Digital Customer Success

2Durable Business Strategies to Fuel Long‐Term Success

According to the philosopher Heraclitus, “Change is the only constant in life.”

This is one of those adages with which everyone agrees in principle, but rarely heeds in practice. Instead, most of us habitually believe that tomorrow will look pretty much like today. And it usually does. Until it doesn't.

No matter how many times the economy is disrupted by wars, new technologies, inflation, or (most recently) a worldwide pandemic, many business leaders respond—time after time—by hunkering down, cutting budgets, and looking forward to the day when everything returns to “normal.” Which it never does. Things never return to exactly the way they were.

As we write this, the SaaS industry is undergoing sudden change. After watching a 12‐year bull market recede in the rearview mirror, we find ourselves hurtling down a pothole‐lined highway to an uncertain destination. A new era has arrived. Almost overnight, unprecedented prosperity was replaced by stagnating sales, declining valuations, and an investment community that now measures success in terms of sustainable profits rather than meteoric growth.

In 2022, tech stocks fell more than 30 percent, due to higher interest rates, higher inflation, and turbulent economic conditions.¹ By year's end, tech companies had shed more than 140,000 jobs, with many more layoffs to come.² In 2019, rapid growth was the key metric by which investors valued SaaS businesses. Since then, the script ...