How can SaaS leaders use AI to drive growth without making workforce reduction the goal? In this episode, Kristi Perdue speaks with Parth Gargish, EVP of Business Growth at NetSmartz and founder of SaaSNxt, about building effective AI strategies that improve productivity and deliver measurable business results.

Discover how AI agents, workflow automation, data readiness, and human oversight can help SaaS companies improve customer experience, accelerate software delivery, and turn AI investments into business value.

Parth Gargish brings two decades of SaaS and technology experience, sharing practical insights on AI transformation, governance, and building AI-first organizations.

Connect with Parth: https://www.linkedin.com/in/parth-gargish-0803b897/

Learn more about NetSmartz: https://www.netsmartz.com/

Subscribe to Inside the SaaS AI Shift, presented by PowerMoves AI, for more insights on enterprise AI, SaaS innovation, and business transformation.

#InsideTheSaaSAIShift #AITransformation #SaaS #EnterpriseAI #AIAgents #NetSmartz

I hope you enjoyed this episode!
If you did, please like, share, and subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next.
- Kristi and the Inside the SaaS AI Shift podcast team

Kristi's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristiperdue/
AlterBridge Strategies website: https://alterbridgestrategies.com/

#saasaigovernance #aigovernance #aistrategy #saasleadership #aiexecution #ciso #airoi #aiforsaas #executiveleadership #aicompliance #saasgrowth #aitransformation #boardgovernance #ai #saas

AI is changing the SaaS business itself - from what companies build and monetize to what enterprise buyers are willing to trust. Inside the SaaS AI Shift is the executive decision making podcast for leaders responsible for what comes next.

Host Kristi Perdue brings more than 30 years of SaaS experience and credentials as a Certified Chief AI Officer (CAIO) and Certified Information Governance Officer for AI (CIGO/ AI). As founder of AlterBridge Strategies and creator of Power Moves AI™, she gets past the demos and into the decisions reshaping enterprise software.

Each episode examines the consequential choices behind the shift: how AI changes product strategy and the SaaS business model, where anticipated ROI breaks down, when governance must become operational, and what enterprise buyers will require before they trust AI at scale.

Through candid conversations with executives doing the work, the show surfaces the tradeoffs and hard-earned lessons behind those decisions. It is built for SaaS founders, CEOs, product leaders, and executive teams preparing to lead through a fundamental transformation of the SaaS business.

What happens when companies try to move faster with AI before fixing the problems underneath?

In this episode of Inside the SaaS AI Shift, presented by PowerMoves AI, Kristi Perdue sits down with Samuel Crescêncio, Founder of Lean IT 101, to explore AI transformation, agentic AI, software development, Agile, and the future of SaaS.

They discuss why AI cannot fix broken processes, how companies can redesign value streams before automation, and how AI agents are changing software development, engineering teams, governance, and organizational knowledge.

Samuel also shares how AI helped transform a complex software system and produce hundreds of automated tests in hours - work that could once have taken months.

Key topics:

* AI adoption and business transformation
* Agentic AI and AI-powered software development
* The future of Agile
* Value stream optimization
* AI governance and organizational knowledge
* Forward deployed engineering
* The changing SaaS business model

The key takeaway: AI is not the goal. It is a tool. Fix the process first, then use AI to accelerate it.

Guest:
Samuel Crescêncio
Founder, Lean IT 101
Software Engineer and Technical Transformation Leader

Host:
Kristi Perdue
Inside the SaaS AI Shift
PowerMoves AI

Learn more: leanit101.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/crescencio/

#AI #AgenticAI #SaaS #AITransformation #SoftwareDevelopment #AIGovernance #Agile #EnterpriseAI #AIAgents

I hope you enjoyed this episode!
If you did, please like, share, and subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next.
- Kristi and the Inside the SaaS AI Shift podcast team

Kristi's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristiperdue/
AlterBridge Strategies website: https://alterbridgestrategies.com/

#saasaigovernance #aigovernance #aistrategy #saasleadership #aiexecution #ciso #airoi #aiforsaas #executiveleadership #aicompliance #saasgrowth #aitransformation #boardgovernance #ai #saas

AI is changing the SaaS business itself - from what companies build and monetize to what enterprise buyers are willing to trust. Inside the SaaS AI Shift is the executive decision making podcast for leaders responsible for what comes next.

Host Kristi Perdue brings more than 30 years of SaaS experience and credentials as a Certified Chief AI Officer (CAIO) and Certified Information Governance Officer for AI (CIGO/ AI). As founder of AlterBridge Strategies and creator of Power Moves AI™, she gets past the demos and into the decisions reshaping enterprise software.

Each episode examines the consequential choices behind the shift: how AI changes product strategy and the SaaS business model, where anticipated ROI breaks down, when governance must become operational, and what enterprise buyers will require before they trust AI at scale.

Through candid conversations with executives doing the work, the show surfaces the tradeoffs and hard-earned lessons behind those decisions. It is built for SaaS founders, CEOs, product leaders, and executive teams preparing to lead through a fundamental transformation of the SaaS business.

What does it really take for SaaS companies to adopt AI without creating major security, governance, and data risks?

In this episode of PowerMoves AI: Inside the SaaS AI Shift, Kristi Perdue sits down with Greg Clark, Senior Director of Product Management - Enterprise Cybersecurity at OpenText.

With more than 20 years of experience across information governance and cybersecurity, Greg shares what enterprise organizations are really facing as they adopt AI and agentic AI.

They discuss:

* AI governance and enterprise cybersecurity
* Shadow AI and unauthorized AI agents
* Identity and access controls for AI agents
* Data security and over-permissioned agents
* AI adoption, training, and organizational change
* How AI is transforming product management
* AI guardrails, monitoring, and risk management
* Why companies need to understand their data before deploying AI
* How SaaS leaders can build AI features that deliver real value

This conversation goes beyond AI demos to explore the practical challenges of adopting AI responsibly while balancing innovation, security, governance, and business growth.

Connect with Greg Clark on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregoryclark/

I hope you enjoyed this episode!
If you did, please like, share, and subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next.
- Kristi and the Inside the SaaS AI Shift podcast team

Kristi's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristiperdue/
AlterBridge Strategies website: https://alterbridgestrategies.com/
#saasaigovernance #aigovernance #aistrategy #saasleadership #aiexecution #ciso #airoi #aiforsaas #executiveleadership #aicompliance #saasgrowth #aitransformation #boardgovernance #ai #saas

AI is changing the SaaS business itself - from what companies build and monetize to what enterprise buyers are willing to trust. Inside the SaaS AI Shift is the executive decision making podcast for leaders responsible for what comes next.

Host Kristi Perdue brings more than 30 years of SaaS experience and credentials as a Certified Chief AI Officer (CAIO) and Certified Information Governance Officer for AI (CIGO/ AI). As founder of AlterBridge Strategies and creator of Power Moves AI™, she gets past the demos and into the decisions reshaping enterprise software.

Each episode examines the consequential choices behind the shift: how AI changes product strategy and the SaaS business model, where anticipated ROI breaks down, when governance must become operational, and what enterprise buyers will require before they trust AI at scale.

Through candid conversations with executives doing the work, the show surfaces the tradeoffs and hard-earned lessons behind those decisions. It is built for SaaS founders, CEOs, product leaders, and executive teams preparing to lead through a fundamental transformation of the SaaS business.

Alden Do Rosario runs CustomGPT.ai, and a few months ago he made a decision most CEOs only talk about: he removed every management layer in his 30 person company. In this episode of PowerMoves AI, he tells Kristi Perdue what happened next, including a highly paid employee whose underperformance had been invisible for years and a low paid employee whose work turned out to be exceptional once there was nothing left to hide behind. Alden calls this legibility, and he argues AI is what makes it possible to see an organisation clearly for the first time.

The conversation moves into what CustomGPT.ai actually solves, why hallucination has to be treated like a security bug in a business context, and why he thinks most SaaS companies are still measuring the wrong things. He is blunt about organic search being gutted, about the AI cost debates he thinks will disappear within a year, and about why coding assistants gave his team a two percent velocity gain instead of the 100x everyone expected. Underneath all of it is the same idea: the technical problem is usually the easy part, and the human one is what actually determines whether any of this works.

Why removing management layers exposed both underperformance and hidden talent
What legibility means and why AI makes it unavoidable
Why hallucination has to be treated as a security bug, not a quirk
Why his engineering velocity barely moved despite using Claude Code, and where the real bottleneck was
Why he thinks the AI cost debate will be gone within twelve months

If you're thinking about what a flatter, AI native organisation actually looks like in practice, this one is worth the full listen.

I hope you enjoyed this episode!
If you did, please like, share, and subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next.
- Kristi and the Inside the SaaS AI Shift podcast team

Kristi's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristiperdue/
AlterBridge Strategies website: https://alterbridgestrategies.com/

#saasaigovernance #aigovernance #aistrategy #saasleadership #aiexecution #ciso #airoi #aiforsaas #executiveleadership #aicompliance #saasgrowth #aitransformation #boardgovernance #ai #saas

AI is changing the SaaS business itself - from what companies build and monetize to what enterprise buyers are willing to trust. Inside the SaaS AI Shift is the executive decision making podcast for leaders responsible for what comes next.

Host Kristi Perdue brings more than 30 years of SaaS experience and credentials as a Certified Chief AI Officer (CAIO) and Certified Information Governance Officer for AI (CIGO/ AI). As founder of AlterBridge Strategies and creator of Power Moves AI™, she gets past the demos and into the decisions reshaping enterprise software.

Each episode examines the consequential choices behind the shift: how AI changes product strategy and the SaaS business model, where anticipated ROI breaks down, when governance must become operational, and what enterprise buyers will require before they trust AI at scale.

Through candid conversations with executives doing the work, the show surfaces the tradeoffs and hard-earned lessons behind those decisions. It is built for SaaS founders, CEOs, product leaders, and executive teams preparing to lead through a fundamental transformation of the SaaS business.

Debra Logan spent decades at Gartner as a VP, Distinguished Analyst and Fellow before retiring and starting Logan Advisory Services. In this episode of PowerMoves AI, she and Kristi Perdue talk about what actually happens in the moment a senior leader's calendar stops being full, using what Debra calls her tale of two retirements to show why some people glide into that transition and others go off a cliff. Her advice is simple and blunt: if you're retiring on Monday, have a plan for Tuesday.

From there the conversation turns to AI and leadership. Debra argues that AI hasn't made governance different, it has just made the cost of skipping it higher, and that the leaders who struggle most are the ones who were trained to always have the answer. She talks about the loneliness that comes with senior roles, why she believes legacy only happens through other people, and why she still doesn't believe you should lay off your newest hires just because AI can do their tasks faster.

Why some executives thrive in retirement and others struggle, and what separates them
Why AI hasn't changed the fundamentals of governance, only exposed who skipped it
The leadership habit Debra sees as most damaging: surrounding yourself with people who only tell you what you want to hear
Why she keeps her newest hires on the team even as AI takes over their old tasks
Her advice for organisations governing AI across US and EU jurisdictions

If you're thinking about what leadership and relevance look like in the AI era, this one is worth the full listen.

I hope you enjoyed this episode!
If you did, please like, share, and subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next.
- Kristi and the Inside the SaaS AI Shift podcast team

Kristi's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristiperdue/
AlterBridge Strategies website: https://alterbridgestrategies.com/

#saasaigovernance #aigovernance #aistrategy #saasleadership #aiexecution #ciso #airoi #aiforsaas #executiveleadership #aicompliance #saasgrowth #aitransformation #boardgovernance #ai #saas

AI is changing the SaaS business itself - from what companies build and monetize to what enterprise buyers are willing to trust. Inside the SaaS AI Shift is the executive decision making podcast for leaders responsible for what comes next.

Host Kristi Perdue brings more than 30 years of SaaS experience and credentials as a Certified Chief AI Officer (CAIO) and Certified Information Governance Officer for AI (CIGO/ AI). As founder of AlterBridge Strategies and creator of Power Moves AI™, she gets past the demos and into the decisions reshaping enterprise software.

Each episode examines the consequential choices behind the shift: how AI changes product strategy and the SaaS business model, where anticipated ROI breaks down, when governance must become operational, and what enterprise buyers will require before they trust AI at scale.

Through candid conversations with executives doing the work, the show surfaces the tradeoffs and hard-earned lessons behind those decisions. It is built for SaaS founders, CEOs, product leaders, and executive teams preparing to lead through a fundamental transformation of the SaaS business.