The Guided Ops Era: Why Observability Needs a Compass

For years, “visibility” was the holy grail.
Teams instrumented everything (logs, traces, metrics), following the seemingly reasonable principle that if they collected and saw more, they’d definitely gain visibility and thus, control.

Somewhere along the way, companies started moving the goalpost further and further, hoping that the next iteration of integration and ingestion will bring them to visibility.
But with their growing tech landscape and the multiplication of dashboards, an exponentially growing alert stream formed...

Most companies never got to the promised land; they instead got overwhelmed by signals asking for their immediate attention and grabbed their entire bandwidth. Competing priorities became the name of the game, and they lost their direction.

Customer Success learned it first (2020)

Gainsight (founded 2013) built an insight-driven customer success layer on top of CRM and product analytics platforms, helping teams reduce churn by turning data into guided action. The platform aggregates signals from systems like Salesforce and in-app usage data to generate a 360° health score for each customer, surfacing risks and opportunities in real time.

Its dashboards and playbooks prompt CSMs with next-best actions (such as scheduling a QBR or reaching out to an executive sponsor). These actionable insights enable CSMs to prioritize their day around the customers that need attention most.

By driving a 32% reduction in churn within six months of deployment, Gainsight demonstrated the power of proactive, insight-led customer management. It scaled to hundreds of large clients and over $100M ARR, attaining a valuation around $1 billion. In 2020, it was acquired by Vista Equity Partners for $1.1 billion, affirming the value of its model.

Lesson: Customer centricity isn’t achieved through dashboards alone, it’s driven by guided action that turns signals into timely, guided actions that drive higher retention and growth.

Human Resources learned it next (2021)

Peakon (founded 2015) pioneered a continuous employee feedback platform that acts as a coach for managers. It sits on top of HR systems, gathering real-time input from employees through pulse surveys and converting that feedback into actionable insights for leadership. Peakon’s dashboard shows managers exactly what their teams are concerned about and guides them on how to improve engagement and performance.

Peakon’s value as an insight layer became so clear that in 2021 enterprise software giant Workday announced it would acquire Peakon for $700 million in cash.

Lesson: Tracking data isn't enough. Organizations needed a coach to interpret that data and recommend actions which truly improve outcomes.

Cybersecurity wrote the playbook (2021)

Exabeam (founded 2013) built an insight layer for Security Operations on top of companies’ existing log management and SIEM (Security Info/Event Management) systems.

Enterprise security teams often drown in low-level alerts from firewalls, ID systems, and other tools. Exabeam’s solution acts as a “co-pilot” that highlights important alerts only and guides analysts in their investigations.

By 2021 Exabeam had grown into one of the top independent SecOps platforms, raised $200 million, and reached a valuation of $2.4 billion.

Lesson: Under mountains of data, success lies in guiding human analysts to the needles in the haystack. This Guided Ops tool augments existing security tools with an intelligence layer, which has helped companies vastly improve their cyber defense while focusing operator effort where it matters most.

Process Engineering caught on (2022)

Celonis (founded 2011) created an intelligent process analysis layer atop companies’ existing IT platforms, and grew into a multi-billion-dollar independent leader. Celonis provides a process mining platform that plugs into widely-used systems like ERP, CRM, supply chain and other enterprise apps, then automatically maps out how processes are actually flowing, finds inefficiencies, and highlights the next best actions to improve.

By 2022 Celonis had 2,500+ deployments worldwide, including at giants like Johnson & Johnson, Dell, and Cisco, and secured a $1 billion funding round that valued the company at roughly $13 billion.

Lesson: Operational coaches are needed where data and workflows are obscured by siloed teams and data points.

Health sector proved B2C was also interested (2025)

Livongo proved that collecting & showing diabetic patients their glucose numbers wasn’t enough.
Their digital coach helped patients reduce their medical spending by 21.9 %, nearly $90 per member per month saved.

Omada Health followed the same model, then scaled it. They've helped patients unlock long-term health benefits and cost savings, and just IPO’d at a $1 billion valuation (June 2025). Studies validate the correlation between program engagement and clinical outcomes.

Lesson: metrics and dashboards don’t change outcomes, being engaged in a coached program does.

The same shift is now hitting Observability

Datadog, New Relic, Dynatrace, Grafana... These platforms already show us everything.
Yet teams everywhere still ask:

“Which issue should I fix first?” - Lack of prioritization
“How do I fix those issues?” - Lack of guidance
“What’s actually costing us the most?” - Lack of clarity on cost metrics
“How do I prove ROI on all this data?” - This is the new holy grail companies are after, at the junction of Observability Maturity and Observability Cost

Observability is catching up on The Guided Ops Era, the moment where systems have become too vast to fly solo.

In the Guided Ops Era, success isn’t about collecting more signals; it’s about having a compass that points to what matters.

Introducing Digitam: Your Compass for Datadog

Digitam is the first platform built for the Guided Ops Era.
It’s a Digital Technical Account Manager that:

• Analyzes your Datadog setup
• Prioritizes what truly matters through an Observability Maturity Model
• Guides you step-by-step to improve reliability and cut waste

In a world where observability costs are soaring and dashboards multiply faster than insight, Digitam helps you move from visibility to direction; from “What’s wrong?” to “Here’s what to do next.”

Why this matters now

The data proves it:
Guided Ops cut healthcare spend 22 % (B2C Healthcare), deliver 32% reduction in churn within 6 months (Customer Success), drive multi-billion-dollar outcomes in operations, and help security teams find the signal in the noise.

The lesson is universal: Even perfect visibility fails without a guided response.

The same evolution is coming for observability: only those who embrace guidance will deliver best-in-class reliability at a lower cost.

Value comes from direction, not data.
Welcome to the Guided Ops Era.
Welcome to Digitam.