At Compugen, we don’t just keep pace with industry best practices — we define them. The appointment of Steve Spence, Director of Service Portfolio Management, to the Advisory Board for the Technology and Services Industry Association (TSIA) in Offering Management highlights our role as Canada’s largest privately owned and operated Technology Ally. While TSIA classifies organizations like Compugen as Technology Service Providers (TSPs), we differentiate ourselves as a Technology Ally — focused not just on delivering services, but on being a true strategic partner for our customers. But what does this mean for you — our partners and customers?
Simply put: greater service value, agility, and strategic foresight, by ensuring that every Compugen service is aligned to best-in-class methodologies and backed by industry-leading insights.
A Seat at the Table: What Steve Spence’s Appointment Means
TSIA is the leading research and advisory organization dedicated to helping technology companies drive innovation in service leadership. With a focus on industry data rather than opinion-based recommendations, TSIA empowers organizations to build service offerings that are scalable, repeatable, and automated, and as a result, have high-impact.
Steve’s role on the TSIA Board of Advisors for Offering Management means he’ll be working alongside global technology leaders, shaping the future of IT service offerings, and ensuring that Compugen remains at the forefront of innovation.
"TSIA has a Board of Advisors for each of its disciplines. My appointment is to the Board for the Offering Management discipline. What this role entails specifically I’ll have to learn over the weeks or months ahead as we prepare for the April conference,” Steve explains. "I will be collaborating with Hal Stanley, Vice President of TSIA’s Offering Management Research, along with other board members to exchange best practices for offering management and to observe trends that may influence future developments.
As Compugen continues to deliver customer experience by design, our participation in industry-leading forums ensures we remain relentlessly curious — always looking ahead to provide customer/partner ecosystem with the best strategies for optimizing their IT investments.
How We Elevate Our Customers’ Experience
People turn to Compugen for guidance in navigating the complexities of modern IT. With the emergence and accelerated growth of AI, escalating cybersecurity challenges, and evolving As-a-Service consumption models (such as hybrid cloud IT), organizations need more than just a supplier — they need a strategic ally to guide them through the turbulence.
Steve’s longstanding involvement with TSIA ensures that Compugen’s service offerings remain:
- Data-driven and aligned with industry best practices — leveraging TSIA’s research to guide our service evolution.
- Future-ready — anticipating and adapting to market shifts before they impact our customers.
- Customer-focused — prioritizing practical, scalable, and flexible solutions that help organizations achieve their long-term goals.
"Our customers tell us that they value our openness in sharing with them our technical knowledge and practice experiences. Information technology is a diverse and constantly shifting landscape, and it’s near impossible for them to keep up and even harder to separate the reality from the hype,” says Steve. “It’s become a lot more difficult for them in the past few years. COVID was child's play compared to the minefields IT leaders must traverse through today. This is our role. We help them see beyond the hype."
Evolving Offering Management: A Strategic Advantage
The way technology is consumed is changing rapidly. Organizations are shifting from buying standalone products to investing in service offerings that integrate industry-leading technologies with a full lifecycle of services that can adapt to their evolving needs. This transition — from technology as an asset to technology as a service — demands a reimagined approach to Offering Management.
"For years, I felt strongly that simply with the right dedication and commitment to standardized and well-documented process, it was possible for IT services to be procured and delivered just as one might pick a physical product off a store’s shelf,” notes Steve. “I still believe this is achievable, but with Hal Stanley’s guidance, I now see that we have many phases to go through first before that kind of reality can become commonplace.
Compugen helps organizations navigate these challenges, ensuring that the technology their business depends on is safeguarded for long-term success. We believe that being a true Technology Ally means bringing a new customer experience to our customer are standardized, repeatable, and automated, adaptable to diverse customer needs.
Q+A with Steve Spence
Q: How does TSIA’s focus on industry data benefit Compugen’s customers?
A: What I’ve always liked about TSIA is their focus on industry data. They have an amazing group of highly experienced tech business leaders I’ve worked with and admired for over ten years. Rarely though will anyone at TSIA ever give you an opinion or offer advice that isn’t supported by its research. This is important to me. This is important to Compugen. TSIA helps us find the needles among haystacks of noise, ensuring that the guidance we give our customers is grounded in objective, data-backed insights.
Q: What are some of the biggest challenges in Offering Management today?
A: One of the biggest challenges is convincing sales teams to focus on selling standard service offers instead of always gravitating so quickly back to bespoke or custom-engineered services. The simplest way to shift this is through sales compensation, but that’s easier said than done. Another challenge is navigating the Innovator’s Dilemma — balancing the need for new, innovative services while ensuring we still maintain a dependable, revenue-generating portfolio. Most organizations struggle with this.
Q: What role does AI play in the evolution of IT services?
A: AI has two major roles in Offering Management. The first is developing offerings faster and easier by tapping into a huge body of market knowledge. This is leveraging Generative AI. The second role is embedding AI into the service itself so that the solution can learn and adapt on its own using Agentic AI and Natural Language Processing. AI will change how we design and deliver services, but we must ensure it’s applied responsibly.
Q: What new insights or opportunities do you see coming from this advisory role?
A: TSIA doesn’t read the tea leaves; it reads the data. This helps us find the needles amongst haystacks of noise. They help us understand the tech services industry so we can offer objective advice to our customers. In pivotal areas like AI, cyber security, cloud, platforms, etc., that have fundamentally changed the industry in recent years, TSIA has consistently said that the tech sector is no longer a sprint to dominance but a curated journey that must be carefully crafted with safety nets in place should things go awry. We know they will at times go awry. TSIA’s Offering Management practice has provided us with great insight into the true state of IT offering management, particularly underscoring the differences between offering management aspirations and its truths today.
Q: What are some of the key opportunities you hope to explore with the TSIA Board?
A: One of the big opportunities I see is improving collaboration between technology service providers, manufacturers, and channel partners. The industry is shifting towards a service-first approach, and we need models that allow different stakeholders to work together effectively while avoiding conflicts over service investments. Additionally, I’m eager to explore how standardizing service offerings can help create more predictable and scalable solutions for customers.
Get an Ally in Your Technology Journey
Compugen isn’t just following industry best practices — we’re helping to shape them. By leveraging insights from TSIA and applying them to our service portfolio, we ensure that our customers gain access to the most innovative, effective, and forward-thinking technology solutions. Whether it’s optimizing IT investments, navigating digital transformation, or enhancing service agility, our expertise is your advantage.
Let’s build the future of IT services together. Connect with our experts to explore how Compugen can help your organization stay ahead in an evolving technology landscape.
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