When Leadership Meets Shifting Landscape
A Global Sales Enablement Leader Pushes Past Legacy Tech and Adoption Gaps
For one of the world’s leading sales-enablement technology providers, dominance was no longer enough. Trusted by over 2,000 global enterprises, including multiple Fortune 500 firms, the client had long defined how go-to-market teams engage customers through content automation, analytics and seller productivity.
But the competitive field was shifting. New entrants were embedding AI into their platforms, scaling faster and pricing lower. To stay ahead, the client needed a transformation that could:
- Accelerate innovation through AI-driven engineering
- Expand adoption through affordability and speed
- Achieve cost efficiency without sacrificing quality or performance
When innovation becomes the price of staying relevant, velocity is the new currency.
Behind-the-Curtain Challenges
Despite its leadership position, the client faced mounting friction:
- Platform adoption lagged due to limited third-party integrations and slow feature delivery
- Cost and complexity escalated as multiple acquisitions left overlapping tools and duplicated workflows
- Maintenance and technical debt from monolithic databases increased latency and operational risk
- 85% manual testing slowed releases, delayed issue resolution and ultimately put customer retention at risk
If unaddressed, these bottlenecks threatened not only efficiency but also the client’s market position.
From Fragmented Systems to Unified Canvas
Persistent came on board as a strategic product-engineering partner to modernize, optimize and re-imagine the client’s core platform through a GenAI-first lens. The engagement unfolded in three deliberate phases:
- Stabilization: Built a 100-member offshore team in India, embedded GenAI tools into QA and shortened release cycles
- Modernization: Migrated tech stacks, consolidated applications and optimized cloud spend
- Innovation: Embedded AI into workflows, built agent-ready APIs and launched new customer-facing features
Each phase built momentum for the next and engineering precision evolved into business agility.
AI-First by Design
At the core was a cultural and technological reset: “AI in everything we do.”
Persistent integrated intelligent automation throughout the software development lifecycle to create measurable efficiency:
- Development Velocity: GitHub Copilot and GenAI accelerators increased code and documentation throughput by 25%
- Quality Assurance: GenAI-based testing raised critical test-case coverage from 15% to 80%
- Smart Prompts: Configurable GenAI prompts let users craft contextual searches across modules
According to McKinsey, enterprises that embed GenAI into development cycles achieve up to 30–50% productivity gains in software engineering, a benchmark the client has now reached in practice.
Modernizing without Missing a Beat
Speed alone wasn’t enough; the architecture had to be future-proof.
Persistent re-engineered the foundation to balance modernization with resilience:
- Tech Upgrades: Angular → React, Ruby on Rails → Node.js, .NET Framework → . NET Core
- Infrastructure Optimization: PostgreSQL migrated to PGO, Azure components refreshed, monoliths sharded for regional performance gains
Every modernization choice improved maintainability, reduced latency and turned engineering efficiency into a measurable business advantage.
Modernization isn’t maintenance, it’s the engine of reinvention.
Platform Innovation: Making AI Work for Sellers
Beyond engineering, the focus shifted to the seller experience: the real differentiator in sales enablement. Persistent helped the client:
- Develop agent-friendly APIs for new AI-powered features
- Build an AI-driven reporting suite that eliminates costly third-party licenses
- Deepen 3rd party integrations with Salesforce, Zoom and cloud storage platforms to simplify seller workflows
The payoff was immediate: faster deal cycles, higher adoption and a unified workspace where sellers could access insights, content and recommendations from one intelligent platform.
Business Impact: Measurable Gains in Speed and Cost
The outcomes turned modernization into momentum:
- 25% boost in developer productivity with GenAI tools
- 30% test automation coverage with 80% of critical cases automated
- 60% drop in critical post-production defects, reinforcing customer trust
- Full-scale migrations across front-end and back-end frameworks completed on time
- $1M+ annual savings expected by replacing external reporting software
- Unified seller experience driving engagement and retention
Deloitte reports that firms combining modernization with GenAI capabilities achieve 20–40% faster release cycles and significantly lower rework. This partnership brought those figures to life.
Extending the Impact
The success went beyond efficiency. It changed mindset:
- 30–40 % task-level productivity uplift across teams using GenAI for learning and experimentation
- Evolving beyond AI-enabled to agentic, with systems that learn and adapt autonomously
The engagement proved that embedding AI across people, process and product delivers exponential value.
AI stops being a tool when it starts shaping how teams think, build and scale.
Why Persistent
The client chose Persistent for its ability to deliver engineering precision with strategic foresight:
- For our deep product development capacity, Persistent was initially selected as a core engineering partner and then co-created the AI-first journey
- Balanced cost optimization with continuous innovation
- Delivered GenAI-first modernization that secured ROI today and scalability for tomorrow
With Persistent, the client redefined how sales enablement evolves in the GenAI era, fusing cost discipline, innovation and user experience into one growth engine.
From Platform to Powerhouse
The journey from fragmented systems to intelligent orchestration stands as proof that modernization is a growth strategy. Persistent’s partnership turned complexity into clarity and technology into a sustained competitive edge.
Accelerate innovation. Simplify scale. Lead with intelligence. Talk with Persistent.
