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Success Services: The New Customer Paradigm in the Digital & AI-First Economy
Success Services: The New Customer Paradigm in the Digital & AI-First Economy

September 9, 2025

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Over the years, technology services have changed the way businesses operate. As the measure of success has shifted, clients expect partners who can directly influence outcomes, from improving customer experience to accelerating growth. In response, service providers have shifted their focus from just managing infrastructure and meeting technical SLAs (Service Level Agreements) to driving measurable outcomes. The journey started with supporting on-premises systems and keeping them stable. It evolved to facilitate migration and management of these systems on Cloud. But now it has grown into a partnership model aimed at delivering real business results. Today, deep expertise in software & Cloud is paired with an understanding of each customer’s goals, moving from simply running technology to ensuring it delivers its full value. Hence, this shift from managed services to success services marks a broader trend. It is enabling customers to achieve lasting value, not just smooth operations.

Outcome-Driven Success Services

Today, simply keeping technology systems running is expected as a basic service. A partner who helps them get the most out of their technology investment is key - One who can support them at every step of implementation, helping users to adopt the new tools effectively, and making sure the technology contributes to their goals. Thankfully, success services are built around this idea. It focuses on how service providers can support customers through each step of their journey to achieve lasting business value. The model emphasizes on five major pillars: It starts with understanding customer needs. Success starts with a clear grasp of the customer’s business priorities and use cases rather than just technical priorities. For example, a healthcare sector can aim to lessen the patient’s wait times, while a logistics provider can focus on improving delivery accuracy. Understanding these drivers shapes every decision that follows.

Secondly, focus on the customer's rollout strategy. Be it a solution that is deployed in phases or in a single “big-bang” go-live, the provider must internalize the rollout plan. This alignment makes sure the right resources and interventions are in place at each stage. As a result, it prevents common pitfalls like stalled adoption or operational disruption. Additionally, there is a need to identify key interventions across the customer lifecycle.  By mapping the customer journey—Land → Operate → Value → Expand—service providers can target interventions that matter most. For instance, early adoption phases may require intensive user training, while the value stage could focus on analytics to demonstrate ROI or identify new use-cases that can benefit from technology. Each stage is an opportunity to create a positive and relevant experience. The fourth pillar is to craft a tailored success plan. All insights feed into a strategic blueprint that links the customer’s business goals to the capabilities of the solution. At this stage, outline how solutions support those goals, the measurable milestones at each phase and the interventions that will ensure adoption, satisfaction, favorable outcomes, and business impact. Lastly, we move onto conducting regular check-ins. Progress reviews keep the strategy on track. These are used to measure outcomes, identify gaps, and recalibrate efforts so that the customer’s evolving needs remain at the centre of the partnership.

Trend Toward Cloud Services

The adoption of cloud computing is growing rapidly, with cloud managed services expanding from overseeing on-premises environments to supporting difficult migrations onto private and public cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. As a measure, service providers need to offer end-to-end support, starting from the customer’s first day on cloud subscription, through implementation, and into ongoing post-production management. This demands expertise in cloud infrastructure, container orchestration tools such as Kubernetes, CI/CD automation with Jenkins and Ansible, and operational frameworks like Site Reliability Engineering (SRE).

In India, these shift patterns are similarly positive. With the cloud computing services market expected to expand at a 26.5% CAGR through 2030, Indian enterprises are dependent on providers who combine traditional ITIL practices with cloud-native skills. This ensures operational reliability in an evolving digital landscape. While this technical expertise remains critical, the true shift now lies in moving beyond managed services to success services.

Today’s customers expect their service partners to do more than maintain systems. They seek proactive guidance and strategic partnerships that drive adoption, value realization, and long-term growth. This marks an important shift in the role of service providers, from being custodians of technology to enablers of success, helping customers unlock the full potential of their cloud investments.

Afterthought

In the rapidly evolving landscape of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) & hybrid cloud (Private + SaaS), the role of customer success has become increasingly pivotal. At its core, success planning establishes long-lasting relationships. After taking the necessary first steps to a comfortable shift to success services, organizations also need to rethink how they engage with service providers. They will need to focus on determining clear business outcomes from the beginning, putting in place the means to communicate effectively for ongoing alignment, and building a degree of adaptability into the contracts they enter for the ever-evolving nature of the partnership. Businesses are modifying their working methods to be proactive in partnership with service providers by recognizing the shift from reactive support to taking ownership over their technology journey for growth, and ultimately, innovation. The shared emphasis on business outcomes also helps articulate the ROI on any technology spends & justify future investments to facilitate growth – something critical for both customers & service providers alike.

 

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AI-generated content may be incorrect.About the Author

Rajiv Krishnan is a senior cloud technology executive at OpenText India with over two decades' experience of incubating, managing & scaling global delivery practices that deliver a portfolio of SLA-driven Professional and Managed services to on-prem and cloud customers.


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