Ryan MacDonald: Appreciate the call there. Maybe for a follow-up, on the product side, obviously great to see the investments on AI, generative AI, and then obviously skills mapping. From the checks that we’ve had out in the marketplace, it seems like that with AI, a lot of interesting functionality out there early days, but there’s still a hesitancy, with heads of L&D, CHROs, to invest in this area or maybe just not sure where to start. And on skills mapping, it’s something that seems like most organizations we speak to wants to move towards, but it’s not an easy fix. So, as you think about some of these product investments and then commercializing those, how do you start to get customers over the hump this year as you, more broadly go to market with that functionality? Thanks.
Greg Brown: That’s a really good one, Ryan. So, first I’ll say that the example we gave, the Genpact example, Genpact creating their own AI academy, we’re seeing that type of scenario play out in a number of our engagements. Another one is, just to give you a little bit more color and bring this to life, Emirates Integrated Telecom, Middle East, I think this is one of the first large organizations in the Middle East has developed their own version of an academy. They call it TechUp. And they partnered with us specifically to up-level the AI literacy in the organization with respect to chat GPT. And a key component of that was being able to validate that there are employees that acquired those skills through our validation capability.
Now, they started with tech skills first and they’re in the process of putting the plan in place to expand to management, leadership, coaching, and then the sales organization. So, although it may feel like, and you’re doing some market tests and touch points, that a lot of organizations, and they are, are in the exploratory stage, there’s also the progressive organizations that are much beyond that. They’re moving. And we believe that those are the organizations that are truly going to get a leg up and have the ability to distance themselves in their category. And so, again, we’re enabling that and, our content and the focus we’re putting on enabling our customer success organization to help these companies develop the right strategy in addition to the platform that we provide.
It really is one of the key components because, Ryan, the platform without the strategy, most organizations don’t know how to do this, right? They’re looking for, from us, they’re looking for as much of the strategic value and insight in terms of how to think about developing, a capability around AI in their company as much as they are the platform to do it. And we’ve invested heavily to enable our customer success organization to provide that strategic level of service and support up front to enable the organization to get comfortable with making that investment, starting that transition. So there’s a lot that goes into it. You’re absolutely right. And we’ve made some big investments and we’ll continue to make those big investments to help organizations take that step.
And the ones that have, are already starting to reap rewards as a result. And we’re doing that ourselves, by the way, right? We put everybody in our organization through a boot camp. And, a lot of the progressive companies are doing just that.
Operator: Thank you. The next question is from Josh Baer with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Josh Baer: Great. Thanks for the question. I want to stick with growth and margins. And thinking about it from a rule of 40 basis, I think in 23 it was close to 17%. And then in guidance implied, it’s closer to 12%. And so with that in mind, two areas of questions. First, what is your growth and margin framework? And how should investors, what should we think, what should we expect from a rule of 40 like metric from a philosophy standpoint? And then second, if you could talk through any areas of conservatism that are embedded in this initial guidance.
Sarah Blanchard: Yes, Josh, thanks for the question. our philosophy around rule of 40 is we are, working toward achieving that. For this year, what we see is, at the midpoint, it’s about 10% revenue growth, and that includes about three percentage point headwind from FX. What you have to remember is we are sitting in front of a massive opportunity. And organizations have to transform how they upscale and rescale their employees to stay up with the pace of change and to embrace AI technology and other things that can actually really help their businesses. And so, as you’re thinking about the long term opportunity, this is an investment year because of our position, because of the opportunity in front of us, we’re always thinking about balancing that growth, balancing profitability.
But the long term, our long term expectations around EBITDA margins have not changed. We are still committed to achieving EBITDA margin of 15% to 20% by 2027. And so while we work through some of these short term execution issues that are impacting the top line in the first half, we continue to invest in the things that are going to drive that long term growth, continue to deliver UB growth at scale above 20%. And at the same time, we are committed to continue to pursue areas of operational efficiency, which you saw us deliver against very meaningfully in 2023.
Operator: The next question comes from Terry Tillman with Truist. Please go ahead.
