We expected generative AI to impact our pricing; clients assume content professionals will use the latest tools, and that Steyer’s pricing will reflect any new efficiencies. Our pricing has indeed needed to adjust, and our team has risen brilliantly to the challenge of finding those necessary efficiencies through the use of generative AI—particularly as a sounding board and process assistant. (See “Why We’re Not Anti-AI” for more from me on this.) We’ve brought these new capabilities to clients to help them get more done with their existing budgets, and those capabilities have also opened up entirely new business opportunities for Steyer.
We also expected less predictability of client budgets, and potentially fewer open-ended, retainer-type engagements—and this is indeed where we find ourselves now. These tough realities have us rethinking how to forecast in such an environment.
We expected to have fewer total jobs than in years past, given the impact of AI on the market, and this is the case. We’d been running with well over 100 people on payroll, and now we appear to be stabilizing at roughly 80 to 85. The reduction has come both on our ops team and our client-facing consultant teams.
We expected our internal automation efforts to enable us to remain competitive in a changing market, and that, too, has come to pass. We’ve overhauled almost every system we use, from top to bottom, to make it possible for fewer people to manage more detail, more accurately—and we have our eyes peeled for ways to make the most of our new systems.
We expected that communicating more with our employees would help reduce market-related anxiety by closing information gaps. In some ways, yes: more comms in more places as a strategy has brought us more connection, helped us through tough situations, and given us another way to hold ourselves accountable for our promises. But it’s certainly not been a magic bullet; financial insecurity is painful, no matter how much information you have from your employer.
Finally, we expected a pick-up in business after a long run of tech industry spending cuts. The good news: it finally arrived last month, and we’re delighted to see some of our clients able to spend again, even as tech layoffs continue through the end of the year. We try hard not to count our chickens before they hatch, but our pipeline looks really healthy—and as our Director of Content Services, Josh Krenz, likes to chant, we are loving the Big Q4 Energy.
We’ve got a couple more months to go before we’re officially in our fourth decade as a company. We’re making every day count, with a major focus on client outreach and improving our employee experience in the context of this new, leaner environment. (More on employee experience from Josh and me in a future post!)
And you? Have your predictions for the year come to pass? What are you hoping for from the final months of 2024? I’d love to hear from you.
Thanks,
Katelyn
Photo by NordWood Themes on Unsplash