Turning Innovation Into Revenue: How Partners Can Lead the AI Conversation

We all recognize the opportunities with artificial intelligence, but how can partners help customers realize them?

As vendors compete to implement AI, customers are inundated with news and claims about its potential. This is true not only with communications technology, but across the entire enterprise stack. With so much noise, many organizations want to harness these new technologies, but data, privacy, trust, compliance, ethical, and accuracy considerations all give IT leaders pause.

As Catherine Behrenbrinker, CEO and president of Symplicity Communications, put it: "AI is here, and it's transformational, perhaps the biggest change in our history since the Industrial Revolution. The AI innovations are endless, and the speed of change is lightning fast. Businesses are struggling to embrace it and figure out how to incorporate it into their business."

Educating and Advising

That's where partners, as trusted IT experts, can add tremendous value by serving as "chief educator" for their customers. By helping customers navigate the possibilities and pitfalls with AI, partners can demonstrate their expertise and establish themselves as the customer's go-to resource for all things tech. This can only lead to more business in the future.

Frank Rogers, CXO at Arroyo360, shared how his organization approaches the conversation: "It's super important to rally around clear business cases when incorporating AI to ensure a company's first foray into the topic is successful. This is truly a consultative and non-transactional form of business, and the level of time we spend in education and research has outpaced anything we have done before. There are definitely best practices for starting, iterating and damping down any risk."

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Similarly, Behrenbrinker added that "incorporating AI or automation into a client's technical plan requires more than just selling a product; it necessitates a vision."

Partnering for Success

Part of that strategy is to look for vendors with transparent practices, or "explainable AI." Most critical here is maintaining privacy. A responsible vendor doesn't use customer data to train its AI models, nor does it allow third parties to do so.

Similarly, partners should seek out vendors that can explain their AI strategy in plain but not vague language, in addition to vendors that have the safeguards in place to ensure a privacy-driven approach. Since most customers aren't familiar with the inner workings of AI, a partner who can walk them through the nuances has a leg up on the competition.

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"AI is one part of an overall customer experience (CX) strategy and you must start by unpacking needs before aligning with the right AI vendor," Rogers said. "The best AI vendor will have a robust AI strategy, demonstrate serious technical investment and work to de-risk change."

Turning Innovation into Revenue

By guiding customers through this transformative time, partners can cement themselves as experts in cutting-edge technologies and the intricacies involved in implementing them. Unified communications, customer experience and artificial intelligence are coming together to create the perfect trifecta of opportunity.

Education is key. A strong AI vendor will also have product enablement in place to help partners understand and identify opportunities and use cases for AI, by connecting partners with product experts who can demonstrate real impacts.

"By utilizing skills honed over master classes and learnings that specialize in AI data security, agents can help clients navigate the complexities of automation and AI, ensuring successful outcomes and long-term benefits," Behrenbrinker said.

Benefits for All

As partner expertise and success with AI grows, their customers can realize the promises of new innovations. Many see the need to implement solutions now to stay ahead of the curve.

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The AI value proposition, economics and customer experience are improving at lightning speed, Rogers said. "In all seriousness, for the customer, standing back and waiting from the sideline puts them behind, a tactic that could end up more negligent than cautious."

It's a remarkable time in tech, as we all race to keep up with the rapid pace of innovation. Partners who can help their customers do the same stand to win in the long run, turning themselves into leaders in the space.

As Behrenbrinker put it: "AI is confusing and change is hard for humans. In all of this chaos, there is an opportunity for agents to bring calm to the AI storm."