the customer. Yeah. And then you might have an SI GSI an integration partner that’s also doing the con the consulting work around getting the solution to meet with the customer’s requirements. [00:21:12] Vince Menzione: Would you say [00:21:13] Jen Odess: so? That’s exactly right. Yeah. And actually in. AI era, we’re seeing more of it than ever. And even on the smaller deals, maybe not the GSIs on the smaller deals, but we’re seeing multiple partners come in to serve up their specific expertise, which is actually a best practice. That’s [00:21:33] Vince Menzione: terrific. [00:21:33] Jen Odess: We don’t want. If you’ve got an area that’s a blind spot and you’re a partner, but that’s something your customer is buying from you, there’s no harm in saying let’s bring in an expert in that category to deliver that piece of the business. That’s right. And we’ll maybe shadow and watch alongside. [00:21:46] Jen Odess: So we’re seeing more and more of it. And I actually think like the world of. Partnerships and ecosystems. If I go back to like my previous ecosystem as well, it’s become so much more communal than ever before. Yes. This idea that we can share and be more open and maybe even commiserate over the things, gosh, I can’t believe we have the same frustrations or we have the same. [00:22:09] Jen Odess: Wow, that’s amazing. And you’re in this country. And I’m in this country. And so we’re seeing more and more coming together on deals which I really respect a lot. ’cause So one of the new facts we’ve just learned actually, Vince, is that. Of all the ai buying that customers are doing out there, they actually still want over 70% of it to be done by partners. [00:22:32] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:22:33] Jen Odess: So even though it looks like it could be maybe set up easy configured, easy plug and play it. It to get, it’s not real ROI. You still need a partner with expertise in that industry or that domain, or in that location or in that language to come and bring the value to life. And we will certainly accelerate, help accelerate time to value with things that ServiceNow will do for our partners. [00:22:56] Jen Odess: But if over 70% is gonna go to partners and AI is so new, wouldn’t you want more than one partner Sometimes on a absolutely on a deal, at least while we’re all learning. I think we can keep ebbing and flowing [00:23:07] Vince Menzione: on this. We you, I dunno if Jay McBain, ’cause we’ve had him in the room here and he is a, he’s an analyst that does a lot of work around this topic. [00:23:14] Vince Menzione: And we talk about the seven seats at the table because there are, again, you need more you, first of all, you need to have your trusted, you need to have the organizations that you work with. And you also, in the world of ai, with all of the tectonic shifts, all the constant changing that’s going on right now, I need to make sure that I have the right. [00:23:31] Vince Menzione: People by my side that I can trust, they can help me deliver what I need to deliver. ’cause it might have changed from six months ago. And the technology is changing. Everything is changing so rapidly right now. So again, having all those right people I want to pick up on something ’cause we talked a little bit about MSPs and they’ve become a favorite topic of ours. [00:23:52] Vince Menzione: I have become acutely aware of the Ms P community recently. I kinda looked at them as well. There’s little small partners, but you’ve suggested this as well. They have regional expert, they have expertise in a specific area. And can be trusted, and maybe you’re integrating multiple solution sets for a customer. [00:24:11] Vince Menzione: But we’ve seen this MSP community become very vibrant lately, and I feel like they woke up to technology and to AI in such a big way. Can you comment on that? [00:24:20] Jen Odess: So we feel and see the same thing I’ve always valued what managed service providers bring to the table. It’s like that. [00:24:26] Jen Odess: Classic are you a transformation shop or are you a ta? The tail end or the run business shop? And so many partners are like we’re both, and I wanna be like, but are you? But now I feel like we finally are seeing the run business is so fruitful. So AI is innovating. All the time. [00:24:46] Jen Odess: We, we are innovating as a AI platform all the time. What used to be six month, every six months family releases of our software. Yeah. It became quarterly and now we’re practically seeing releases of new innovation every six to eight weeks. So why wouldn’t you want a managed service provider? Paying close attention to your whole instance on ServiceNow and taking into account all the latest innovation and building it into your existing instance, and then looking out for what new things you should be bringing in. [00:25:20] Jen Odess: So that’s the beauty of the, it’s almost partnerships, observing, and then suggesting how to keep. Doing better and more and better versus always jumping straight back to complete redesign and transformation. Yeah, and that’s one of the things I like about the MSPs in this space. [00:25:36] Vince Menzione: So let’s broaden out from this part of the conversation ’cause you’re giving specific guidance to the MSPs, but let’s think about this whole partner community. [00:25:43] Vince Menzione: And you’ve seen this transformation coming over to ServiceNow and even within ServiceNow these last five years. How do these organizations need to think differently? And how do they need to structure their services in this newent world? [00:25:58] Jen Odess: Great question. There’s really four things that I think they have to be thoughtful of. [00:26:02] Jen Odess: The first is maybe the most obvious they have to adopt AI as their own ways of doing work methodology. Delivery, whatever it is, because only through the, it’s not about taking out people in jobs, it’s about doing the job faster, right? It’s about getting the customer to value faster so that adoption of AI will make or break some partners. [00:26:24] Jen Odess: And our goal is that every partner comes on the other side of this AI journey, thriving and surviving. So we’re really pushing. This agenda. And maybe later I can talk to you a little bit more about this autonomous implementation concept. Please. ’cause I that will [00:26:37] Vince Menzione: resonate. So you’re saying they need to, we used to use the term eat their own dog food. [00:26:41] Vince Menzione: Now it’s drink your own champagne. Yeah. But they need to adopt it as well internally. [00:26:46] Jen Odess: Yeah. And I think whether they’re using, I hope they’re using ServiceNow as like a client, zero. To do some of that adoption. But there’s lots of other tools that are great AI tools that will make your job and your day-to-day life and the execution of that job easier. [00:26:59] Jen Odess: So we want them adopting all of that. The second is, we really need to see partners. Innovating on the ServiceNow platform. Yeah. And whether that’s building agents AI agents that go into the ServiceNow store, whether it’s building a really fantastic solution that we wanna joint jointly go to market with, or maybe it’s one of those embedded solutions you were commenting where the end user doesn’t even know that the backend, like a tax and audit solution that is actually just. [00:27:29] Jen Odess: The backend is all ServiceNow. Yeah. But that partner is going to market and selling it to all their customers. Exactly. So I think this co-innovation is gonna be a place that we will really win in market. The third is if a partner wants to stand out right now, they have to differentiate on paper too. [00:27:47] Jen Odess: It’s gotta like what does that mean? So if there’s 2,500 partners. And it’s not like we don’t walk around and just say, you should talk to this partner. Yeah. Or here’s my secret list. You should, we don’t do that. That’s not good business and it’s not compliant. So we have algorithms that take all the quantitative and qualitative data on our partners and they know all the data points ’cause it’s part of the partner program Nice. [00:28:10] Jen Odess: That they adhere to and then ranks them on status. And all those data points are what I’m referring to as on paper. You’ve gotta be differentiated. So whether or not you wanna be great at one thing or great across the whole thing, think about how all of those quantitative and qualitative data points are making you stand out, because that’s where those matches that I was referring to. [00:28:35] Jen Odess: Yes. That’s where that’s gonna come to life. And it’s skills, it’s capabilities. It’s deployments. So Proofpoint and deployments, customer success stories, csat, all the things. So [00:28:47] Vince Menzione: those are all the qualifi qualifiers for and more, but those are the types [00:28:49] Jen Odess: of qualifications. Yeah. [00:28:51] Vince Menzione: And then do your, does your sales organization do a match against that based on a customer’s requirements that they’re working with and who they work with and co-sell with? [00:29:00] Jen Odess: And I feel like you just lobbed me the greatest question. I didn’t even know you were gonna ask it, but I’m so glad you did. So today. Today there is something called a partner finder, which is which is nice, but it’s a little bit old school in a world of ai. Yeah. So you go to servicenow.com, you click partner from the top navigation, and then it says find a partner and you can literally type in the products you’re buying the country, you’re, that you’re headquartered out of. [00:29:26] Jen Odess: Whatever thing you’re looking for. And it will start to filter based on all those data points, the right partners, and you can actually click right there to be connected to a partner. So lead generation. Okay, interesting. But where we’re going is a agentic matching right in our CRM for the field. Oh. So those data points are gonna matter even more, and that’s where the gated. [00:29:48] Jen Odess: I say gated entry, which is probably too extreme, right? It’s really gated. If you wanna surface toward the top, there’s gated parameters to try to surface to the top, but those data points will feed the algorithm and it will genetically match right in our CRM for the field. Who are the best suited partners? [00:30:09] Jen Odess: Would you like to talk to them? [00:30:10] Vince Menzione: Okay. And so is it. Partner facing? Is it sales team facing [00:30:14] Jen Odess: Right now? It’s sales. It’ll, when it goes live, it will be sales team facing. Okay. But we have greater ambition for what partners can do with it. Yeah. Not just in the indirect motion, but also what partners may be able to do with it to interface with our field. [00:30:30] Jen Odess: The. [00:30:31] Vince Menzione: The, yeah the collaboration [00:30:33] Jen Odess: opportunity. Which is always a friction point that we’re working on [00:30:36] Vince Menzione: always because it’s very manual. It’s people intensive. Yeah. Partner development managers sitting on both sides of the equation and the interface between the sales organization and a partner organization is not always the. The easiest. So right. Automated, quite a bit of that. [00:30:49] Jen Odess: My boss is obsessed with the easy button, which I know is a phrase many of us in the US know from I think it’s an Office Depot, all these ways in which we can have easy button moments for the partner ecosystem is what we’re trying to focus on. [00:31:01] Jen Odess: I love the easy button. [00:31:02] Vince Menzione: Yeah. And I love your boss too. Yeah, he’s fabulous. Fabulous. So Michael and I go back like many years ago. You must have, [00:31:08] Jen Odess: yeah. You must have had paths crossing on numerous occasions. [00:31:12] Vince Menzione: Yeah we we worked together micro I’m going to hijack the session for a second here. [00:31:16] Vince Menzione: But when I first came to Microsoft, he was leading a, the se, a segment of the business, and he invited me to come to his event and interviewed me on stage at his event. [00:31:26] Jen Odess: No way. [00:31:26] Vince Menzione: And we got to know each other and yeah. So he was terrific. He was what a great find for, oh, he’s for service now. [00:31:32] Vince Menzione: He’s really [00:31:32] Jen Odess: has been a fantastic addition [00:31:34] Vince Menzione: to the global partnerships and channels team. And Michael, we have to have you on the podcast. Yes. Or cut down here in the studio at some point too with Jen and I. That’d be great. So this is terrific. We are getting it’s an incredible time. [00:31:44] Vince Menzione: It’s going so fast this time, 2022 was, seems like it was five, it feels like it was almost 10 years ago now. It wasn’t that we just started talking about it and you were implementing AI 10 years ago, but it wasn’t getting the attention that it’s getting today. And it really wasn’t until that moment that it really started to kick off in a way that everybody, yeah. It became pervasive overnight I would say. But now we’re starting 2026, like we’re at. This precipice of time and it’s continuing. I don’t even know what 2030 is gonna look like, right? So I’m a partner. [00:32:16] Vince Menzione: What are the one, two, or three things that I need to do now to win over and work with ServiceNow? [00:32:23] Jen Odess: One, two or three things? I’ll tell you the first thing. So today ServiceNow will end up hitting 500 million in annual contract value in our Now Assist, which is our AI products by the end of 2025, which is the fastest growing product in all of ServiceNow history. [00:32:37] Jen Odess: That’s one product that’s so there’s lots of SKUs. Yeah, but it is. It’s our AI product. Yeah. And it is, but yeah, because of all the various ways. [00:32:45] Vince Menzione: So half a billion dollars, [00:32:46] Jen Odess: half a billion by the end of 2025. And I think, someone’s gonna have to keep me honest here, but if memory serves me right, the first skews didn’t even launch until 2024. [00:32:54] Jen Odess: So we’re talking about wow, in a year it’s fast. Over 1,700 customers are live with our now assist products. Again, in a matter of, let’s call it over, a little over a year, 1,700 partners. So I think the first thing a partner needs to do is they’ve gotta get on this AI bandwagon, and they’ve gotta be selling and positioning AI use cases to their customers, because that’s the only way they’re gonna get. [00:33:20] Jen Odess: Experience and an opportunity to see what it feels like to deliver. So we have to do that. And I think you could sell a big use case like that big, we talked north, south, east, west, you could do that whole thing. Brilliant. But you could also start small. Go pick a single use case. Like a really simple example of something you wanna, some work you wanna drive productivity on. [00:33:41] Jen Odess: Yeah. And make sure you’ve got multiple stakeholders that love it and then go drive proving that use case. That’s what we’re telling a lot of partners. That’s the first thing. The second is they have got to build skills on AI and they have to keep up with it. And so we’re trying to really think about our broader learning and development team at ServiceNow is just next level. [00:34:00] Jen Odess: And they’re really re-imagining how to have more real time bite size. Training and enablement that will help individuals keep up with that pace of innovation. So individuals have got to get skilled. Yes. On AI today, of that a hundred thousand or so individuals in the ecosystem right now, about 35% of those individuals hold one or more AI credential. [00:34:25] Jen Odess: Again, that’s in a little over a year, which is the fastest growing skill development we’ve ever had, but it should be a hundred percent. Yeah. All of our goals should be that every account is being sold ai. ’cause that’s where the customer’s gonna get to value a ServiceNow is if they have the AI capabilities. [00:34:40] Jen Odess: And [00:34:41] Vince Menzione: how are you providing enablement and training? Is it all online? It’s, we have [00:34:44] Jen Odess: all sorts of ways of doing it. So that we have ServiceNow University, which is just a really robust, learning platform. Elba is our professor in residence. Very cool. Which is very cool. And they’re all content. [00:34:57] Jen Odess: Is free to partners. The training is free to partners that is on demand. Beyond that, partners can still get, instructor led training, whether that’s in person or virtual. And then my team offers enablement. That’s a little bit more, it’s like not formal training, it’s more like hands-on labs and experiences. [00:35:17] Jen Odess: We bring in lots of groups that sit around me that help and we very cool hands on with partners face-to-face. And do you do an annual event where you bring all these partners together? No, because we do we have three major milestones a year for partners. So the first is at sales kickoff, which is coming up the third week in January. [00:35:33] Jen Odess: And alongside sales kickoff is partner kickoff. Okay. And so we do a whole day of enabling them. So that’s your [00:35:39] Vince Menzione: partner kickoff? [00:35:40] Jen Odess: That’s partner kickoff. But of the, of all the partners in the ecosystem, it’s not like they can all make it. So we still also record and then live stream some of the content there. [00:35:49] Jen Odess: Then at Knowledge, there’s a whole partner track at Knowledge and same concept. Yeah, it’s like it’s all about customers and we wanna, build as much pipeline and wow as many customers as possible, but we also need to help our partners come along the journey. Then the third and final moment is in September, always, and it’s called our Global Partner Ecosystem Summit. [00:36:08] Jen Odess: We should have you, I’d love to join this next year. I love that. And it’s really, that’s the one time if sales kickoff is all about the sales motion in the field and knowledge is all about the customers and getting customers value. Global Partner Ecosystem Summit is only about the partners, what they need, why they need it, and what we’re doing to make their lives easier. [00:36:28] Jen Odess: I love it. Yeah. I’ll be there September. I love it. Dates yet set yet? I have to, it’s getting locked. I’ll get it to you. [00:36:34] Vince Menzione: Okay. All right. I’ll, we’ll be there. Okay. So you’ve been incredible. I just love having you. We could spend hours, honestly, and I want to have you back here. I’d love to, I have you back for a more meaningful conversation with the hyperscalers. [00:36:45] Vince Menzione: Talk to some of the partners that join us at Ultimate Partner events. We’ll find a way to do that, but I have this one question. It’s a favorite question of mine, and I love to ask all my guests this. Okay. You’re hosting a dinner party. And you could host a dinner party anywhere in the world. We could talk about great locations and where your favorite places are, and you can invite any three guests from the present or the past to this amazing dinner party. [00:37:11] Vince Menzione: We had one guest who wanted to do them in the future, like three people that hadn’t reached a future date. Whom would you invite Jen and why? [00:37:21] Jen Odess: Oh, first of all, you’re hitting home for me because I love to host dinner parties. I actually used to have a catering company. This is like one of those weird facts that, we didn’t talk about my pre services and ecosystem days, but I also had a catering company, so I love cooking and hosting dinner parties. [00:37:38] Jen Odess: So this is a great question. I feel like it’s a loaded question and I have to say my spouse. I love my husband dearly, but I have. To invite Lee to my dinner party. Okay. He’s in [00:37:47] Vince Menzione: Lee’s guest number one. Lee’s [00:37:49] Jen Odess: guest, number one. And the reason why is, first of all, I love him dearly, but he’s super interesting and he has such thought provoking topics to, to discuss and ways of viewing the world. [00:38:00] Jen Odess: He’s actually in security tech, so it’s like a tangential space, but not the same. [00:38:05] Vince Menzione: Yeah. But an important space right now, especially. Yeah. And [00:38:07] Jen Odess: he, yeah. And he’s, he’s just a delight to be around. So he’d be number one. Number two would be Frank Lloyd Wright. [00:38:15] Vince Menzione: Frank. Lloyd Wright. [00:38:17] Jen Odess: Yeah. I am an architecture and design junkie. [00:38:21] Jen Odess: Maybe I don’t do any of it myself, though. I dabble with friends that do it, and I try to apply it to my home life when I can. And Frank Lloyd Wright sort of embodies some of my favorite. Components of any kind of environment that you are experiencing, whether it’s a home or it’s an office building or it’s an outdoor space. [00:38:39] Jen Odess: I love the idea of minimalism and simplicity. I love the idea of monochromatic colors. I love the idea of spaces that can be used for multipurpose. And then I love the idea of the outside being in and the inside being out. I love it. So I would like love to pick his brain on some of his, how he came up with some of his ideas. [00:38:59] Jen Odess: Fascinating for some of his greatest. Yeah. Designs. Okay. That’s number two. Number three, I think it would be Pharrell Williams. Really? Yeah, I, Pharrell Williams. Yeah. I love fashion music and all things creativity. He’s got that, Annie’s philanthropic. He’s just yeah. The whole package of a good person. [00:39:26] Jen Odess: That’s super interesting and I very cool. I would love to pick his brain on what it was like to be behind the scenes on some of the fashion lines he’s collaborated with on some of his music collabs he’s had, and then just some of the work he’s doing around philanthropy. I would. I could just spend all night probably listening to him. [00:39:43] Jen Odess: This would be a [00:39:44] Vince Menzione: really cool conversation night. [00:39:45] Jen Odess: Don’t you wanna come to my dinner? Was gonna say, I’m sorry I didn’t invite you to identify. No [00:39:49] Vince Menzione: I was, can I bring dessert? [00:39:50] Jen Odess: Yeah. I come [00:39:50] Vince Menzione: for dessert. I, but it can’t, [00:39:51] Jen Odess: it has to be like a chocolate dessert. It’s gotta have [00:39:54] Vince Menzione: I love chocolate dessert. [00:39:55] Vince Menzione: Okay, great. So it would not be a problem for me, Jen. This is terrific. You have been absolutely amazing. So great to have you come here. Yeah. Such a busy time of year to have you make the trip here to Boca. We will have you back in the studio. I promise that I’ll have you back on stage. Stage. [00:40:10] Jen Odess: This is beautiful. [00:40:10] Jen Odess: Look at it. Yeah. This is [00:40:11] Vince Menzione: beautiful. And we transformed this into, to a room, basically a conference room. And then we also have our ultimate partner events. I would love to come, we would love to have you join us. Like I said, ServiceNow is such an impactful time. Your leadership in this segment market, and I wouldn’t say segment across all of AI in terms of all the use cases of AI is just so meaningful, especially for within the enterprise. [00:40:33] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Right now. So just really a jogger nut right now within the industry. So great to have you and have ServiceNow join us. So Jen, thank you so much for joining us. [00:40:42] Jen Odess: Thanks Vince. Appreciate the time. It’s a pleasure to be here. [00:40:44] Vince Menzione: Thank you very much. Thanks for tuning into this episode of Ultimate Eye to Partnering. [00:40:50] Vince Menzione: We’re bringing these episodes to you to help you level up your strategy. If you haven’t yet, now’s the time to take action and think about joining our community. We created a unique place, UPX or Ultimate partner experience. It’s more than a community. It’s your competitive edge with insider insights, real-time education, and direct access to people who are driving the ecosystem forward. [00:41:16] Vince Menzione: UPX helps you get results. And we’re just getting started as we’re taking this studio. And we’ll be hosting live stream and digital events here, including our January live stream, the Boca Winter Retreat, and more to come. So visit our website, the ultimate partner.com to learn more and join us. Now’s the time to take your partnerships to the next level.

In this episode, Avanish and Antonio discuss:BBVA's data transformation journey, including the strategic decision in 2017 to create a global data function at the executive committee level reporting to the CEO and ChairmanBuilding hybrid data architecture combining centralized lake house (AWS) with data mesh approaches to balance agility and control across global operations in regulated environmentsThe "eight robots" framework—a top-down AI transformation agenda targeting the most critical parts of BBVA's value chain, from digital client relationships to banker productivity to risk underwritingHow BBVA defines data democratization as "responsible access" not "open access," implementing strict governance while enabling self-service analytics in a highly regulated industryReal-world AI impact: solutions reducing tasks from 11 minutes to less than 1 minute, generative assistant "Blue" serving 20+ million clients in Spain and Mexico, and IVR improvements saving minutes to secondsThe partnership and ecosystem strategy leveraging enterprise-focused innovation through AWS, OpenAI, Google Gemini, and vertical solution providers to increase speed of learning and innovationWhy the "mode in this cycle is learning—how fast you can learn, how fast you can test hypotheses"—embracing experimentation and continuous improvement as models rapidly evolveAntonio's vision for the future: using AI and data to expand bankarization globally, serving underserved populations and fueling economic growth for families and businessesAbout the host:Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and served as a Board Member of Hubspot from 2018 to 2023; he currently serves on the boards of Birdie.ai, Flywl.com and Meta.com.br as well as a few non-profits and educational boards. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow.  From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase.  Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early to mid-stage startups in Silicon Valley.About Antonio Bravo, Global Head of Data at BBVAAntonio started his career in 2009 as a consultant focused in Technology, Media and Telecom. There he had the opportunity to learn how (mobile) internet growth blurs barriers between different industries and makes them converge. One of those industries is finance. He joined BBVA in 2011 to be part of its transformation strategy, and since then he has had different jobs. Started working in the Strategy & M&A area, with focus on the BBVA Ventures team (today Propel) investing in fintech startups, continued with a role in Digital Banking Strategy team, and later in 2015 assumed the responsibility of Business Development in South America (Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Perú, Venezuela, Uruguay and Paraguay).He also held the responsibility of Agile Organization until July 2019, focused in scaling the Agile methodology through-out the entire organization, more than 33.000 people including holding and countries, to improve quality, time to market, productivity and team engagement.From July 2019 until September 2021 he held the responsibility of IT Strategy & Control within BBVA, a function that manages some of the core IT functions at a global level, such as IT strategy, finance, vendor management, PMO, first line of defense and IT spin-offs.Since September 2021 he holds the position of Head of Sustainability Strategy & Business Development, where he contributes to the design of the strategic plan for all segments and manages investment in descarbonization funds. In January 2024 he was also appointed as Head of Corporate and Investment Banking Strategy, Industrial client coverage and cross border business.In January 2025 was appointed Global Head of Data at BBVA. Antonio is responsible of leading the transformation of the Group towards a data-driven company.About BBVA:BBVA is a global financial services group founded in 1857. The bank is present in more than 25 countries, has a strong leadership position in the Spanish market, is the largest financial institution in Mexico and it has leading franchises in South America and Turkey. In the United States, BBVA also has a significant investment, transactional, and capital markets banking business.BBVA contributes with its activity to the progress and welfare of all its stakeholders: shareholders, clients, employees, providers and society in general. In this regard, BBVA supports families, entrepreneurs and companies in their plans, and helps them to take advantage of the opportunities provided by innovation and technology. Likewise, BBVA offers its customers a unique value proposition, leveraged on technology and data, helping them improve their financial health with personalized information on financial decision-making.About TidemarkTidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale.  Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years.  Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.LinksFollow our host, Avanish SahaiLearn more about Tidemark

In Episode 145 of “The Trusted Advisor,” RSPA CEO Jim Roddy talks with RSPA General Counsel Atty. Jill Miller about why VAR and ISV leaders need to understand the important difference between legal interpretations and personal opinions. Miller also provides an update on the latest news related to surcharging and cash discounting. “The Trusted Advisor,” powered by the Retail Solutions Providers Association (RSPA), is an award-winning content series designed specifically for retail IT VARs and software providers. Our goal is to educate you on the topics of leadership, management, hiring, sales, and other small business best practices. For more insights, visit the RSPA blog at www.GoRSPA.org.  The RSPA is North America's largest community of VARs, software providers, vendors, and distributors in the retail, restaurant, and grocery verticals. The mission of the RSPA is to accelerate the success of its members in the retail technology ecosystem by providing knowledge and connections. The organization offers member-to-member warm introductions, education, legal advice, industry advocacy, and other services to assist members with becoming and remaining successful. RSPA is most well-known for its signature events, RetailNOW and Inspire, which provide face-to-face learning and networking opportunities. Learn more by visiting www.GoRSPA.org. 

Payments shouldn't break just because a card changes. We sat down with leaders from NMI, G+D and Mastercard to unpack how network tokenization has moved far beyond basic security to become the backbone of higher approvals, fewer chargebacks, and smoother recurring billing. If you care about conversion, fraud, and customer lifetime value, this conversation goes straight to the signal.Tiffany Johnson, CPO at NMI, Mark Van Horn, Digital Solution Lead, North America at G+D and Ryan Francis, Vice President, Digital Product at Mastercard start the episode by clarifying what network tokens are and how they differ from traditional vault tokens, then dig into the metrics that matter: consistent 3–6 percentage point authorization uplift, real-world portfolio wins that stretch even higher, and measurable savings from reduced retries and smarter routing. You'll hear how merchant-bound and device-bound tokens give issuers reliable context, why lifecycle management keeps subscriptions uninterrupted, and how those improvements cascade into lower operational costs and stronger retention.From there, we look ahead. Tokens are becoming the default for card-not-present payments and will extend into open banking and account-to-account flows. With AI on the rise and agentic commerce coming into view, tokens provide portable trust - binding identity, device, and permissions so agents can transact safely on our behalf. The guests share how G+D and NMI make token adoption turnkey for ISVs and platforms, and how Mastercard is scaling token rails to power seamless, intelligent commerce.If you're an ISV, platform, or merchant seeking higher approval rates and lower fraud without adding friction, this is your blueprint. 

The recent journey of Vaisesika Dāsa and Nirākulā Dāsī through India was filled with inspiring moments they eagerly shared, including their stops in Jaipur, Puṇe, and Karauli. Among their favorite destinations were the renowned Imlitalā in Vṛndāvan and the tranquil Govardhan Āśram. They particularly stressed how important it is for devotees to read the Caitanya Caritāmṛta together, which provides remarkable depth of realization. The conversation wrapped up beautifully, offering insights into the spiritual meaning of their travels and how they navigate their lives between Vṛndāvan and the West. What was a favorite place you visited? (0:41) What was your biggest takeaway from the Chaitanya chartamartha readings? [03:01] What was something unexpected that happened on the trip? [04:42] Was there anyone you got to reconnect with after a long time? [06:56] What was one of your favorite meals you had? [08:57] When you think of Vrindavan and you close your eyes, where does it take you? [10:34] How do you deal with fatigue on a day-to-day basis during an Yatra? [12:52] What was your favorite time you had with the cows? [15:29] When you are in Vrindavan, do you miss ISV more? Or when you're in ISV, do you miss Vrindavan more? [17:18] How do you retain the freshness of going to the same dhams again and again, and how do you not take it for granted each time you go? [19:09] Did you see any monkeys? [21:54] Would you rather live in Vrindavan or live in America? [23:21] ------------------------------------------------------------ To connect with His Grace Vaiśeṣika Dāsa, please visit https://www.fanthespark.com/next-steps/ask-vaisesika-dasa/ ------------------------------------------------------------ Add to your wisdom literature collection: https://iskconsv.com/book-store/ https://www.bbtacademic.com/books/ https://thefourquestionsbook.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------ Join us live on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FanTheSpark/ Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sound-bhakti/id1132423868 For the latest videos, subscribe https://www.youtube.com/@FanTheSpark For the latest in SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/fan-the-spark ------------------------------------------------------------ #spiritualawakening #soul #spiritualexperience #spiritualpurposeoflife #spiritualgrowthlessons #secretsofspirituality #vaisesikaprabhu #vaisesikadasa #vaisesikaprabhulectures #spirituality #bhaktiyoga #krishna #spiritualpurposeoflife #krishnaspirituality #spiritualusachannel #whybhaktiisimportant #whyspiritualityisimportant #vaisesika #spiritualconnection #thepowerofspiritualstudy #selfrealization #spirituallectures #spiritualstudy #spiritualquestions #spiritualquestionsanswered #trendingspiritualtopics #fanthespark #spiritualpowerofmeditation #spiritualteachersonyoutube #spiritualhabits #spiritualclarity #bhagavadgita #srimadbhagavatam #spiritualbeings #kttvg #keepthetranscendentalvibrationgoing #spiritualpurpose

In this episode of the AI Agent & Copilot Podcast, John Siefert hosts Jeff Miller, Vice President, Americas, LS Retail, for a discussion on LS Retail's position in its industry, how it supports organizations across the globe, integrating AI, and upcoming projects.Key TakeawaysAbout the company: LS Retail has been a leader in its industry from an ISV perspective. The company has been in the ecosystem for about 30 years, focusing on software development in the retail market. There are over 110,000 retail locations using LS Retail in their stores. "We come to a market with what we call 'composable solution,' so I can build building blocks, depending on a retailer's need, that can do everything from run the entire enterprise of a retail business, simply down to a point-of-sale solution that integrates into the rest of the retailer solution stack," Miller explains.Global use: One of LS Retail's specialties is creating the localization and fiscalizations that organizations need to operate across different countries. Every country manages aspects of business, like taxes, a little bit differently. Between LS Retail and its partners, they have done the work to make sure it operates in a way that companies conducting business in various countries can use the software in their stores around the world. Deploying in the Microsoft Cloud with Azure enables them to implement the software seamlessly.Partner network: Operating at a global scale also speaks to the power of LS Retail's business partner network. It has over 300 business partners globally who go through certification testing so they have a technical understanding of how to implement the software and support clients in their local communities.AI integration: "We really take in the whole idea of customer zero and being a frontier firm to heart," Miller says. Within LS Retail, there has been an emphasis on using Copilot and Copilot Studio not only from a development standpoint but also for automating the testing of code. Externally, LS Retail is part of Microsoft's program, "The Microsoft Red Carpet Club." They have been meeting to discuss ideas around agents and providing feedback to Microsoft about the future of products and code, as well as how it integrates with Dynamics products.Pharmacy agent: LS Retail recently announced a project at an event. One of the agents it has developed supports pharmacies in Europe. The company is working on co-innovation projects with pharmacy clients to develop an agent that manages tasks for them, like handling prescriptions and refills. LS Retail is looking at opportunities to expand this particular agent in Latin America as well. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

** AWS re:Invent 2025 Dec 1-5, Las Vegas - Register Here! **SnapLogic CTO Jeremiah Stone reveals how they evolved from open-source to AI-powered integration platform, doubled AI adoption with one UX change, and delivers measurable enterprise ROI.Topics Include:SnapLogic CTO shares their decade-long journey building AI-powered integration with AWS partnership.SnapLogic drives "human cost of integration to zero" for thousands of global companies.Started as open-source project, pivoted to cloud in 2015 with AWS infrastructure.Began AI workloads in 2018, predicting next steps in integration workflows using models.Became AWS Bedrock launch partner, completely reinventing their product for generative AI era.SnapLogic lives through transformations first, then credibly helps ISV customers do same.Helped Adobe migrate entire CRM from Salesforce to Microsoft over single weekend.Built normalized data architecture using S3, Iceberg, Glue for analytics-ready enterprise data.SnapGPT copilot converts plain language prompts into complete integration pipelines in minutes.Live demo shows generating Salesforce-to-Redshift pipeline with filters using natural language commands.Small UX tweak adding helpful header doubled monthly active users of SnapGPT.Changed legal agreements in 2017 to capture metadata, enabling AI features years later.Agent Creator delivers ROI across customers: Inspirant, Core Plus, AstraZeneca use cases.SnapLogic's own finance team cut order reconciliation from 40 hours monthly to 90 minutes.Key lessons: governance first, understand business impact, use AWS native patterns consistently.Participants:Jeremiah Stone – Chief Technical Officer, SnapLogicOlawale Oladehin – Managing Director, NAMER Technology Segments, Amazon Web ServicesSee how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon.com/isv/

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ISV leaders from Automation Anywhere, DataVisor, and Sumo Logic share battle-tested strategies for deploying AI agents at scale, including pricing models, proof of concepts and ROI.Topics Include:Panel brings together ISV leaders from automation, fraud detection, and security operations.Companies rethinking entire business processes rather than automating incremental portions with agents.Start with immutable data before tackling real-time changing data in production.Intent for change must come from board, CEO, and customers simultaneously.Challenge: proving agent value beyond CSAT when internal teams block deployment.Sumo Logic measures Mean Time to Resolution, aiming to cut hours to zero.DataVisor cuts fraud alert resolution from one hour down to twenty minutes.Customers demand reliability as workflows shift from deterministic to probabilistic agent decisions.Automation Anywhere spent three years making every platform component fully agent-ready.Focus on business outcomes, not chasing every new model release each week.Human oversight still critical—agents are task-oriented and prone to hallucinations and drift.Humans validate agent findings, then let agents scale actions across hundreds instances.Pricing experiments range from platform-plus-consumption to outcome-based to decision-event models.Token pricing doesn't work due to varied data modalities and complexity.Next two quarters: more POCs moving to production with productive agents deployed.Future prediction: enterprise apps becoming systems of knowledge powered by MCP protocol.Participants:Jay Bala - Senior Vice President of Product, Automation AnywhereKedar Toraskar – VP Product Partnerships, DataVisorBill Peterson - Senior Director, Product Marketing, Sumo LogicJillian D'Arcy - ISV Senior Leader, Amazon Web ServicesSee how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon.com/isv/

On this episode of How We Got There, I am joined by Alex MacKay, Executive Chairman & Co-Founder of Tequity Advisors. He shares his start in CRM when running Siebel Canada and found his way into sell-side advisory for M&A at Tequity, with deep experience in the Salesforce ecosystem with 28 companies and counting.*If you are at Dreamforce next week, make sure to reach out to Alex or Mahnoor Naeem if you will be there too*They take a long-term view of the relationship, oftentimes getting to know a company over a period of 2-3 years to help them get ready to sell. They help demystify the journey, even serving as an informal board member in many cases.We talk a bit about lessons learned and Alex shares his advice at various stages of an ISV's journey from first customers, to a couple million in ARR, to scale.  He talks about the importance for entrepreneurs to roll out a management operating system, like EOS, to help set the business up for growth. Alex shares his advice for early-stage ISVs around speaking with customers in their language, not about your product!This episode is brought to you by Tequity Advisors . Tequity Advisors is a global sell-side M&A advisory firm with core expertise in SaaS and ISVs, Salesforce, ServiceNow, SAP, Microsoft, all things Data and AI, and the hyper scaler MSP cloud ecosystems with a focus on the Salesforce ecosystem and beyond! 

In the final episode of Powering Payments Together: How Payroc Helps ISVs Scale Smarter, we turn the spotlight on CenterEdge Software and their journey to building a payments program that drives real business value. Leslie Legel, Director of Payments at CenterEdge, joins the conversation to share how Payroc has become a trusted partner in helping them overcome challenges, strengthen their platform, and deliver a seamless experience for their clients.Leslie explains why payments are mission-critical for family entertainment centers, where more than 90 percent of transactions are digital and downtime isn't an option. From July 4th waterparks to cashless operations, reliability isn't just a nice-to-have—it's the foundation of customer satisfaction. She reflects on a tough lesson learned when a gateway integration didn't meet expectations, and how those setbacks ultimately led CenterEdge to develop a more reliable and scalable payments strategy.The episode also explores how CenterEdge built and branded “CenterEdge Payments,” giving them control over the customer journey and creating a more transparent, feature-rich solution for their clients. Leslie shares how Payroc stood out as a partner, not just for their technology and APIs, but for their willingness to understand CenterEdge's business, answer tough questions, and provide the tools and flexibility needed to scale.Finally, Leslie offers advice to ISVs navigating the high-stakes world of payments: do your homework, know your limitations, and find a partner who is as invested in your success as you are. Looking ahead, she discusses how CenterEdge and Payroc will continue to grow together, exploring new solutions and opportunities to strengthen their offering in the family entertainment space.

In this episode, Avanish and Umesh discuss:Uniphore's founding story in 2008 and evolution from conversational AI applications to an end-to-end Business AI Cloud platform serving 2,000+ customers including Fortune 500 enterprisesThe pivotal moment when two of Uniphore's largest customers (10% of revenue) warned their contracts might expire unless Uniphore opened up their platform for customer-built AI agentsHow platform necessity emerged from scale—running out of data scientists to manually fine-tune models for each customer led to building automated platform toolingThe "open-heart surgery" transformation: shifting from selling business outcomes to line-of-business buyers to serving CIOs and developers, requiring wholesale DNA changes across engineering, product, sales, and marketingWhy platform and ecosystem strategies are inseparable: "A platform is really not a platform until other people are building things on it"The M&A strategy for platform companies: narrower aperture requiring 100% architectural alignment, but instant unlocks when acquisitions fit the single-codebase platform architectureThree frameworks for platform success: maintain paranoia about whether you're a feature/product/company, surround yourself with "system thinkers," and stay intensely close to customersThe "five-by-five" metric for measuring platform adoption: five large enterprises and five GSIs using the platform as their weekly "factory" for fine-tuning models and building agents, requiring simplified user experience for non-technical business users Host: Avanish SahaiAvanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and served as a Board Member of Hubspot from 2018 to 2023; he currently serves on the boards of Birdie.ai, Flywl.com and Meta.com.br as well as a few non-profits and educational boards. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow.  From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase.  Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early to mid-stage startups in Silicon Valley. About UmeshUmesh Sachdev is the CEO and Co-founder of Uniphore, one of the largest AI-native, multimodal enterprise-class SaaS companies in the world.  Sparked by his vision and focus to use AI technology to bridge the gap between humans and machines, today Umesh is recognized as an enterprise AI pioneer, bringing knowledge AI, generative AI and emotion AI into a single platform, allowing customers to harness AI's powerful capabilities across voice, video and text-based applications.  Known for his grit as a leader, his passion for customers and his deep understanding of technology, he is called upon to guide some of the world's largest brands through their digital transformation. Umesh's strong portfolio of patents serves as a testament to his innovative thinking and commitment to advancing AI technology.As an international business leader, Umesh has been recognized with many awards including ‘40 under 40' Bright Young Business Leaders in the Economic Times, ‘Next Generation Leader' by Time Magazine, and previously, as an ‘Innovator Under 35' by MIT Tech Review.  Umesh is an alumnus of Jaypee Institute of Information Technology and an accomplished speaker and highly sought-after presenter. About TidemarkTidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale.  Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years.  Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.Follow our host, Avanish SahaiLearn more about Tidemark

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We'll chant some of the Brahma-saṁhitā. Because in 1975, during an initiation ceremony in Chicago, Illinois, which we had the pleasure of being present for, Rohiṇī Kumar Prabhu, one of the founders of ISV, had organized a group of us to chant the Brahma-saṁhitā and the Puruṣa-sūkta in 1998. And Prabhupāda was present at an initiation, and afterward, he made it a point to tell the leaders there that he liked the chanting of Brahma-saṁhitā and Puruṣa-sūkta very much. So we continue that tradition by chanting Brahma-saṁhitā together. (Initiation Ceremony, 21 Sep 2025, ISV) To connect with His Grace Vaiśeṣika Dāsa, please visit https://www.fanthespark.com/next-steps/ask-vaisesika-dasa/ ------------------------------------------------------------ Add to your wisdom literature collection: https://iskconsv.com/book-store/ https://www.bbtacademic.com/books/ https://thefourquestionsbook.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------ Join us live on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FanTheSpark/ Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sound-bhakti/id1132423868 For the latest videos, subscribe https://www.youtube.com/@FanTheSpark For the latest in SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/fan-the-spark ------------------------------------------------------------ #spiritualawakening #soul #spiritualexperience #spiritualpurposeoflife #spiritualgrowthlessons #secretsofspirituality #vaisesikaprabhu #vaisesikadasa #vaisesikaprabhulectures #spirituality #bhaktiyoga #krishna #spiritualpurposeoflife #krishnaspirituality #spiritualusachannel #whybhaktiisimportant #whyspiritualityisimportant #vaisesika #spiritualconnection #thepowerofspiritualstudy #selfrealization #spirituallectures #spiritualstudy #spiritualquestions #spiritualquestionsanswered #trendingspiritualtopics #fanthespark #spiritualpowerofmeditation #spiritualteachersonyoutube #spiritualhabits #spiritualclarity #bhagavadgita #srimadbhagavatam #spiritualbeings #kttvg #keepthetranscendentalvibrationgoing #spiritualpurpose

In this revealing conversation with Conn Byrne, Executive Director of Integrated Payments at Payroc, we uncover the secret sauce behind their remarkably successful ISV program.Having fallen into payments during a six-week temporary position that turned into a 14-year career, Byrne brings a wealth of experience from his journey with WorldNet (acquired by Payroc in 2022) to his current role leading integrated partnerships. His perspective reveals why payment integrations fail when they focus solely on revenue shares rather than comprehensive support."My team is pretty wide at this stage," Byrne explains, describing how Payroc surrounds partners with experienced business development resources, highly skilled sales engineers, integration engineers, and their newest differentiator - a dedicated go-to-market team. This collaborative, high-touch approach means partners never wonder where to turn when challenges arise or opportunities emerge.The conversation explores how Payroc has built a truly omnichannel solution supporting over 50 payment terminals alongside comprehensive card-not-present options. Byrne illustrates this advantage through compelling examples like car wash operations, where a single integration handles everything from license plate recognition with tokenized payments to unattended terminals, mobile POS, and subscription billing.Looking forward, Payroc continues expanding its capabilities through their cloud integration method (allowing implementation in under a week), enhanced API suite, and expanded hardware support - particularly for Android devices and unattended solutions. The company's flexible partnership models create multiple entry points for ISVs at different growth stages.The most telling insight? When Payroc recently gathered their largest partners for an advisory council, the recurring themes weren't about technology or pricing - they were about trust, flexibility, and the journey they'd shared together. Some partners who began with small referrals 7-10 years ago have grown alongside Payroc into sophisticated payment operations.

Integrated payments are reshaping the industry, but success looks very different depending on whether you're an ISV or an ISO. This week, James Shepherd sits down with Ashley Willson, a consultant who works with both software companies and ISOs, to share her unique perspective on the challenges and opportunities in integrated payments. With experience on both sides of the equation, Ashley offers practical insights into where the market is headed and how to navigate it. Then, Patti Murphy joins James for Today in Payments to cover the latest industry trends, including new statistics on surcharging programs and what they mean for the future.

In the first episode of our three-part series with Payroc, Powering Payments Together: How Payroc Helps ISVs Scale Smarter, I sit down with Payroc President Adam Oberman to explore the shifting landscape of integrated payments. Once seen as a simple feature, payments have now become the financial backbone of successful software companies.Adam explains why the relationship between ISVs and their payment partners has never been more strategic. The most successful software providers now generate 20–40% of their revenue through payments, making it a critical driver of both growth and valuation. As he puts it, “ISVs don't outgrow payments - they outgrow their payment partners.”We discuss how market expectations have evolved dramatically. ISVs are demanding global payment capabilities from day one - multi-currency processing, cross-border compliance, and frictionless user experiences are now table stakes. At the same time, the integration process itself has shifted toward low-code solutions that enable faster deployment without sacrificing functionality.What stands out most in Adam's perspective is the human element of payments. Clean APIs may get an integration live, but it's strategic guidance, problem-solving, and white-glove support that build long-term partnerships. “People do business with people,” Adam emphasizes, highlighting why technical capability must always be paired with trust and service.Looking ahead to 2026, Adam predicts payments will no longer be viewed as a utility but as a core competitive advantage. Companies that fail to prioritize their payment strategy risk falling behind more agile competitors not just in features, but in valuation and market position.Whether you're an established ISV or just beginning to explore embedded payments, this episode offers essential insights into selecting a partner who can scale with you, adapt to change, and deliver value far beyond transaction processing.

Three leading ISV executives from Coveo, DTEX Systems and Honeycomb, reveal how companies with proprietary datasets are gaining unbeatable competitive advantages in the AI era and share real-world strategies how you have similar outcomes.Topics Include:Panel introduces three ISV leaders discussing data platform transformation for AIDTEX focuses on insider threats, Coveo on enterprise search, Honeycomb on observabilityCompanies with proprietary datasets gain strongest competitive advantage in AI transformationData gravity concept: LLMs learning from unique datasets create defensible business positionsCoveo maintains unified enterprise index with real-time content and access rights syncHoneycomb enables subsecond queries for analyzing logs, traces, and metrics at scaleMulti-tenant architectures balance shared infrastructure benefits with single-tenant data separationCoveo deployed 140,000 times last year using mostly multi-tenant, some single-tenant componentsDTEX scaled from thousands to hundreds of thousands endpoints after architectural transformationCapital One partnership taught DTEX how to break monolithic architecture into servicesApache Iceberg and open table formats enable interoperability without data duplicationHoneycomb built custom format following similar patterns with hot/cold storage tiersBusiness data catalogs become critical for AI agents understanding dataset contextMCP servers allow AI systems to leverage structured cybersecurity datasets effectivelyDTEX used Cursor with their data to identify North Korean threat actorsReal-time AI data needs balanced with costs using right models for jobsCaching strategies and precise context reduce expensive LLM inference calls unnecessarilySearch remains essential for enterprise AI to prevent hallucination and access informationROI measurement focuses on cost reduction, analyst efficiency, and measurable business outcomesKey takeaway: invest in data structure early, context is king, AI is just softwareParticipants:Sebastien Paquet - Vice President of AI Strategy, CoveoRajan Koo - CTO, DTEX SystemsPatrick King - Head of Data, Honeycomb.ioKP Bhat - Sr Solutions Architecture Leader- Analytics & AI, Amazon Web ServicesFurther Links:Coveo: Website – LinkedIn – AWS MarketplaceDTEX Systems: Website – LinkedIn – AWS MarketplaceHoneycomb.io: Website – LinkedIn – AWS MarketplaceSee how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon.com/isv/

You might think, "Where do we go from here, where we are now, to there, somewhere near there?" Of course, we hold these subject matters high above our heads. We aspire, after first trying to deserve. This is the instruction Srila Prabhupada gave in Los Angeles. I remember 1976: "First deserve, then desire, never aspire." What does that mean? "First deserve," engage in Krishna's service, capture the attention of Krishna, capture the attention of Srimati Radharani, and then you can desire. Yes, "Let me serve them for their pleasure." But "never aspire." What does he mean, "never aspire?" "First deserve, then desire, never aspire." He explained, from your low position—he was quite graphic—"From your monkey position, don't jump to the top of the tree." First deserve, and then develop some genuine spiritual desire. But never, from your position on the ground, aspire that you want to jump to the top of the tree. So I wanted to share with you some realizations I've had about the mysticism, the Gauranga mysticism behind ISV. Are you ready? ------------------------------------------------------------ To connect with His Grace Vaiśeṣika Dāsa, please visit https://www.fanthespark.com/next-steps/ask-vaisesika-dasa/ ------------------------------------------------------------ Add to your wisdom literature collection: https://iskconsv.com/book-store/ https://www.bbtacademic.com/books/ https://thefourquestionsbook.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------ Join us live on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FanTheSpark/ Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sound-bhakti/id1132423868 For the latest videos, subscribe https://www.youtube.com/@FanTheSpark For the latest in SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/fan-the-spark ------------------------------------------------------------ #spiritualawakening #soul #spiritualexperience #spiritualpurposeoflife #spiritualgrowthlessons #secretsofspirituality #vaisesikaprabhu #vaisesikadasa #vaisesikaprabhulectures #spirituality #bhaktiyoga #krishna #spiritualpurposeoflife #krishnaspirituality #spiritualusachannel #whybhaktiisimportant #whyspiritualityisimportant #vaisesika #spiritualconnection #thepowerofspiritualstudy #selfrealization #spirituallectures #spiritualstudy #spiritualquestions #spiritualquestionsanswered #trendingspiritualtopics #fanthespark #spiritualpowerofmeditation #spiritualteachersonyoutube #spiritualhabits #spiritualclarity #bhagavadgita #srimadbhagavatam #spiritualbeings #kttvg #keepthetranscendentalvibrationgoing #spiritualpurpose

This verse in the Śrī Brahma-saṁhitā (BS 5:37) describes Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī. It says Kṛṣṇa is there, but eternally expanded to serve him is Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī, and within the purport—have you ever read the purport to that verse? We've read it together in the old days. It's the longest purport you'll find in the Brahma-saṁhitā or perhaps anywhere else, and it's a description really of the 64 arts that Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī is perfect in. And she offers that to Kṛṣṇa. It's this perfection of service that is ārādhanam, this feeling of "Let me perfect my service." So this is the motto of ISV. Our motto, our battle cry, is "Always better service," and this is the mood of Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī, and all the devotees are always trying to follow in her footsteps to perform better and better service to Kṛṣṇa, because her service is the best. Her service is perfect, so we try to perfect our service. In Vṛndāvana once, Prabhupāda came out of his room and the devotees offered him a garland. It was scraggly. Is that a word? Scraggly? It is? Yay! It was scraggly; it was withered. And in the first place, it wasn't a very nice garland, but after the heat hit it, then it turned into something that made Prabhupāda's lips curl a little bit. And then he called all the garland makers to his room, and he gave them a seminar on how to make garlands. So when I walked in this morning and I saw these—the garlands that the devotees are making here—this is ārādhanam. This is the mood of Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī. In the fine arts in the spiritual world, as an example, garland making is one of the arts. Can it be refined? Well, I remember a day here at ISV when it was by Jamunā's grace that we had any flowers at all. We were so poor. How poor were we? I remember we were so poor when we decided to start our saṅkīrtan party and we needed a table. We looked around at each other, "Where are we going to get it? We need a table to set up. We'll have to get somebody to loan us the money." The flowers that we were getting, because Jamunā from the very beginning was the only one supplying us flowers, and they were carnations, but the room was so hot there at our old temple. How hot was it? It was so hot that those little garlands that we offered, the best of what we could put together, they would dry up within an hour and they became these very scraggly little garlands. But over time, we see that the devotees have learned the art of making garlands, and Kṛṣṇa has given more and more facility to get flowers, which is the real opulence in Deity worship—flowers. And now, if you see these vases up here next to Prabhupāda or over here, this looks like somebody is following in the footsteps of Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī. What to speak of Prabhupāda's garland! Hare Kṛṣṇa! And you can imagine, while they are making those garlands—they take hours, it takes hours to make those—and then the offering goes. And Śrīla Prabhupāda wears it for a few hours. The Deities wear them for a few hours. But do the devotees who made them feel satisfied? Yeah, completely satisfied... Verse for discussion: https://vedabase.io/en/library/sb/10/9/21 https://vedabase.io/en/library/bs/5/37 ------------------------------------------------------------ To connect with His Grace Vaiśeṣika Dāsa, please visit https://www.fanthespark.com/next-steps/ask-vaisesika-dasa/ ------------------------------------------------------------ Add to your wisdom literature collection: https://iskconsv.com/book-store/ https://www.bbtacademic.com/books/ https://thefourquestionsbook.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------ #prabhupadapicks #spiritualawakening #soul #spiritualexperience #spiritualpurposeoflife #spiritualgrowthlessons #secretsofspirituality #vaisesikaprabhu #vaisesikadasa #vaisesikaprabhulectures #spirituality #bhaktiyoga #krishna #spiritualpurposeoflife #krishnaspirituality #spiritualusachannel #whybhaktiisimportant #whyspiritualityisimportant #vaisesika #spiritualconnection #thepowerofspiritualstudy

This episode is sponsored by SignUp Software.   The experience of deploying and managing a Dynamics 365 F&SCM solution can look quite different for the customer compared to their Microsoft partner. But as these two counterparts on an ERP project make decisions to move a project forward, they must contend with a series of key decisions related to ISV solutions including vendor selection, architecture decisions, and user adoption plans.   To understand more about ISV selection challenges specific to AP automation for D365 F&SCM, our guests, Rachel Ackerman of Microsoft partner Caf2Code and Josh Torres of SignUp Software join us to talk both real world experiences and recommendations for organizations considering their next move.   Ackerman brings a particularly unique perspective, having spent several years working for D365 F&SCM and AX customer organizations to deploy and administer their ERP solutions, including their AP automation add-on solutions. Now working for a Microsoft partner, she is helping a range of D365 customers across industries with both their D365 deployments and their ISV selection.   Rachel and Josh discuss what real AP automation selection and deployment looks like including considerations like whether to go with an embedded solution, the importance of reliable and accurate data capture for invoices, and the outcomes customers should expect from their AP automation investments.   More from Signup Software: If you'd like to learn more about AP automation in Dynamics 365, visit signupsoftware.com or connect with them on LinkedIn. You can also reach out to their partner Caf2code at caf2code.com for implementation insights and support.

Zac Schneiderman shares a deeply personal journey from political science student to VP of ISV at Payarc, where he's become a driving force behind the company's innovative approach to payment integration for software platforms.What does it take to build successful partnerships in the fast-evolving payments ecosystem? For Schneiderman, it begins with understanding what software companies truly need: feature-rich payment solutions that deliver reliability, flexible pricing models, and exceptional support. "Speed to revenue is the name of the game," he explains, detailing how Payarc's approach combines cutting-edge technology with human expertise to activate partners quickly.The conversation reveals fascinating insights into the integration process – often the make-or-break moment for ISV partnerships. Schneiderman estimates a third of signed contracts fall apart during integration, which is why Payarc invests heavily in dedicated sales engineers, weekly check-ins, and robust sandbox environments. Their proprietary AI tool, PIE AI, represents the next frontier, helping debug code and streamline developer experiences.Looking toward the future, Schneiderman predicts a significant "decoupling of SaaS and payments" as technology evolves at breakneck speed. Software companies will increasingly rely on specialized payment partners rather than building in-house payment departments. Meanwhile, AI applications continue expanding beyond integration support to include lead generation, external developer tools, and merchant conversion campaigns.

I am joined by ⁠Sean Lewis⁠, Director of Partnerships at Vicasso and the Serviceblazer User Group Leader for AMER.   We talk about his journey from customer support to sales to partnerships and everything in between. When he was selling, a Salesforce AE sent them a referral to a F100 company that really opened his eyes to the value of the partnership. Now Vicasso has two FTEs focused on partnerships to drive further top of the funnel growth. The partner team at Vicasso focuses on Salesforce AEs, SEs and leaders but has started to explore SI partnerships as well since Vicasso no longer provides SI work as part of their business as a pure ISV. Sean shares an incredibly valuable learning around focus when it comes to coselling with Salesforce.  One time they found that one Service Cloud RVP has 5x the number of existing accounts and were only in 5% of their total accounts. Hyperfocus means Sean and his team knows where they will provide value to them.If your app helps add value to Service Cloud users, the Serviceblazer community events might be worth your time to check out. Here is a link to ⁠join the serviceblazer slack community⁠.We talk a bit about Chris Voss' book called ⁠Never Split the Difference⁠, which is a sales classic everyone can get value out of. And Sean calls out ⁠Matt Kravitz⁠ as a great person to follow to learn about service cloud.And thanks again to ⁠Jon Schultz⁠ for the recommendation to have Sean on!This episode is brought to you by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Invisory⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Invisory is designed to meet you where you are: in your cloud marketplace journey through a strong go-to-market strategy that helps drive prospect and co-sell opportunities with Salesforce, AWS, Microsoft, and Google.  v2

AWS executives reveal how generative AI is fundamentally reshaping ISV business models, from pricing strategies to go-to-market approaches, and provide actionable insights for software companies navigating this transformation.Topics Include:Alayna Broaderson and Andy Perkins introduce AWS Infrastructure Partnerships and ISV SalesGenerative AI profoundly changing how ISVs build, deliver and market software productsTwo ISV categories emerging: established SaaS companies versus pure gen AI startupsLegacy SaaS firms struggle with infrastructure modernization and potential revenue cannibalizationPure gen AI companies face scaling challenges, reliability issues and cost optimizationRevenue models shifting from subscription-based to consumption-based pricing per token/prompt/taskFuture-proofing architecture critical as technology evolves rapidly like F-35 fighter jetsData becoming key differentiator, especially domain-specific datasets in healthcare and legalBalancing cost, accuracy, latency and customer experience creates complex optimization challengesMultiple specialized models replacing single solutions, with agentic AI accelerating this trendHuman capital challenges include retraining engineering teams and finding expensive AI talentSecurity, compliance and explainability now mandatory - no more black box solutionsEnterprise customers struggle with data organization and quantifying clear gen AI ROIISV pricing models evolving with tiered structures and targeted vertical use casesTraditional SaaS playbooks failing in generative AI landscape due to ROI uncertaintyPOC-based go-to-market with free trials and case study selling proving most effectivePricing strategies include AI gates, credit systems and separate SKUs for servicesCustomer trust requires proactive security messaging and auditable, transparent AI solutionsModular architecture enables evolution as new technologies emerge in fast-changing marketAWS positioning as ultimate gen AI toolkit partner with ISV collaboration opportunitiesParticipants:Alayna Broaderson - Sr Manager, Infrastructure Technology Partnership, Amazon Web ServicesAndy Perkins - General Manager, US ISV, Amazon Web ServicesSee how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon.com/isv/

Hear how PagerDuty and Zoom built successful AI products using Amazon Q-Index to solve real customer problems like incident response and meeting intelligence, while sharing practical lessons from their early adoption journey.Topics Include:David Gordon introduces AWS Q-Business partnerships with PagerDuty and ZoomMeet Everaldo Aguiar: PagerDuty's Applied AI leader with academia and enterprise backgroundPaul Magnaghi from Zoom brings AI platform scaling experience from SeattleQ-Business launched over a year ago as managed generative AI servicePlatform enables agentic experiences: content discovery, analysis, and process automationBuilt on AWS Bedrock with enterprise guardrails and data source integrationPartners wanted backend capabilities but preferred their own UI and modelsQ-Index provides vector database functionality for ISV partner integrationsEveraldo explains PagerDuty's evolution from traditional ML to generative AI solutionsHistorical challenges: alert fatigue, noise reduction using machine learning approachesNew gen AI opportunities: incident context, relevant data surfacing, automated postmortemsEngineering teams faced learning curve with agents and high-latency user experiencesPaul discusses Zoom's existing AI: virtual backgrounds and voice isolation technologyAI Companion strategy focused on simplicity during complex generative AI adoptionProblem identified: valuable meeting conversations disappear after Zoom calls endCustomer feedback revealed need for enterprise data integration beyond basic summariesGoal: combine unstructured conversations with structured enterprise data seamlesslyPagerDuty Advanced provides agentic AI for on-call engineers during incidentsQ-Index integration accesses internal documentation: Confluence pages, runbooks, proceduresDemo shows Slack integration pulling relevant incident response documentation automaticallyAccess control lists ensure users see only data they're authorized to accessZoom's AI companion panel enables real-time meeting questions and summariesExample use cases: decision tracking, incident analysis, action item identificationAdvice for starting: standardize practices and create internal development templatesSingle data access point reduces legal and security evaluation overheadCenter of excellence approach helps teams move quickly across product divisionsCut through generative AI buzzwords to focus on real user valueFederated AWS Bedrock architecture provides model choice and flexibility meeting customersCustomer trust alignment between Zoom conversations and AWS data handlingGetting started: PagerDuty Advance available now, Zoom AI free with paid add-onsParticipants:Everaldo Aguiar – Senior Engineering Manager, Applied AI, PagerDutyPaul Magnaghi – Head of AI & ISV Go To Market, ZoomDavid Gordon - Global Business Development, Amazon Q for Business. Amazon Web ServicesFurther Links:PagerDuty Website, LinkedIn & AWS MarketplaceZoom Website, LinkedIn & AWS MarketplaceSee how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon.com/isv/

Employee Navigator, a leading benefits administration & HR software provider, announced it has completed a $100 million funding round from existing investors JMI Equity and Spectrum Equity.  https://hrtechfeed.com/employee-navigator-completes-100-million-funding-round/ Bullhorn, the leader in software for the staffing industry, today announced the acquisition of TargetRecruit, a Houston-based provider of front- and middle-office solutions built on the Salesforce platform. The acquisition deepens Bullhorn's strategic investment in supporting firms that run their business on Salesforce and bolsters its position as the leading recruitment ISV in the Salesforce ecosystem. https://hrtechfeed.com/bullhorn-acquires-targetrecruit-and-expands-salesforce-ecosystem-to-150000-users/ LAS VEGAS – Today, VLTED announced the launch of a unique employee engagement platform for startups, enterprises and team leaders to enable everyday team-building that fuels belonging, productivity and retention through topics that matter the most to employees. https://hrtechfeed.com/new-employee-engagement-platform-launces/ For the first quarter of fiscal year 2025, the HR Technology segment of Recruit Holdings reported the following financial results: Revenue: Revenue for HR Technology was ¥341.7 billion ($2.3 billion USD), a decrease of 3.8% compared to the same period in the previous year. https://hrtechfeed.com/433995-2/ NEW YORK — Greenhouse, the leading hiring platform, announced the appointment of its new Chief Technology Officer, Sagar Patel, who has extensive engineering leadership experience spanning companies including Ampla, PayPal, and BlackRock. https://hrtechfeed.com/greenhouse-software-names-new-cto/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This season features conversations with key decision-makers who have shaped the evolution of today's leading technology platforms and ecosystems. We talk to C-suite executives, board members, investors, and others who must be bought into the platform journey.In this episode, Avanish and Greg discuss:Greg's journey at the intersection of technology and professional services, including his role building EY's global partnerships practice into a substantial business driverWhy most companies remain confused about partnerships, platforms, and ecosystems, and how successful companies are "built from the ground up" to orchestrate ecosystemsMicrosoft's transformation under Satya Nadella as the gold standard for ecosystem strategy - shifting from competing against everyone to becoming a platform that orchestrates the capital of hundreds of thousands of companiesWhy the future belongs to companies that shift from linear value chains to orchestrated ecosystems where they either orbit around or become the center of mass for other participantsThe urgency for C-suites to think beyond operational AI improvements and envision what their industry will look like in five yearsHost: Avanish SahaiAvanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and served as a Board Member of Hubspot from 2018 to 2023; he currently serves on the boards of Birdie.ai, Flywl.com and Meta.com.br as well as a few non-profits end educational boards. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow.  From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase.  Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.About GregGreg is the Founder of Sarafin Advisory which he launched in 2024 to provide companies with actionable advice and insights to help them grow Enterprise Value in an era of immense change and opportunity. Previously, Greg spent over 9 years at EY where he was most recently the Global Vice Chair - Alliances and Ecosystems. Prior to joining EY in 2015, he spent seven years as an executive at IMB, running one of the top five accounts at the firm and then managing the professional services P&L for Banking and Financial Markets in North America. He also held significant leadership positions in financial service technology and digital disruption across industries. In addition, he helped found a health payments dot-com and, prior to that, ran his own software development company.About TidemarkTidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale.  Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years.  Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.LinksFollow our guest, Greg SarafinFollow our host, Avanish Sahai

AWS's Mark Relph draws fascinating parallels between today's AI revolution and the 1900s agricultural mechanization that delivered 2,000% productivity gains, while exploring how agentic AI will fundamentally reshape every aspect of software business models.Topics Include:Mark Relph directs AWS's data and AI partner go-to-market strategy teamHis role focuses on making ISV partners a force multiplier for customer successPreviously ran go-to-market for Amazon Bedrock, AWS's fastest growing service everCurrent AI adoption pace exceeds even the early cloud computing boom yearsHistorical parallel: 1900s agricultural mechanization delivered 2,000% productivity gains and 95% resource reductionFirst commercial self-propelled farming equipment revolutionized entire economies and never looked back500 machines formed the "Harvest Brigade" during WWII, harvesting from Texas to CanadaMark has spoken to 600+ AWS customers about GenAI over two yearsOrganizations range from AI pioneers to those still "fending off pirates" internallyGenAI has become a phenomenal assistant within organizations for content and automationAWS's AI stack has three layers: infrastructure, Bedrock, and applicationsBottom layer provides complete control over training, inference, and custom applicationsMiddle layer Bedrock serves as the "operating system" for generative AI applicationsTop layer offers ready-to-use AI through Q assistants and productivity toolsAI systems are rapidly becoming more complex with multiple model chainsMany current "agents" are just really, really long prompts (Mark's hot take)Task-specific models are emerging as one size won't fit all use casesEvolution moves from human-driven AI to agent-assisted to fully autonomous agentsAgent readiness requires APIs that allow software to interact autonomouslyTraditional UIs become unnecessary when agents interface directly with systemsCore competencies shift when AI handles the actual "doing" of tasksSales and marketing must adapt to agents delivering outcomes autonomouslyGo-to-market strategies need complete rethinking for an agentic worldThe agentic age is upon us and AWS partners should shape the futureParticipants:Mark Relph – Director – Data & AI Partner Go-To-Market, Amazon Web ServicesSee how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon.com/isv/

I am joined by ⁠Ryan Sieve, the CTO at Accounting Seed⁠. We get to talk about his journey from consulting in the Salesforce ecosystem to his time at Salesforce itself, before heading to Accounting Seed to lead their technology group as CTO. And thank you to Jon Schultz for the suggestion to be joined by Ryan!We start out talking about positioning products to buyers in ways that focus on solving problems vs. the speeds and feeds of a product. We touch on feature prioritization at a mature ISV like Accounting Seed and how best to collect feedback from internal and external constituents. Ryan and his team leans into customer and partner feedback to help drive features they build and at the 18:10 mark shares tactically how they execute and track the product feedback in their own internal instance of Salesforce. Accounting Seed has worked with Agentforce to optimize both collections and accounts payable to drive improved cashflow for their customers, freeing up time on their teams to be more strategic. Ryan shares their experience of how best to align with Salesforce on this new technology but always with an eye on what is going to help their customers as the top priority. We touch on their team's use of App Analytics from Salesforce, setting up listeners to understand better how your application is being used in the wild. And ISVApp is an option that layers on top of that for even better insights. Accounting Seed leverages Trialforce technology with org creation automation and to keep the data and config up to date via Github repository.This episode is brought to you by ⁠⁠⁠Invisory⁠⁠⁠. Invisory is designed to meet you where you are: in your cloud marketplace journey through a strong go-to-market strategy that helps drive prospect and co-sell opportunities with Salesforce, AWS, Microsoft, and Google. 

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Industry leaders from Celonis and AWS explain why 2025 marks the inflection point for agentic AI and how early adopters are gaining significant competitive advantages in efficiency and innovation.Topics Include:AWS's Cristen Hughes and Celonis's Jeff Naughton discuss AI agent transformationAndy Jassy declares AI agents will fundamentally change how we workThree key trends make AI agents practical: smarter models, longer tasks, cheaper costsAI now beats humans on complex benchmarks for the first time everClaude 3.7 cracked graduate-level reasoning where humans previously dominated completelyAI evolved from brief interactions to managing sustained multi-step complex workflowsProcessing costs plummeted 99.7% making enterprise-grade AI economically viable at scaleWe're transitioning from 2023's adaptation era to 2025's human-AI collaboration eraBy 2028, AI will suggest actions to humans rather than vice versaAgents are autonomous software that plan, act, and reason independently with minimal interventionAgent workflow: receive human request, create plan, execute actions, review, adjust, deliverFour agent components: brain (LLM), memory (context), actions (tools), persona (role definition)AWS offers three building approaches: ready-made solutions, managed platform, DIY developmentKey enterprise applications: software development acceleration, customer care automation, knowledge work optimizationManual processes like accounts payable offer huge transformation opportunities through intelligent automationDeep process analysis is critical before deploying agents for maximum effectivenessCelonis pioneered process mining to help enterprises understand their actual workflow realitiesCompanies are collections of interacting processes that agents need proper context to navigateProcess intelligence provides agents with placement guidance, data feeds, monitoring, and workflow directionCelonis-AWS partnership demonstrates order management agents that automatically handle at-risk situationsParticipants:Jeff Naughton – SVP and Fellow, CelonisCristen Hughes – Solutions Architecture Leader, ISV, North America, Amazon Web ServicesFurther Links:Celonis WebsiteCelonis on AWS MarketplaceSee how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon.com/isv/

In this episode of the Fintech One-on-One podcast, we talk with Paulette Rowe, CEO of Stax, a payments technology company that's making waves in the embedded payments space by taking a fundamentally different approach than many competitors. Rather than simply reselling services from payment processing giants, Stax has built and acquired the technology to own their entire stack, from gateway to clearing and settlement. This strategic decision allows them to move faster, provide better data, and offer more flexibility to their clients, particularly in the vertical SaaS and ISV market where they are seeing rapid growth.Paulette, who brings a unique perspective from her extensive payments experience across both the UK and US markets, discusses how Stax differentiates itself in the competitive embedded payments landscape, their innovative Stax Connect Plus offering that helps ISVs dramatically improve payment attachment rates, and how AI is already transforming their customer support operations. The conversation also explores the future of payments innovation, including the potential for agentic AI in e-commerce and Stax's international expansion plans.In this podcast you will learn:Paulette's career arc and the journey to the CEO job at Stax.How the US payments landscape differs from the UK and Europe.The comprehensive payments solutions provided by Stax.How they work with ISVs (independent software providers).The two acquisitions they have made in the past two years.Why they developed Stax Connect Plus.How Stax differentiates itself in the ISV embedded payments market.How they compete with the Stripes and Squares of the world.What markets Stax operates in today.Paulette's thoughts on the new payments rails being developed.How they have been using AI internally and then, Benji for customer support.How they are preparing for Agentic AI for e-commerce.The biggest opportunities in the future for Stax.Connect with Fintech One-on-One: Tweet me @PeterRenton Connect with me on LinkedIn Find previous Fintech One-on-One episodes

When we talk about the future of enterprise software, AI is front and center. But behind the buzzwords, real transformation is happening in how businesses plan, execute, and deliver professional services. In this episode, I sat down with Raju Malhotra, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Certinia, to explore how AI is shifting from theory to practice in high-scale environments. Certinia, a native ISV on Salesforce, is helping global tech and service firms like Cisco, Siemens, and PwC automate their services operations. With over two million users and six million active projects, the platform isn't just adding AI for the sake of it. It's embedding it directly into workflows to solve tangible business challenges. Raju shares a clear framework for understanding how different types of AI are being implemented. Predictive AI is already deeply integrated into enterprise processes. Generative AI is gaining traction for simplifying content and communication. Agentic AI, the most recent frontier, enables digital agents to complete complex tasks independently within enterprise guardrails. What stood out in our conversation was the emphasis on outcomes over features. Raju makes a compelling case for starting every technology decision by understanding the customer's goals. Certinia's approach avoids chasing trends for the sake of headlines. Instead, the focus is on delivering results like improved margins, higher resource utilization, and smarter project delivery. We also discussed Certinia's early adoption of Salesforce's Agent Force and how their team works closely with Salesforce engineering to align on AI strategy. Rebranding their ERP Cloud to Financial Management Cloud was another move that reflects their sharper focus on services-centric financials, rather than trying to be everything to everyone. There's a clear message in this conversation. Innovation in AI must be matched with investment in performance, latency, scale, and user experience. For any tech leader navigating the AI landscape, Raju's insights provide a grounded, real-world guide. How are you aligning your AI investments with measurable business outcomes?

What's it really like for a vertical software company to integrate payments? In this week's episode, James Shepherd sits down with Derek Henmi, founder of Vino—a platform built specifically for wineries and a partner of Full Stack Payments. They discuss the realities of software development, integrating with Dejavoo, and navigating the world of payments from an ISV's perspective. If you want to understand what software companies truly face when embedding payments, this episode is a must-listen. Then, Rich Norton shares practical sales tips from the field, and Patti Murphy joins James for a powerful Today in Payments segment focused on interchange regulation, surcharging, and other hot-button industry topics.

Why you should listenAndré van Kampen reveals how his 9-year hospitality background became his secret weapon for delivering exceptional client care in Salesforce consulting, going the extra mile that sets him apart from competitors.Discover how building and nurturing the ISV community in Europe created multiple revenue streams while establishing André as a thought leader in the Salesforce ecosystem.Learn practical strategies for leveraging networking and community involvement to build a sustainable consulting business without relying on paid advertising or traditional marketing tactics.Differentiating yourself in an increasingly crowded consulting market while building genuine client relationships feels nearly impossible. In this episode, I sit down with André van Kampen, a Salesforce consultant from the Netherlands who has built his business through exceptional client care and community leadership. We explore how his hospitality background shaped his consulting approach, why he focuses on the most challenging manufacturing projects, and how he's created multiple revenue streams through ISV partnerships and event organization. André shares insights on navigating AI adoption challenges, the importance of data quality, and why networking remains the most underrated lead generation channel for consultants.About André van KampenAndre van Kampen is a seasoned Salesforce consultant and founder of KampKonsult, ISV Forum, and YeurDreamin'. He specializes in Service Cloud and Community Cloud, holds multiple Salesforce certifications, and has been recognized as a Salesforce MVP (2021–2024). Andre is active in the Salesforce community as an Amsterdam User Group co-leader and is fluent in Dutch and English.Resources and LinksKampkonsult.comAndré's LinkedIn profilePrevious episode: 620 - The Death of Billable HoursCheck out more episodes of the Paul Higgins PodcastSubscribe to our YouTube channel: @PaulHigginsMentoringJoin our newsletterSuggested resources

In this episode of the Office of the CFO Podcast, John Siefert hosts Rob Ashe, VP of North America, SignUp Software, and Blaine Grzegorek, Senior Solution Architect, Sikich, for a conversation on the benefits of partnering with ISVs, top considerations when selecting an ISV, and the impact of AI agents.Key Takeaways:  Risks of building your own solutions: One major risk that's becoming more prominent is having the expertise in-house to build custom solutions. Another hurdle is the upfront costs compared to subscription costs associated with many ISVs. Oftentimes, Ashe notes, "You have to spend a lot of capital on new tools...to make this new solution or change a process." Grzegorek suggests a third challenge which is meeting compelx needs. Oftentimes, industry expertise is also required, as you may be able to build the technology but might not be ready to translate the business needs to the ERP.Benefits of partnering with an ISV: A big reason organizations turn to ISVs is that they develop purpose-built solutions to address multiple different situations and multiple industries. "That's what I've found clients like about it, there might be a core functionality out of the box but it doesn't really handle every scenario," Grzegorek says. Working with ISVs provides expertise in various industries to consult with to address specific issues and needs.Considerations: Because ISVs work on these types of projects regularly, they are aware of more elements to take into consideration. For instance, Ashe describes how ISVs look at the landscape within Dynamics 365. It's important to consider how the solution will integrate with existing systems, how it will impact security, where data is being sourced from, and more.Selecting an ISV: When selecting an ISV, there are some qualities you should look for to ensure unexpected situations are taken care of. "The documentation they have, that speaks a lot to what they're able to contribute on an ongoing basis," Grzegorek says. Clients are looking for partnership, and working with an ISV is a partnership. You want to be confident that you can reach out to your ISV and get answers right away. "It's hard to see that before you actually start that partnership, so I go to that documentation of what the solution has, what it solves, and if that stuff is detailed...that is a huge indicator." Initial interactions with them are also a good sign of this.Multiple ISV solutions from a single vendor: It's always beneficial to have an ISV that can provide multiple solutions in different areas. One thing to look out for, Grzegorek highlights, is to make sure that the ISV has good alignment internally. Integration time is also a major focus, considering whether you have to integrate or if it's embedded in the system.AI agents and Microsoft Dynamics 365: While the solutions themselves are very powerful, AI agents can add a new level of efficiency. Ashe shares an example of how individuals are now running teams of agents to automate various functions. There are agents fulfilling individual functions within Dynamics 365 that customers are already using, so SignUp Software is like an extension of the platform and the workload. "We feel like we have a really strong value proposition to bring back to Microsoft to leverage the strength and the roadmap of the platform, but then also have immediately valuable solutions that they can take advantage of now," Ashe says.This episode is sponsored by SignUp Software. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

1 year ago, a law firm founder told me their biggest fear. (It wasn't AI.)It was losing the rainmaker.The partner who brings in the big clients.The one who could walk out & take half the revenue with them.For decades, that's how law firms grew.But things are shifting.AI isn't just automating admin.It's DEMOCRATISING business development.This doesn't replace your rainmakers.It amplifies what makes them greatSo you're not left exposed.So growth doesn't depend on one person.Because the real risk isn't losing your rainmaker.It's building a firm that only works if they stay.Today, I'm sitting down with Jody Glidden and James Wang, the founders of Postilize, a groundbreaking AI platform that's transforming how law firms build relationships and win business.Jody is a serial legal tech entrepreneur and the brains behind Introhive, a leading CRM intelligence platform.James is a BlackBerry veteran who led global ISV strategy, secured over $30M in partner-driven revenue.Today we talk about a topic that I've never heard people discuss, will AI kill the traditional law firm rainmaker?Find Postilize here:https://www.postilize.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this live event, James Shepherd and Jon Shirey, CEO of Full Stack Payments, unveiled the brand-new Full Stack Payments ISO Program — a game-changing opportunity for ISOs who want to empower their sub-agents with vertical-specific software solutions and Full Stack's full suite of integration and support. We broke down exactly how ISOs can plug into our network of ISV partnerships, provide real value to their agents, and still earn lifetime vested residuals — all without needing to manage onboarding, integration, or fulfillment themselves. Jon also shared how agents and ISOs can download the Full Stack Payments app from the Apple or Android app stores to: • Schedule demos with ISV partners • Track the status of each referral • Earn residual income from every closed deal This program is built to help ISOs grow smarter, scale faster, and win in niche markets — from fitness and hospitality to tattoo and professional services. If you missed the live event, be sure to watch the full recap now to see how the ISO Program works and how to get started.

Sameer Narkar is the founder and CEO of Konnect Insights, a global SaaS company based in Mumbai that provides an omnichannel customer experience platform to consumer brands in 100 countries. Sameer created Konnect Insights in 2015 to help customer service teams respond to customers who mention their brands on social media. The product and company have expanded from a slow start working through marketing agencies in India to now distributing through ISV partners in all major global regions. The Konnect Insights product includes social listening, ticketing, reputation monitoring, and social media analytics. They have grown to 140 employees, hundreds of customers, and $7 million ARR--without any outside funding. In this episode, Sameer talks about: Selling through agency and ISV partners to grow efficiently Competing with large, well-funded software companies How he thinks about how AI can help them compete Why he hasn't sold the company or raised outside funding Quote from Sameer Narkar, founder and CEO of Konnect Insights “When you start a software company, you have all odds against you. You don't have enough money. There's no reason why customers would trust you against the established products. There is a 99% chance that you'll fail. “But if you're really passionate about what you're building, then don't look too far ahead. Try to achieve your smaller goals or get from zero to one. So just build something and get some early customers. We figured out a way for agencies to be interested in selling our solution to bring it to market. “Then meet directly with your end customers. It's very easy for tech founders to sit in the office and build a product the way they think. That doesn't work. Many founders think that if they take a half-baked product, they won't get another chance. But that's not the case. You need to build relationships to help you improve and grow..” Links Sameer Narkar on LinkedIn Konnect Insights on LinkedIn Konnect Insights website The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com.

I am joined by Heather Cooper, the COO at Baker Law Group and the former CEO at Cloud Coach. Heather and I didn't know each other when we competed against each other (TaskRay and Cloud Coach) but have gotten to know each other since, which has been really fun. She is starting a podcast with one of my favorite work people, Blakely Graham, that will launch later this year.While Heather was at Cloud Coach, they found a great talent pipeline by running an internship program recruiting heavily from the local university near their HQ, Colorado State in Fort Collins, CO. She shares lessons learned regarding sizing of that program.We talk about her experience working with Tequity advisors, who are a sell-side advisory firm, helped her navigate leading the process where Cloud Coach exited to private equity and how engaging early, way before they were ready to sell, was important along the way. Even though Heather is A lawyer, she isn't YOUR lawyer. With that in mind, her and I talk through some important concepts for every ISV to consider and hold the line around key contract terms like termination for convenience, multi-year deals, and the importance of educating the buyer on how security works with the Salesforce platform. This episode is brought to you by ⁠⁠Invisory⁠⁠. Invisory is designed to meet you where you are: in your cloud marketplace journey through a strong go-to-market strategy that helps drive prospect and co-sell opportunities with Salesforce, AWS, Microsoft, and Google. 

In this episode, Avanish and Andrew discuss:Andrew's journey as an "operational CFO" from Sun Microsystems through ServiceNow, WalkMe, Lacework, and now Amplitude, being part of the team that built ServiceNow from $400M to $4.5B ARRWhy CFOs must "play chess, not checkers" - thinking several moves ahead about decision implications and making strategic investment pivots for anticipated future growthThe critical difference between multi-product and platform strategies: true platforms have definite customer adoption journeys where products aren't sold independentlyRecognizing platform readiness signals: when customers organically create their own workflows and use cases you never conceived, like hospitals using Amplitude for emergency room optimizationBuilding effective teams by mixing "veterans with rookies" to solve problems rather than just "admire problems," and driving focused execution around single key investmentsThe "fair exchange of value" approach to pricing and partnerships that emphasizes customer adoption, transparency, and simplicity over complexityAbout Avanish Sahai:Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and served as a Board Member of Hubspot from 2018 to 2023; he currently serves on the boards of Birdie.ai, Flywl.com and Meta.com.br as well as a few non-profits end educational boards. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow.  From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase.  Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.About Andrew Casey: Andrew Casey is Chief Financial Officer at Amplitude, where he leads Amplitude's General & Administrative organization, which includes finance, accounting, and legal. With more than 25 years of enterprise software experience, Casey brings deep financial expertise combined with extensive go-to-market strategy and business operations experience.Casey joined Amplitude from Lacework, where he served as CFO and oversaw its successful acquisition by Fortinet. Prior to that, he was the CFO of WalkMe, where he led its Initial Public Offering (IPO) and transformed its enterprise sales motion. Casey's career also includes senior finance roles with ServiceNow, Hewlett-Packard, NortonLifeLock Inc. (formerly Symantec), Oracle, and Sun Microsystems.About TidemarkTidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale.  Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years.  Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.LinksFollow our guest, Andrew CaseyFollow our host, Avanish SahaiLearn more about Tidemark

As the Vice President of Strategy at Xebia Microsoft Services, Rocky leads the vision and direction of the company's software development solutions and services. He brings extensive expertise in framework design and implementation, distributed systems architecture, and cloud and container technologies, helping clients achieve their business goals and deliver value to their customers.   He is also the creator of CSLA .NET, an open-source development framework that enables developers to build scalable, maintainable, and secure object-oriented applications. As an accomplished author, he has written multiple books on the subject and frequently shares his insights at major conferences worldwide. He is honored to be a member of the Microsoft Regional Director and MVP programs and serves as co-chair of Visual Studio Live! as well as chair of the Cloud & Containers Live conferences. His passion lies in advancing the software industry and empowering developers to create better software.   Topics of Discussion: [3:30] Rockford shares his first job experience at an independent software vendor (ISV) building software to dispatch and manage the delivery of ready-mix concrete trucks. [8:30] The evolution of software and its connection to real-world processes. [9:53] The impact of technology advancements, such as miniaturization and material science, on modern software applications. [12:40] The influence of AI on software architecture and decision making. [19:15] Rockford about the importance of open-source libraries and personal projects in software development. [21:35] How does one become aware of what's available these days? [23:14] Rockford suggests using RSS readers, curated feeds, and platforms like Feedly and Mastodon to stay informed about industry developments. [27:06] The upside to blogging and microblogging. [28:25] Importance of sharing knowledge and expertise. [29:19] Expertise through teaching and sharing. [32:19] Impact of Large Language Models (LLMs) on Coding. [38:22] Infrastructure challenges with AI. [40:21] Legacy software modernization. [40:52] Career advice for leaders and recognizing it as its own career path.   Mentioned in this Episode: Clear Measure Way Architect Forum Software Engineer Forum Programming with Palermo — New Video Podcast! Email us at programming@palermo.net. Clear Measure, Inc. (Sponsor) .NET DevOps for Azure: A Developer's Guide to DevOps Architecture the Right Way, by Jeffrey Palermo Azure & DevOps Podcast: Rocky Lhotka: CSLA - Episode 210 CSLA.NET Rockford on LinkedIn Rockford Lhotka Rockford's Blog Feedly Morning Dew — Alvin Ashcroft Drive by Daniel Pink  Visual Studio Live! Tunisia DevDays   Want to Learn More? Visit AzureDevOps.Show for show notes and additional episodes.

When Advaita Ācārya started his prayers to Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu, he held open class and prayed that Lord Caitanya would come and help spread the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement all over the world. So, however insignificant it may seem, the way one starts—one person—can change the whole world; one person with a sincere desire. And we feel it in you, Mahārāj, that wherever you go, you set this example of utter humility, at the same time complete seriousness, about this strategy to spread Kṛṣṇa consciousness all over the world. I remember years ago when we talked about New York, and it seemed to be a complicated situation, but I remember you'd always say, "But Prabhupāda started there. He wanted us to spread Kṛṣṇa consciousness in New York." And even in the most difficult situations, you've always adhered yourself to Śrīla Prabhupāda's desire. So all the initiates today are fortunate to be able to see you, to observe how you live and how you interact with others, and to be able to adhere themselves to your instructions. And I'm personally grateful to all the devotees here who are following in Śrīla Prabhupāda's footsteps by accepting His Holiness Radhanath Swami Mahārāja as the representative of the Guru-paramparā, who's showing how to use one's entire life to not only expand Kṛṣṇa consciousness all over the world, but to attain the ultimate perfection of life, which is to constantly remember Kṛṣṇa, talk about Kṛṣṇa, and chant Harē Kṛṣṇa. (HG Vaisesika Dasa) Thank you so much, Mahārāj, for keeping us in your orbit, for inspiring not only your disciples, but all of us here at ISV and around the world. And I'm very happy for these initiates to be connected to our glorious Paramparā. Under your shelter, we're so fortunate to be connected to the most glorious Paramparā. It's a big step you're all taking, and the whole community is here to support you and help you in any way you can. And I already see so many of you who do so much here, do so much service, do so much preaching. So however we can continue to serve each other, serve your Guru Mahārāj and serve Śrīla Prabhupāda. Personally, I want to offer my help, my support, and I'm just so happy for you all to be under the shelter of Radhanath Mahārāj and Śrīla Prabhupāda. Thank you. Harē Kṛṣṇa! (HG Nirākulā Dāsī) I am so happy to see that you are under the shelter of Vaiśeṣika Mahārāja and Nirākulā Devī because, from the core of my heart, I appreciate how Śrīla Prabhupāda is so pleased with their surrender, their example, and their spiritual leadership for this community, and actually for inspiring the whole world of our movement.And I'm just a little creature that's crawling around trying to serve, but Vaiśeṣika Prabhu and Nirākulā Devī are really great Vaiṣṇavas, and how they are pleasing Śrīla Prabhupāda is so meaningful to me and so many other devotees. There is nothing more pleasing to me than you trying to assist them and please them.In my own heart, I'm just assisting them by trying to inspire all of you in this connection to Śrīla Prabhupāda and our Guru-paramparā (HH Rādhānātha Maharaja) Link to the complete ceremony: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3tMBBPxMt4 ------------------------------------------------------------ To connect with His Grace Vaiśeṣika Dāsa, please visit https://www.fanthespark.com/next-steps/ask-vaisesika-dasa/ ------------------------------------------------------------ Add to your wisdom literature collection: https://iskconsv.com/book-store/ https://www.bbtacademic.com/books/ https://thefourquestionsbook.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------ Join us live on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FanTheSpark/ Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sound-bhakti/id1132423868 For the latest videos, subscribe https://www.youtube.com/@FanTheSpark For the latest in SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/fan-the-spark

AWS leaders commemorate the podcast's 100th episode while looking ahead to expanded coverage of technology partners and continued focus on generative AI, modern data strategies, agentic AI solutions and more!Topics Include:Episode 100 celebrates milestone of AWS software companies podcastWeekly podcast shares ISV stories, best practices, guidanceToday features AWS leader thoughts on ISV communityArym Diamond heads North America data and AI salesSpecialist team helps win deals, create happy customersISV customers do cutting-edge work on AWS platformISVs create force multiplier effect for entire companyBuilding community through podcast video and audio contentKristen Backeberg leads global ISV partner marketing at AWSPodcast featured 157 ISV leaders from 121 companiesReached over 30,000 listeners across 90+ countries worldwideISV partners drive cloud innovation across all industriesAWS supports growth from startups to enterprise leadersAPN network designed to help partners succeed, scaleOlawale Oladehin directs ISV solutions architecture in North AmericaPodcast shares customer insights, journeys, and innovationsAWS technology continues evolving to meet customer needsCarol Potts leads North America ISV sales at AWSPodcast started less than two years agoFirst episode titled "Data the Engine for Growth"Customer obsession drives everything AWS does for ISVsDeep collaboration focused on joint ISV success partnershipsVishal Sanghvi heads ISV marketing for North AmericaISVs face pressure delivering products at generative AI paceModern data strategy foundational for ISV product successFavorite episodes include Snowflake, Wiz, Coupang discussionsAWS offers programs for every ISV persona typeFuture episodes focus on generative AI, cybersecurity, dataAgentic AI becoming important for production phase evolutionPodcast expanding scope to include technology partnersParticipants:Kristen Backeberg – Director, Global ISV, Solutions Enterprise and Alliance Partner Marketing, Amazon Web ServicesArym Diamond – Director, US ISV Specialists, Amazon Web ServicesOlawale Oladehin – Director, ISV, Solutions Architecture, North America, Amazon Web ServicesCarol Potts – GM, ISV Sales Segment, North America, Amazon Web ServicesVishal Sanghvi - Head of ISV Field Marketing, North America, Amazon Web ServicesSee how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon.com/isv/

This week's episode features a replay of a live event with Brian Fitzgerald, EVP of ISV and Enterprise Partnerships at Full Stack Payments. James Shepherd interviews Brian about what it really takes to close large merchant accounts and build successful ISV partnerships. Learn how Full Stack supports agents with implementation, integrations, and lifetime vested residuals. Then, stick around for the Today in Payments segment where James and Patti Murphy cover the latest headlines shaping the payments industry.

When we would stay at Govardhana Hill during Kārtik every year, he would come on parikramā with thousands and thousands of devotees. The Govardhana āshram is a quiet place, and during the festival season, sometimes during the day, a yātrā will come in and swarm the place for half an hour, an hour, and then go away. Mahārāja was so personal that he would stop in to see any of his godbrothers, whatever room they were in. And I can remember many times when he would just burst in the room, and then the room would be flooded because devotees would come in with him. Sometimes I'd be sitting doing a pūjā or getting ready for something, and all of a sudden the door would fling open, and Mahārāja would come in with his devotees, and we'd offer obeisances. He would grab my hand, and he'd always have some encouraging words to say. He would say something personal, and it was 99.9% of the time about book distribution, that we have to distribute more, we have to double it. He would say encouraging things, and he would stop in and see other godbrothers, and then he would go on his way. When he came here to ISV, we invariably asked him to make a video for us. Luckily, we have those and we have the pictures of them. One of the times I remember, he sat outside there in front of the hedge in a chair, and we had all he camera set up, and he had the microphone, and it was a blissful time that we had to sit around him and feel that here's one of the senior most leaders in our movement, and he's a book distributor, and he's for us. He would take the time to sit down and go through the rigors of making a video. "Did that go through? Did that take? Fix the microphone, move a little to the left." He didn't mind because he knew the influence he would have by advocating for book distribution, so he would take the time to do that, and we would sit with him and listen to him speak, and it did have a huge effect on people all over the world, as it still is now. Last year, because the devotees were dedicating their activities in distributing books to Mahārāja, and they were especially inspired, which is also the mode of the devotees after their spiritual master leaves the world—where to take shelter? The tirobhāva means when the light of the spiritual master's personal presence goes out, then what light does one follow? One must follow the order of the spiritual master, and one must reconstitute everything one's heard and seen in one's guru to understand how to conduct one's own life. How did my guru speak? How would he make a decision about a particular issue that's going on? We all of you who are his disciples and all of us who are his loving godbrothers and anyone else have a catalog of all he said and the way he said it and the way he reacted to circumstances that we can remember and bring out as we go through the maze which is the material world and trying to find our way through darkness and conduct our services. A heartfelt moment I had with Mahārāja was after... (excerpt from the talk, 24 Apr 2025, ISV) Link to full programe: https://youtube.com/live/2IRzqMpeQ7U?feature=share ------------------------------------------------------------ To connect with His Grace Vaiśeṣika Dāsa, please visit https://www.fanthespark.com/next-steps/ask-vaisesika-dasa/ ------------------------------------------------------------ Add to your wisdom literature collection: https://iskconsv.com/book-store/ https://www.bbtacademic.com/books/ https://thefourquestionsbook.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------ Join us live on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FanTheSpark/ Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sound-bhakti/id1132423868 For the latest videos, subscribe https://www.youtube.com/@FanTheSpark For the latest in SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/fan-the-spark ------------------------------------------------------------

In this episode, Avanish and Mike discuss:Mike's journey from his early tech roots in Silicon Valley to his role as CRO at Zscaler, including his transformative work growing ServiceNow from $500M to $6B in the Americas regionThe importance of always viewing platform strategy through the customer's lens - helping them achieve outcomes rather than managing multiple point solutionsHow a successful platform requires breaking down silos not just within your own organization, but often within your customer's organizationThe "one team" concept of the three-legged stool: customer, vendor, and partner, all working together toward shared successWhy ecosystem partners are mission-critical, providing industry expertise and customer insights that vendors can't replicateThe role of security in enabling productive AI adoption, with Zscaler helping customers leverage generative AI safely at scaleHow to develop meaningful metrics with partners beyond just pipeline generation, focusing on mutual success plans and regular reviewsThe importance of playing the long game with partners - "It's not how you behave when things are going great, it's how you behave when things hit the fan"Host: Avanish SahaiAvanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018 and of Birdie.ai since April 2022. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow.  From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase.  Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.About Mike RichMike Rich is a highly accomplished technology sales professional with a career spanning more than 30 years.During his tenure as President, Americas at ServiceNow from 2011–2023, Mike played a pivotal role in the company's success. Under his leadership, the AMS region experienced unprecedented revenue growth, catapulting from $500 million to $6 billion+.Mike focused on initiatives like vertical industries that enabled customer-facing teams to partner closely with customers. During his time, the company's overall growth skyrocketed from $80 million to $8 billion. Throughout his career, Mike has kept customer satisfaction as the north star, ensuring that every business decision aligns with the goal of providing unparalleled value to clients and career advancement for employees.Before ServiceNow, Mike held leadership roles at enterprise software companies Borland, Rational Software, and Kana.Mike's leadership philosophy revolves around building diverse teams that prioritize achieving desired mutual outcomes. His passion is fostering environments where collaboration, mutual respect, and teamwork are paramount.About TidemarkTidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale.  Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years.  Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.LinksFollow our guest, Mike RichFollow our host, Avanish SahaiLearn more about Tidemark