Icertis' New CEO Is Banking On Servicification And A Broader Product Suite

Forbes

07-08-2025

One of the most visible shifts AI has triggered in enterprise software isn't in what the tools can do, it's in how companies are using them to serve their clients.
The SaaS playbook that once prized point solutions and passive enablement is getting rewritten, and what used to be a jungle of single-task tools is being cleared out by CEOs aiming higher up the value chain, replacing intermediary outcomes with finished products, workflows, and, increasingly, services.
Taking the helm at Icertis this week, Anand Subbaraman joins this movement with force.
A former Oracle and BrowserStack executive, Subbaraman has spent the past two years as COO at Icertis. Now, he's stepping into the CEO role to lead a company that sits at the intersection of enterprise contracting, and sees a chance to expand what that role can mean. And in his decisions, we see a glimpse of where the industry is growing, empowered by AI.
'We're seeing the transformation first-hand,' Subbaraman explained in an interview before the transition. 'We've built the product. We've built the platform. Now we're building the service. We can capture more value for our customers, faster, cheaper, better than ever before. In fact, we must.'
And Icertis isn't alone in this endeavor. Across the enterprise landscape, agentic AI is pushing vendors up the stack. From Salesforce to ServiceNow, Amplitude to Anaplan, the dominant motion is clear even if not everyone has made out more than it's contours yet: software that once merely enabled work is now increasingly executing it. Companies are embedding intelligence to support tasks as well as using AI to take ownership of them, and in the process, many are also bundling more products and services into their offerings.
Subbaraman plans to push Icertis in both directions by going deeper into execution, and broader in the ways it captures and delivers value. In that sense, his company serves as a prime example of the servicificaiton of software we're rapidly undergoing.
How AI is incentivizing servicification
MBAs have always known that the money's in the outcome, not the tool. But for a long time, SaaS veered away from that principle, seduced by the scalability of product-led growth (PLG). Why bother managing messy workflows and non-deterministic humans when your software subscription page can rake in millions without ever needing an account manager?
Joseph Semrai, CEO of Context, the AI-native office suite backed by Qualcomm and General Catalyst, has seen this firsthand. 'We've seen the fastest-growing companies build on a PLG motion,' he says. 'But increasingly, the tools themselves are doing what consultants used to.'
Context's own approach illustrates the pivot. It wraps long-context reasoning and agentic task execution into everyday office work resulting in less clickwork, more done-for-you outcomes. In other words: software behaving like the service itself.
For incumbents with strong data moats and industry muscle, the temptation to follow suit is growing stronger by the day.
'We have a unique right to play,' Subbaraman says. 'Our platform has seen millions of contracts, across every industry. Our clients already trust us with core operations. Now we can go further, bringing them insights, not just documents.'
And this is where the bundling begins.
We're in a bundling cycle again
Marc Andreessen once quipped that the future of business is just bundling and unbundling in cycles. Right now, we're swinging hard toward bundling, but not in the old-fashioned, add-on sense.
In an AI-native world, bundling starts with intent. A task, a workflow and a goal are just the beginning. Then you'll need a set of agents, apps, and services to lock into one place to get it done without changing tabs on your browser. In this game, the company that owns that orchestration layer owns the relationship while the others just supply the parts and lubrication.
Subbaraman seems acutely aware of this.
'We're moving from user-based models to outcome-based models and as we do so, the clients want more from what they buy,' he says. 'But that shift is hard. Measuring outcomes means agreeing on what matters, up front. That takes new tools that need to be bundled in, and new mindsets for all involved.'
Icertis is an example of a company that is banking on both of the trends at play here. Behind the scenes, Icertis is already tailoring bundles by industry where its healthcare clients get one set of orchestration logic and its aerospace and defense partners get another. Nichefication makes the bundles go deep, while the outcomes are getting more horizontal and automated.
Now all companies like Icertis need to do is execute on the idea. Bundle, servicify, it all comes down to execution
'AI makes it easier than ever to build a product,' Raj Koneru, CEO of Kore.ai, tells me. 'What matters now is execution, and that's always been the hard part.'
Koneru should know. His company powers over 450 million AI-assisted interactions per day for global industry leaders across pharmaceuticals, financial services, and aviation. His view is that execution no longer comes from scale or capital, it comes from iteration. 'We're somewhere between semi-autonomous and full autonomy,' he says. 'And companies that get that wrong will stall out. Excellence in deployment is everything.'
Subbaraman agrees.
'The biggest challenge isn't the tech. It's the mindset,' he says. 'We've seen this before with the SaaS transition. If you're stuck in the old ways of thinking, you'll miss what's possible. You need to think like a beginner. Ask what's the outcome, and then work backward.'
It's a quiet but significant shift from the Icertis of old; a company once known primarily for digitizing contracts. Under Subbaraman, the focus is less on storage and search and more on execution and insight.
'Our assets aren't limited to the documents anymore,' he tells me. 'It's the intelligence we've built around them. It's the understanding of industry-specific workflows and the trust our clients have, as well as the positioning we have to leverage it.'
That positioning matters today more than ever. In a landscape where startups can swing big with agentic AI and retrofitted incumbents can pivot fast after an infusion of capital, execution becomes as much about momentum as having the most water-proof plans.
Whoever learns fastest wins, and the game is now all about pushing the limits of how fast organization can learn. And Icertis, with its seat at the table in some of the world's most complex industries, has a front-row view of how contracts move value and how AI can accelerate that movement.
But none of this works without clients stepping up, too.
'In the end, it's a mindset shift on the client side as well,' Subbaraman says. 'They have to stop thinking in terms of contracts as documents, and start thinking about contracts as systems and as strategy.'
Whether it's bundling, servicification, or full platform execution, one thing is clear: the companies that pay closest attention to where the value actually lies, and build systems to deliver it, will win.
And today, Icertis is betting that Subbaraman is the leader who can take them there.