Revenue generation services are the fastest growing LOBs within CX outsourcing at over 9% CAAGR through 2026 globally (NelsonHall forecast). While the focus of most new revenue generation programs is on the consumer space, enterprise and mid-market client onboarding, sales, and retention are also becoming highly promising areas and the next growth engine for the leading CX services players.

In July 2022, Concentrix completed the acquisition of specialist provider ServiceSource International for ~$131m to enhance its B2B sales capabilities and bring complementary technology domain expertise. Here is how the deal complements Concentrix's existing portfolio and presents growth opportunities.

Full life-cycle revenue generation services for B2B brands

ServiceSource offers specialized B2B inside sales, customer success, renewals, and channel management. It adds ~3k employees in San Francisco, Nashville, Dublin, Liverpool, Bulgaria, Singapore, Manila, Japan, and Kuala Lumpur. Its client base has grown from multinational technology brands where demand for their services has evolved into other verticals including financial Services, manufacturing, and healthcare.

Following the acquisition, Concentrix integrated the new capability within its B2B sales services and now offers a full spectrum of revenue generation services across:

• Purchasing with digital lead generation and management, sales performance analysis, ad sales, inside sales, deal desks, and quote generation
• Implementing and executing for customer or partner onboarding, welcome calls, shipping and logistics, and various types of dealer, seller, partner, and channel management and support
• Growth, where Concentrix offers renewal management, churn analytics, win backs, retention and recapture, and customer success strategy.

Account management with proprietary talent enhancement

ServiceSource started in 2001 as a B2B sales specialist, developing its proprietary framework, High Performance Selling (HPS), with multiple components to boost the performance of sales reps. The company employs a multilayered approach for the different levels of the team, including customer success executive coaching, team and leader level strategy with tactics such as forecasts and deal stacks, team huddles, and territory and strategy reviews supported by BI. Key success factors include driving pipeline hygiene, discipline, customer relationship governance, and enforcing accountability to optimize returns.

For example, for a cloud technology provider who wanted to build more efficient partner onboarding and management and increase revenue, Concentrix prioritized business development for converting warm and cold leads into prospects and then handing them off to internal sales teams. It helped the client grow its pipeline sales volume, accelerate time-to-close, and increase revenue by upselling and cross-selling new products to existing accounts. For renewals, Concentrix utilized account health checks to increase recurring revenue, accelerate service ticket resolution, and more improve the efficiency of channel partner management (with improved partner onboarding and overall quality of the partner population). As a result, Concentrix has achieved over 190% increase in SMB revenue since 2019, while consistently exceeding all revenue targets. In that time, Concentrix onboarded ~9k new partners to the SaaS platform with a 98% satisfaction score from the partners.

Matching sales expertise to customer needs at scale

Integrating the new B2B sales capability within the over 300k-employee Concentrix presents a sizable opportunity to scale operations and enter new markets. An example program is for a software developer looking to improve the retention and renewal rates of its customer base. Concentrix led the client's commercial renewal cycle in APAC, EMEA, and the Americas, supporting 57 countries in 23 languages. Concentrix doubled the deal size and increased the deal volumes five-fold with a 15% improvement in the renewal rate and a 10% improvement in retention rate over four years. In 2022, Concentrix took ownership of most commercial renewals for the client.

In parallel to scaling, one of the best practices within the company has been to identify resources from within the organization who have skills and interests in enterprise account management and offer a career path in business development. An example is the work Concentrix delivered for a SaaS migration for a software company that struggled with low channel migration levels. Concentrix set up a 10-member team to resolve a ~6k support ticket backlog, another 20-member team to clean up the CRM data, and 20 global business development representatives to expedite the migration to the client's subscription. It dedicated two specialists to process design and working with the largest channel clients.

Massive potential in IT sales and beyond

Various analyst reports indicate a massive potential in the IT and software license and support markets. Concentrix estimates its TAM for B2B sales at $65bn. The current cooling off of startup investments and scaling down of some of the most prominent technology brands cannot divert from several fundamental factors which boost the massive potential of IT sales.

First among these factors is the evolution to SaaS and subscription models from legacy licensing formats. This change creates a need for a renewals advisor who can combine the roles and skillsets of initial support, sales, and account management with tasks such as onboarding and health checks. Here, Concentrix can bring its expertise in developing outbound sales representatives into customer success executives.

Another driver is the client's requirement for cost saving through offshoring and access to new markets. In the current economic environment, tech clients in particular are actively searching for cost-effective solutions for sales and partner management operations. For Concentrix, the next steps include utilizing its existing nearshore and offshore delivery network and expanding into new geographies with support presence; for example, a program going live in South Korea.

The highly volatile technology market also demands a greater focus on analytics and customer insights. Concentrix has a methodology for a continuous feedback loop with the client’s various functions. One of the direct benefits has been sharing findings and issues that the client's internal team can be reluctant to share. This ongoing feedback is now becoming critical for brands to be quicker and better tuned to their market, improve processes and reduce customer friction. For example, Concentrix helped a robotics automation enterprise define its customized GTM based on customer behavior instead of value segmentation, resulting in higher renewal rates for a greater share of wallet from existing customers.

Augmented talent and opportunities beyond the technology segment

Some of the next steps for Concentrix are employing its tech stack in agent augmentation and domain process optimization, such as loyalty management platforms developed by Concentrix Catalyst and AI and smart data applications for propensity modeling. Sentiment analytics is another promising area with an impact on the revenue generation process. The company is already working on employing it for real-time coaching on live interactions with customer success executives to drive next best actions. Other benefits include an overall cohort analysis based on conversations between the Concentrix team and the customer base to optimize the client's strategy and team coaching. 

Next, the company is building up its sales capability in new delivery locations such as Egypt, Georgia, China, India and Costa Rica to add capacity for markets such as Germany, APAC, and South America.

Outside further optimizations for the significant technology sectors, the Concentrix B2B sales unit is looking at the financial services and manufacturing verticals, focusing on large accounts which face similar challenges of an underserved mid-market.

Concentrix expects the acquired unit to deliver $230m in additional revenues and $38m of adjusted EBITDA in the first twelve months following the ServiceSource acquisition.