AI and analytics solutions are bursting with promise to drive many business and productivity gains for those able to realise what’s possible – and enabling customers to harness this potential would be a landmark growth move for ICT resellers and MSPs, according to industry leaders at last month’s Channel Forecast insight discussion.
The potential impact of AI and analytics on how organisations operate is huge, and the benefits are not lost on SMEs. “Get on the bus now because every business is going to have to adopt AI and analytics tools,” urged Chris Huntingford, Director of AI, ANS Group. “People need to stop looking through the ROI lens and see how these tools are changing the way we work. When we first invested in Microsoft Office, we didn’t ask about the ROI on sending an email, but we understood the productivity benefits and how it underpins most of our businesses.”
Greg Easton, Head of Business Development at Tollring, believes that AI and analytics represent ‘a great opportunity’ to find new revenue streams in an increasingly competitive market. And he noted that the barriers to entry are lowering. “To combat complexity vendors have been creating affordable, out-of-the-box solutions that don’t require resellers to be AI and analytics experts,” he commented. “The challenge for the channel is to bake products into a shrink-wrapped solution that addresses the needs of specific markets.”
This requires a more consultative approach to customer conversations, observed Jonathan Mckenzie, Senior Contact Centre Product Manager at 8x8. “Focus on pain points and aligning solutions with business outcomes,” he said. “Go on a journey with customers and acknowledge that you aren’t just selling AI, you are selling features that solve problems by driving efficiency, customer experience and revenue growth. Be more consultative and you’ll start to see adoption and success rates accelerate.”
The right approach
According to Huntingford, AI is often added as an add-on service which he says is the wrong approach. “These tools solve real-world problems and that has got to be the key differentiator,” he added. “The more a reseller can talk about solving issues in a specific vertical the more successful they will be.”
Mckenzie underscored the point that this is not about price. “Cheaper solutions won’t be enough to motivate people to move in this market,” he commented. “Focus on real-world outcomes, understand customer problems and pitch what your solution can do to fix them. You will form strong partnerships with sticky customers that will come back to you as a trusted advisor and discuss other parts of their business development roadmap.”
Huntingford also noted that resellers don’t need to go into huge depth. “That’s our job as vendors,” he stated. “But by providing the education piece you deepen relationships and eliminate some of the fear holding back adoption. It will be good from an education perspective for anyone in the AI-verse to understand why these tools work the way they do.”
Mckenzie developed this point further: “I’ve seen customers purchasing these products wanting responses as to why they operate in a certain way, and their partners need the answers,” he said. “Resellers should train themselves on how AI outcomes work, what they can deliver and what their limitations are. You need that level of education to facilitate a consultative approach. To build on this knowledge base, work with vendors and set up strategic relationships with better integration to deliver strong use cases.”
The panellists agreed that the strongest use cases will reveal themselves in the SMB space, where rich veins of data are waiting to be tapped, according to Easton. “There is a misconception that AI is only for large enterprises and big system integrators, but there is a huge opportunity in the SMB market,” he said.
“Vast amounts of data are sitting there unused because it’s difficult to mine. AI is set to be the tool that cracks that open. Applying context and intelligence enables businesses to get better use of their data, address gaps in their portfolio, see issues within their customer support and service, and build on existing strengths.”
The first step is to ensure that data is fit for purpose, and McKenzie highlighted the importance of making data clean, accurate and contextually sound so that systems can be plugged in, learn, and give intelligent and actionable feedback. “The potential is huge, but you need to start small and work closely with customers to make sure the foundations are sturdy,” he added. “This is where you can start to make an impact across every level of their business. Don’t just jump in and start building a Large Language Model hoping it will work miracles because it won’t.”
Broad opportunity
What also became clear during the conversation is the remarkable breadth of the AI and analytics opportunity for channel businesses. Huntingford pointed out AI’s potential to boost existing UC, CC, CPaaS, voice and digital solutions. “An AI component can be infused into any product or service that is datadriven, and that is almost all of them,” he stated.
Mckenzie added: “By plugging AI into all these different data elements you have a differentiator, and you leave nothing on the table for competitors. There are so many ways you can start to put this together. It’s about digging into problems and making sure the data can deliver on the back of that. Imagine telling customers you can enable them to drill into existing data and see why they are experiencing churn despite no reported issues. These are insights that can transform the customer experience.”
Responsible AI
Another key area where MSPs can offer value is talking to customers about ethical and responsible AI. Huntingford noted: “This can apply to any tool, product or service to bring a differentiator to the market. Data-responsible AI is going to be top of mind for customers in the coming years which is a foundation you can build analytics into.”
Easton noted that ICT resellers and MSPs could prepare their sales teams by aligning them with the technology, making them receptive to new solutions and pointing them towards low-hanging fruit, such as customers that are doing even basic call recording and therefore have existing data they aren’t deriving significant value from. “The opportunity is to demonstrate the improvement that AI can bring through mining that data more efficiently,“ he added.