During the call, we will reference certain non-IFRS financial measures. Although we believe these measures provide useful supplemental information about our financial performance, they're not recognized measures and do not have standardized means under IFRS. Please use our MD&A for additional information regarding our non-IFRS financial measures, including for reconciliation standards, IFRS measures. I'd like to turn the call over to CEO, Bill Di Nardo.
Hi, Dennis. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us on our second quarter 2023 conference call. With me today, as usual, is Mo Ashoor, our Chief Financial Officer. As we normally do each quarter, we publish CEO letter in conjunction with our earnings results. It's available on our website, filed on SEDAR. You'll find a lot of my comments today, will be reflected in this CEO letter that I, I tend to circulate. I've also mentioned in the past, the interim quarterly letters are gonna be shorter than they have historically, and our, our focus is really gonna be on a larger annual assessment. Again, give you some insights and color in some of these results. We delivered our third consecutive quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA in Q2, despite some of the revenue being down from the previous quarter.
The team is highly focused on driving operating efficiencies in the business, and we took some additional restructuring actions this quarter and identified an additional $10 million annual cost savings, specifically identified and took action on in Q2. This will give us some room to benefit our product initiatives while driving the additional operating efficiencies coming in Q3 and Q4. Again, we have stated this since last year, we were committed to having a model of sustained profitability as we exited last year and continued into this year. I think it was to sustain, and we delivered on that as effective. Our focus this year is to continue to adapt these certain, uncertain economic conditions, ensure that we're sized to remain on our path to sustain that profitability.
The other key factor we've been related since the start of the year is being able to invest in the new products and recurring revenue streams. Our ARR of $43 million makes up nearly half of our revenue, and because of some seasonal consumption to our ARR, we also get it on a trailing four quarter or 12-month basis, and by that measure, it's the highest ever been at $45 million. We continue to work closely with our customers over the span years, we've been transitioning our PS work that we do at the beginning of a relationship into ongoing managed services. All of our processes and efforts this year in particular, have shifted increasingly towards recurring and product-based revenue.
I've been consistent in my communication around the macroeconomic headwinds that we've seen, and the second quarter, we saw this particularly impacted time to close new logos. Existing customers continue to form a pretty strong foundation, but particularly on the professional services side of the business, the new logo closings have continued to be late. While professional services revenue second quarter is down from the record high in Q2 last year, managed service revenue has grown each of the last six quarters and was up 7% in second quarter. Looking at our bookings, the areas that are showing signs of progress again, are in the recurring revenue in the managed service. Our sales pipeline had the largest increase in MRR and product-based opportunities, and our AR bookings of CAD 1.9 million is the best quarter since Q4 2021.
Now, this is being driven in large by supply chain management, and recently saw uptake of our Control Tower solution. A number of folks, and some of our investors and analysts have been able to participate in our, and they can see progress that's being made on, on this front. We're starting to see that show up in the both the pipeline and the bookings. What really pleases me is the, the, the demonstrated creativity in the go-to-market strategies with our teams. They are leveraging the existing customer base to introduce these products, and really what, for us, is important is just the insight that come from, customer-driven roadmap. Control Tower is a great example of that. We've had some really quick take in our existing customer base.
Just landed a new retail logo, a big global brand on a service, and they've been consuming the Control Tower and look like they're gonna be a major part of roadmap in that product with some already really insightful initiatives that are coming out with that product. Again, you can see the link between how we get started with this and our ability to introduce the products and start to sell products with them. The pipeline of qualified opportunities in this area doubled the data and supply chain between Q1 and Q2. We expect Q3 and Q4 to continue the progress on ARR and product connection. Now, on the professional services side of the house, we've continued impact with deal elongation, length of deals, and deal softness affecting the aircraft software and services industry. We've also seen a behavior around the procurement process.
Again, we've been talking about these days, but normally the things we've really seen again, is this taking longer to sign contracts. They say in, or it can turn into an extended procurement decision. Also because we are trying to introduce products and recurring revenue into the mix, it's taking a little bit longer in the explanation and the contracting around those. Now, the other observation, and we highlighted, I think, in our record booking last year, a very large client that gave us 4.5 quarters of visibility on TS. At that time, we thought this might be the new trend. We're seeing in this environment, it's actually close to the opposite.
We're seeing our clients are breaking the projects up into sort of measurable projects, essentially following more of an agile development principle with a shorter time to benefit. That, you know, core, very large PF bookings seem to be more of an anomaly than a trend. The trends we're seeing now is more discovery phases, more proof of concepts, smaller chunks, and as a result, it's taking a little longer to get the larger contracts. What I will tell you, though, it is, you know, we can finally start to see some of the things this past quarter that had been those discovery phases start to sign a larger contract. You know, again, what we're seeing is 7-figure contracts being preceded by 6-figure discovery phases. Those are profitable phases.
It's not that they're mining, but they are smaller contracts initially, and successful completion leads to the bigger contracts. We actually probably have our highest number of discovery phases and proof of concept phases going on right now than we've seen in our history. Okay, I, I, I said this earlier, we're seeing our existing clients continue to do work with us, and this will set the stage and the foundation for a return to growth. Again, we list some of the new logo delays to some of the market uncertainty. As the, you know, market continues to regain confidence and budgets open up, we expect to see the new logo wins. It's not that there are no new logo wins.
In fact, we had a terrific new logo in Q1 as the quantum of new logos that has been down versus previous quarters. Again, I mentioned previously the number of concept and discovery phases. We actually from this process because we believe that it is the pattern of behavior that we'll see as we make the shift towards product. Very much a show me mentality when it comes to buying software these days. Again, I think that show me mentality is also starting to happen in some of the TS work that we're doing. This is not a bad thing for us. It's a bit of transformation. It changes the way we manage our sales process and the way we demonstrate value faster.
I think these are good things for the help of both the business and our clients. We are working with the clients and getting the right issues, we've seen this process play out over the last couple of quarters with great extensions. A good example of that is our Psycho Bunny win last year. They started with a small project and since become one of our larger customers that are working with all fiber business units and leveraging a lot of the products that we've been talking about. This is a really good example of building deep relationships and intimacy on professional services and being able to use that to develop product roadmaps on how to best serve our customers beyond just the professional services. We saw this proof of concept, particularly in commerce.
We've highlighted, you know, that's one area that's been slowly recovering for us. That dynamic of POCs may probably have the greatest number of discovery phase and POCs going on right now in the business. A lot of their contracts really are these six-figure discovery, make sure the requirements are right phase, but they link to quite a large number of seven-figure contracts to take these products through to completion. There's a little bit of a pick up pipe on for our commerce team, and it's been a number of these projects that have been sitting on the five-year line, as we, we call that. As we start to see that open up, I think we're gonna see the turnaround that we've been expecting in commerce.
A number of these actually are also recurring revenue and next generation managed services. I think you start to see behind some of the products that we build, like Control Tower, are finding their way into our broader managed services portfolio. In data management, we had four cross-sell wins in the quarter, where we saw managed services, professional service customers. We also had a bunch of growth in data volumes, and it continues to be an area of relative impact for us. Again, that data is continuing to be a long category for us. It's also the biggest category for using our enabling technologies. We've talked for some time about, you know, the importance of enabling tech, whether that's cloud, which has been, you know, on a growth trajectory for many years, something we use extensively with the client, machine learning and AI.
Our management team is probably the most advanced of the, of the group, using machine learning and generative AI and solving customer problems. Again, good progress, lots of progress in the category. Where we've seen the most recent, the recent momentum of our product is really in supply chain. As I mentioned earlier, several ARR wins for our new Control Tower solution, and it was connected to a number of managed service wins. Again, there's been real progress with supply chain products, which have been our product day. You can see these are the traditional products you touch, feel. They look like enterprise software. They're not hard to communicate on what they do, and as a result, the team's had great success. We get more at bats and more opportunities to evolve their roadmap to longer success.
One of the things that was the question for a while, the PS business versus service product, we're really trying to demonstrate more clarity. The PS business is a critical business. It drives revenue, it drives margin and contributes to our cash flow, but more importantly, it creates client intimacy, and it gives us the information and the knowledge we need to affect our product roadmap. That part of our business is healthy, but not the least of which is for the client insights we gain from our client and our client relationships. Again, this is important. We're, we're gonna continue to push for success in that business, but ultimately, it's to drive product success. Again, I think we're seeing evidence that that, that is in fact working.
These two charts will point to the positive progress that we've made in our strategy and how we can drive value through the economic cycle. Our focus on gross profit and gross profit per share is a result of continued optimization on labor. We've been setting a foundation to expand margins as our digital products gain traction. Again, a number of the changes that you saw us make in Q2, you will again see play out in our two, three numbers, particularly around gross profit and obviously driving the EBITDA. We've continued to maintain our EBITDA the past three quarters, and our commitment is to get a place of sustained profitable growth.
The transformation we've been making on the way we operate, we believe is now reaching a more optimal level relative to the size of the business and the growth rate. The key now is to generate that growth in PS again, as we're growing product side. So you can notice, we had approximately $800,000 of restructuring charges impacting our lower EBITDA, but the annualized impact of that restructuring is closer to $10 million in annualized savings. One thing I'm not gonna do is give you guidance on just how much of that is going to stay the bottom line, because, again, our strategy is produce our own cash in order to invest in our products. Again, as our products are starting to gain traction, we're gonna be looking at investing more into them.
We have much more control over the flow in that and the IRRs than as you'll hear from M&A update, than we can get from some of what we're seeing in the acquisition marketplace. More, more about those financials in a moment. Again, this continued improvement for profitability is an absolute necessity and what we would consider the phase one to our phase two of our investment. I don't have a lot new for you on... Continue to be active with a number of reasons in the pipeline, but I will tell you, we've modified M&A approach and identify more opportunities. Again, what I can't... It hasn't been a lack of interest in the pipeline.
We've had a number of deals that we go through various phases of diligence, but inevitably, the gating hurdle that we get caught at is getting to a valuation that makes sense for us and for the counterparties. You know, part of the shift is how we find the right deals that are closable, and we are modifying some of our tactics in that regard. M&A continues to be a key part of, of mission and vision. We look at it as a way of building strategic elements of our product offering that. You, you will see less of acquisitions in professional services that aren't specifically related to some of the product initiatives that are underway. Again, the key, though, is finding closable deals.
The good news continues to be, we have cash on our balance sheet, we have a great line of credit and a good relationship with our financial institutions that will see that maintained. Probably most importantly, particularly through the last couple of slides, the EBITDA production is paramount to our controlling our destiny in this regard. Continuing to produce EBITDA and cash flow makes acquisitions possible in the future. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Mo for the review of our financial performance.
Great. Thanks, Bill. I'll start with the revenue result. It was the managed service revenue, which owns steady progress with 6 consecutive year-over-year growth. It demonstrates the progress that we've made to offset some of the churn and help us with our 89% net revenue retention rate. It points to all of us on the growth, organic growth we've seen through new managed services and products, and includes professional services that are now managed services, which is offsetting the declines of Oracle and license that's still within our business. We are also pleased with the progress we're seeing, as Bill mentioned earlier, the pipeline that we're building in digital products and feel good with the foundation we're building for success also for future ARR growth.
You can see professional services in Q2 at $12 million, which is down in comparison to the record levels that we set in Q2 of 2020. Some of it is the result of products being delayed and some were put on pause to reevaluate some scope. We also saw a reduced number of new customer, new logo wins, as Bill alluded to, which typically are there and important to replace some of natural ramp down on professional services. The volatility in this environment will likely persist for the second half of the year, as we've been describing. Bill said, the qualified sales pipeline remains strong for us, and we continue to remain focused on progressing and converting that pipeline to revenue in a manner that supports our customers in this environment.
If we go to the next P&L, gross margins were 45.5%, an improvement from the 45% we delivered last year at Q2. Managed services contributed significantly, so the gross profit margins improved to 50% in comparison to last year's 50%. We continue to remain focused on optimizing costs and driving more profitable recurring business. Professional services growth margins declined to 36% versus last year's 41%, largely driven by professional services revenue down, down, and decline, which is obviously resulting in lower utilization rates. With the restructuring and the actions that we've taken in Q2, we expect utilization rates to improve going into Q3, and improve our margins, and get them back to the 40% range. Operating expenses were $12.9 million.
As you can see on the slide, it includes $800,000 in restructuring, which is compared to a $14.7 million operating expense for the same quarter last year. This OpEx improvement of $1.8 million, which includes, again, the restructure charge as well. As Bill, you know, said, we've identified up to million of annualized costs saving off of the levels we were running in Q1 through various initiatives. Some of that was realized in Q2 to deliver the results to help offset revenue decline, and we expect additional benefits going into Q3 and Q4 through those initiatives. EBITDA was positive $37,000, which includes a $400,000 FX loss. With that FX loss is still a year-on-year improvement of $150,000.
While revenue contracted, we have adjusted our cost in a timely manner to continue to deliver positive EBITDA results and a year-on-year improvement. We'll remain focused, as Bill highlighted, it is critical for us to continue to manage our EBITDA and free cash flow. Turning to the balance sheet. The primary use of cash in Q2 was related to working capital charges, and there were some cash seasonal payments that did fall in Q1, but they ended up in Q2. This is something we pointed out when we recorded our Q1 results, so last quarter. Aside from this, cash used in operating activity was fairly neutral, including charges we took in restructuring activity. We expect adjusted free cash flow to improve through the second half of the year. We ended the year with $11 million of cash.
We have not tapped into our credit facility, we do not plan to do so until the right assets be available, and we are comfortable generating positive free cash flow, which we believe are on track to delivering. We are also in active discussions to hire, to renew the credit facility as it approaches maturity in Q4. While right acquisition opportunities might have been hard to come by deploy our capital, we believe our stock is trading at a significant discount to its intrinsic and future value. Those that have been following our filings and press releases would know this and would understand that we've been more aggressive in buying our own stock, and to continue to deploy our cash to NCIB at the right discount levels.
Year to date, July, we bought over 230,000 shares at an average price of CAD 2.47. That's over CAD 500,000 of cash deployed to the NCIB this year. I'll turn it back to Bill for a closing summary.
Thanks, Mo. To reiterate what we said all year, our focus is on things we can control, and that is to run the business for profitable growth. The team has done a great job in finding ways to operate more cleanly while making investments that sets the stage to grow product and recurring revenue business. We're seeing very positive leading indicators here. Customer behaviors have shifted to dividing projects to chunks, but total contract values haven't changed, and our qualified pipeline remains the largest in our history. Again, customer need is there. The timing for them to get their budgets released is probably one of the challenges, but nothing's changed, we believe, from the factor tailwind, which there's a lot of digital transformation still going on, required for companies to meet their objectives.
Through our orientation digital products initiatives, we have a strong position to execute against these opportunities and show value at each step. While M&A continues to be part of achieving our mission and vision, we will continue to approach to find and close the right deals at the right price. Particularly, while our stock is the, you know, one of the best deals on the market, it always is a challenge in deciding where best to deploy capital. In the absence of those opportunities, as Mo said, we'll continue to buy. For those that want to give us their stock back at better prices there, we will happily take it back. At the end of the day, we've been pretty consistent about the things we have said are important. We're continuing to execute on those things.
I think one of the biggest challenges that's in front of us is the transformation to a product company. Again, I'm really pleased with the way the team is making that transition. It will affect our sales cycles, without a doubt, but we're making great customer relationships. We're seeing the buyers of all the things that we do and giving us great insights into how we build those products most efficiently, effectively. I think we're on the right track, and I'm excited about the next 24 months, where the business can go. I'm also looking forward to the recurring threat for recession and everything that goes with it to finally be over, so we can get back to more of a business as usual environment.
Thank you for taking the time to attend our call, and I look forward to updating our progress next quarter. With that, we'll turn it over to our analysts for other questions.
Thank you, Bill. We'll now take questions from the analysts. To ask a question, please click on the icon to raise your hand. Our first question comes from Robert Young at Canaccord Genuity.
Okay, hopefully you can hear me.
We can.
Okay. I guess the first question for me would just be to dig deeper into, is this delay, is it pause, lengthen the proof of concept? Like, are there actually any cancellations? Like, are you, you know, other than the, the legacy Oracle ATG, like, are there clients that are disengaging or is this really just pause and lengthening?
Yeah, honestly, Rob, the reason I'm remaining as confident as I am, is we are losing deals. I think we are seeing pressure. I think we're seeing even deals we've signed where customers have come back and asked to restructure them or to look at, you know, different alternatives to break them up. I think we're seeing the pressure on our customers is really about justifying spend to the C-suite. Yeah, I would say some of the big changes, even internally, that we've been working through is just training and teaching our sales force around ROI calculations and business case making. You know, for a period of time there, those weren't as important to get deals closed, and I would say it's probably now the exception where that isn't being done.
You know, even some of the, the bookings from this quarter, the past, slid into this quarter, and we thought would happen quickly, they've come, but they come even four weeks later than we expected, because a CFO or a CEO injected into the process, business case gets made and it gets approved. It is, it's so far, all the evidence points to delays and tightening of process rather than cancellations.
Okay, okay. The proof of concepts or discovery phase, that isn't a competitive situation where customers are looking at you versus other alternatives. Is this after they've chosen Pivotree as a partner? Or maybe you just explain the dynamic there.
Yeah.
Like, how confident you are that those fall into revenue or it's just tiny?
No, I, I, I think this is, this is in situations where we've won and been chosen. We're seeing that the first phase is let's do a discovery, let's prove the things that we've been told as a client, in, you know, some micro-scale form, give us confidence in the outcome. I think one of the biggest shifts, to be honest, Robert, is I think we're seeing businesses that are becoming more cynical about promises being made by software vendors, not to solve a technical problem, but to solve the business problem. I think those are getting harder, to be able to demonstrate in proof of concepts. How do we prove that this is actually going to solve the business problem rather than just the technical?
The, the, you know, tests in the past might have been, can you finish on time and on budget? That those are increasingly becoming tertiary questions. When you're finished, is this going to do what we think it's going to do? I think that's part of the extensions. I think part of that is, you know, software for decades has been selling, the promise and has often met with disillusionment, and I think CFOs in this climate are taking less risk on those outcomes. It's, it is an extension of show me, don't tell me.
Okay, then one more from me, and I'll pass the line. The you said you have a commitment to positive EBITDA. What does that mean exactly? Does it mean you're going to, you know, seek cost reductions to make sure you're a positive EBITDA, or is are you saying that the $10 million cost reduction you might identify this quarter? I think that's brand new. I think you said that a couple times. Just want to absolutely confirm that. It's, it's brand new for everyone listening. What does the commitment mean?
Yeah. Let me just clarify, and Mo can jump in, 'cause to be clear, like, this is an initiative Mo has been working the hardest at with the, the leadership team consistently to size the business to where we are. I think, you know, we talked about this in the past. We were sized coming out of the IPO to where we wanted to be and to, you know, build towards profitability. We've said, and particularly in this climate, it's no longer acceptable, we have to be sized to where we are. That saying, again, I want to clarify, it's not identified, it's been executed on. We identified it previously. We were starting to execute Q2. We put the, the full throttle down on we need to get there now, and you see the outcome of that is the restructuring charge.
You can expect that that $10 million is now coming out of the business, and an annualized $10 million has come out of the business. You'll see it take effect over Q3 and Q4 as some things are rolling off. The reality is identified, executed, and expect to start seeing the results. Mo, I'll let you kind of elaborate further.
Yeah. I, I mean, our COGS and Opex essentially was running on a $25 million business in Q1. Looking at our Q1 COGS Opex, we've gone through and adjusted for reduction, right, and also EBITDA and reinvestment back in. Next, off of the Q1 levels, $10 million is coming off through, through those, through that level, again, throughout this year. I mean, again, forward, compared to $14.3 million, some of that benefit, it's still not on $10 million lines. Expect more in Q3 and four as those issues close out. Have been identified, actioned, and it's just the, the timing of when the benefits are to be realized.
I, I think the key to, to reflect on this is we've brought the business through one-time changes and a number of process improvements, some renegotiations with vendors. We've brought the business to what we believe is a sustainable profitability level. The goal will be, regardless of what the revenue outcome is in any quarter, that we sustain that EBITDA. As the business grows, we actually think there's not a lot of additional costs we're going to have to, to push into the business to achieve that revenue growth of, you know, the $25 million-$26 million a quarter level, which means our EBITDA should expand even further. The reality is we have better levers now, and we are being much more disciplined around maintaining EBITDA to the revenue levels.
You know, no more I don't think we're going to see many more one-time harsh changes, but you will see the business constantly adjust to what is the current revenue posture.
Okay, thanks. That's very clear. I'll pass the line.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Daniel Rosenberg from Paradigm Capital. Please, go ahead.
Hi, good morning, everyone. My first question was about the legacy business. I know in the past you've mentioned some people are hanging on and to your benefit, longer than expected. Are you still seeing those trends, trends or any changes in behavior?
Yeah, we're still seeing them. I think the, you know, we've talked about this in the past, Daniel. It's a very long tail. These are. What's left in that business is large contracts, generally, you know, billion or multi-billion dollar revenue values on these platforms. Some of them have re-upped for another two years. Some of them are moving to, you know, cloud. We're getting more of data, which will probably again extend the life of that, those platforms. Again, make no mistake, they, they are transitioning. The probably best news that we're seeing right now is the biggest and the most important ones are now working with us on a transition plan to us, taking them to that destination platform and providing managed services on it.
Again, you know, don't want to get way out on our skis, but I, I expect over the next few quarters, you're going to hear about a number of these customers that are, you know, staying with us on MRR, but changing the platform that they're running on. There's some really good signals in the commerce group that our net revenue retention should maintain decent levels, but on our platforms. It's always a thesis, but I think we're finally starting to see that come to fruition.
Then on the behaviors you're seeing on the customer front, with some, you know, delays or, you know, longer decision process, is there anything to say about the geographic mix of these customers? U.S. versus Canada versus...
They're North America. Remember, most of our revenues are U.S.-based, right? The majority of them are U.S. When you look at new logo delays, it would probably be U.S. again. We don't rely heavily on Canadian revenue, but our Canadian clients have continued to be the same Canadian clients for many years, and are continuing to spend with us. We've talked about this in the past, too. They move the spend, you know, I think we've seen probably the greatest movement between our BUs in some of our Canadian customers. Yeah, no, I think these delays we've seen are primarily U.S.-based.
Maybe just a couple points from me. On the product pipeline, it seems to be kind of continuously introducing new features, new functions. Any early indicators on or things you're excited about in the near term or coming down the pipeline on the product front? The last one, just one for Mo on the working cap. There was a kind of swing to the tier detriment on the year-over-year in that slide you showed. Just how should we think about working cap in the next couple of quarters? I'll pass the line, always.
You want me to start on the working capital product?
Yeah, sure. Go ahead.
Yeah, I, I think it's Q1, we fared significantly better on our working capital perspective, 'cause we were managing our, our payables a bit differently. This was, this was catching up. I think Q2 is an anomaly. If you look at the accounts payable line specifically, that's the one that was kind of anomaly. There was a big catch-up in there, and we also had the cyber payments from last year's restructuring, starting to close out and get cleared out as well. That was really the impact, and I would call it an anomaly in the accounts payable line. I expect that to stabilize and get closer to a better trend line in connection to our EBITDA and free cash flow metrics over the rest of this year.
On the product side, I would say, Daniel, the one that's got me excited, but again, you know, 30 days, is Control Tower. I mean, Control Tower is gaining traction. It's got a low price entry point. The ability to prove value is pretty quick with it. Part of it is just the business insight it can extract from the applications running underneath it. The time benefit is pretty fast. Part of what we've seen is, you know, where we've injected into relationships, and customers, start to use it, they are coming back with more requirements and requests, which is helping drive a more insightful roadmap on it. We're actually starting to layer Control Tower into other parts of our business.
All of our BUs are actually seeing Control Tower with the potential to drive the connective tissue between all of our business units. Some of those managed service contracts I was describing, you know, from our Oracle to next-gen switch, Control Tower is becoming a part of that conversation as well. I would say that one holds a great deal of interest into the group. I think it also demonstrates the most capital efficient product realization that we've had in the company. It has not been a capital-intensive spend. It's really leveraged existing client relationships and existing team to drive that one forward. In fact, it probably has the least invested capital so far.
I don't think it's gonna stay that way because the early traction we're seeing with it is inspiring a lot of confidence all the way forward. Again, just like on our M&A, we're really disciplined on our product stuff as well. Until we, you know, really feel like we've cracked the nut on understanding customer issues and challenges we're solving, and see real evidence of a take in customer journey map, we're being careful about how we invest dollars in product.
Thanks, Daniel. The next question comes from Jesse Pytlak with Cormark Securities. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning. I think in the past, you kind of indicated towards maybe 200, 300 basis points of gross margin expansion because of the large contract sizes that you were, were seeing earlier this year. Kind of shift to bringing things up into, into these proof of concepts and discovery phases. Does that, does that outlook change now?
I'll let Mo answer it because he's a beast on managing these things.
I don't know if that's a compliment or. Yeah, no, Jesse, I think we're, we're still focused on the margin, the 200 basis point improvement, so I think that's still, still on track. We're still heading there. Obviously, with the clear line of sight on how we can improve our Q2 results, given the PS margins, I, I don't feel concerned that we can improve it over the remainder of the year. Still, still on track. That doesn't change it. Obviously, longer-term contract does help with visibility and managing utilization, but the team still has a, a path and to continue to accelerate and drive that improvement for us.
Okay. Then maybe just one other question, just in terms of the, the delays you are seeing and some of the changes in behavior, is it, is it pretty uniform across your customer base, or are there any similarities or differences based on who your customers and customers are?
Ask that question again. I wanna make sure I answer it correctly, please.
Just kind of wondering if, if based on these, new behaviors and the delays, is it pretty uniform across all your customers, or is it really kind of dependent on who their own customers are?
You know, that's a really good question, because we've been plowing through our customer profiles and looking for similarities and differences. I, you know, I can think of now a few examples in discrete categories, whether it's B2B, B2C, you know, in a variety of different industries. I would actually say it's a fairly consistent behavior across all of them. Give you an example, Jesse. We, in our data business, with one of our biggest B2B, well-known, distributors, have had a consistent delivery over many years with them. We actually plowed through their data requirements that were expected to take a year. We completed them in about seven months. We did more than they expected. A lot of this has to do with our enabling technology. Project finished.
Then, you know, the team went to go and get budget to bring forward to continue moving through, and, you know, they got paused. They were told, "You know, you're gonna wait until the end of the quarter. You delivered this year's, and, you know, we're not looking for any more right now." They, they couldn't free the budget up. I think that, you know, as an example of we over-delivered in some areas, and, you know, our customers are excited about what we're doing, but they're still getting held back at upper levels around everybody's need and, and drive to improve profit. I think this has been a universal behavior change. In the industry, everybody is focused on bottom line, and it is changing people's buying patterns and behaviors across all industries.
I don't think anybody is not subject to a stronger profitability lens. You know, our take is, no, I don't think it's their end customer. I think it's, you know, who's in charge of budgets, and that's increasingly now CFOs on even technical decisions.
Okay. That's, that's interesting. Thank you.
Thanks, Jesse. Our next question is from John Shao at National Bank. Please go ahead, John.
Good morning, guys, and thanks for taking my questions. Regarding your ARR bookings this quarter, how much are they tied to the professional services customers, and how should we think about the future conversion from PS revenue to MS revenue?
Yeah, I think part of what you can't see in, in the numbers is some of the conversion is install base, and it's not gonna show up in big revenue and big bookings right now. Almost all of those product initiatives are linked to an existing customer taking a new service from us, like Control Tower. So you won't see that as quite as evident. The existing customer base is having a big impact on our ability to get our early-stage products getting used. It's a very strong link on, on leading indicators. Again, I can tell you just in one example, a customer's got five Control Tower installs, and they are looking at a 30x increase on the installation base in the coming months.
That was in a managed service and partially a professional service implementation that led to that. Strong linkage, in our opinion, John, and again, strong evidence that our initial strategy of use PS to get the customer, get them onto managed services and then product overlays. You know, it's never- it never happens as fast as we would like, but we are seeing evidence that that strategy is, in fact, working.
Okay. Thank you, Bill. One more questions. How should we think about your partner ecosystem at this point and any opportunity we can expect from that space?
I think that's a terrific question, and you saw us highlight a number of things that have, have started to happen, too. As we become more product-oriented, new channels are opening up for us. We've got a pretty strong relationship with AWS now. Our products are starting to move into their, their ecosystem and their marketplaces. We are developing joint go-to-market strategies with them. We're actually pulling some of our other ISV partners into a, a collective go-to-market, attacking certain verticals. It is changing the way we're trying to sell as well. Again, our history has relied heavily on our ISV partners bringing us into deals. We're now much more focused on changing that dynamic of identifying market needs and opportunities and going direct to them. I think it's gonna change the kind of partner relationships we have.
AWS is a really good example, but we're also in negotiations with a number of the large consulting firms who tend to have the kind of customers we're interested in, and now we have unique products to, you know, go to market with them. Early days, again, lots of try before you buy, lots of POCs with partners, and getting them better acquainted with the, our features and capabilities. I think this is the evolution. It's gonna take a little time before they're very productive for us, but we're seeing, you know, what you would expect to see in the early innings: interest, engagement, POCs, and trials together.
Okay. Thank you so much. I'll pass the line.
Thanks, John.
Thank you. I don't see any further questions, Bill. Just for the listeners on the call, if, if there's anybody that does have future questions for us, please, please contact us at investor@pivotree.com, and we'd be happy to get back to you. I'll turn it over to Bill to close.
Thank you again for joining our, our second quarter earnings call. Let us know your feedback after the call. We're always happy to continue improving what and how we report, and we really look forward to bringing forward our some good news in Q3, and we'll see everybody then. Be well.