As Lumenate grew, becoming closer to the customer became more important than ever, Dixon said. Before the shift, Dixon said that Lumenate would come onboard for a specific project, then relinquish contact for months until there was another project to be done. However, that had to change in the new model, he said.

"Now what we're finding is we are having to integrate deeply into the business, so you almost start to blur the lines of where [the customer] starts and we stop," Dixon said. "It's really that kind of trusted relationship that's developed over time."

Even the inception of the customer relationship is different since the switch, Dixon said. Before, cold calls were the name of the game, with marketing employing what he called a "brute force tactic" to reel in sales. Buyers today are much more informed coming into the sales conversation, Dixon said, so it's key to engage on use cases to show business value instead of focusing solely on product sales.  

However, taking advantage of the opportunities doesn't always mean being first to market with top solutions, Dixon said.

"I think that one of the dangers of a company like ours is you don't necessarily win by being first to market for a lot of things. What we have to be is fast followers," Dixon said. "What you do is you gather all that information from the marketplace and what you're doing and, quite honestly, you place your bets. You know going in that you're going to fail, and be okay with failure."

For example, Dixon said that even though Lumenate focuses primarily on the enterprise marketplace, partners were continuing to ask for help in mid-market and SMB areas. Lumenate went out into the market, hired some aggressive sales people and packaged the enterprise solutions for SMB. However, it just didn't work for them even though they "tried our darndest on it," Dixon said. The trick with risk, he said, is to not let the bets linger too long.

Despite all the shifts happening and overhauling the company business model in recent years, Dixon said that opportunity is abounding in the marketplace.

"We absolutely believe that the changing dynamics right now are a huge opportunity for us," Dixon said. "All of these dynamics are changing, for us we are innovating and disrupting the market with moves we've done, it's been a huge opportunity for us."