A report published by the Futurum Group finds that artificial intelligence (AI) tools, applications, agents, and bots are being increasingly used to automate a range of tasks and processes across the channel, particularly in sales, finance, and partner management.
AI agents streamline partner operations
It’s still the early days, but AI agents are now being used, for example, to help govern and administer market development funds (MDFs). Rebate Agents are also being used to help manage payments.
Applications infused with AI are being used to guide partners through program requirements, which has dramatically improved response times by automating approvals. Meanwhile, deal registration agents are also helping to optimize processes in near real-time to reduce conflicts. Other AI agents have been trained to validate configurations, suggest alternatives, and provide pricing insights. They are also automatically setting up demonstration environments on behalf of partners.
Organizations are now utilizing AI algorithms to identify the most suitable partners for co-selling opportunities. This approach has led to improved closure rates. It also aims to create a more equitable distribution of opportunities based on actual capabilities rather than personal relationships.
AI gives partners new leverage
The potential benefits of AI, however, are not limited to vendors. Partners, for example, will be able to leverage AI to manage vendors in a similar manner. Partners can use an AI agent to identify which vendor is likely to generate the best margins on any given deal. An AI agent based on the requirements of a channel program might also surface valuable insights. For example, it could reveal the total cost of doing business with one vendor versus another. Partners should also be able to employ AI to better nurture leads and automate follow-up engagements based on their actual quality and the likelihood a deal might one day be closed.
Ultimately, there will even come a day when respective AI agents trained by partners will negotiate with the AI agents created by partners. It remains unclear how anyone will resolve the inherent conflict between their respective goals. However, it’s already clear that many of the manual tasks occurring millions of times a day across the channel are going to become less personal.
Less clear is the degree to which that may be a good thing. There are undoubtedly many repetitive tasks that can make working in the channel more tedious than others enjoy. However, when there is an issue, there will need to be some way for humans supervising all these AI agents to intervene. Otherwise, a set of AI agents pursuing diametrically opposed goals might continuously grind away. Without intervention, they may never achieve any meaningful outcome.
AI shifts buying dynamics
There is, of course, another important constituency that will be making use of AI. Organizations that consume IT products and services will also rely on AI. They will use it to negotiate contracts and evaluate the performance of IT service providers and vendors alike.
Developers and organizations still need to resolve numerous well-documented issues with AI, especially its susceptibility to hallucinations. However, at this point, there is no going back. A Salesforce survey finds 81 percent of sales teams are either experimenting with (40 percent) or have fully implemented (41 percent) AI, with 83 percent having seen an increase in revenue compared to 66 percent that experience growth without using AI. In time, there is little doubt that sales teams using AI will only continue to widen that gap.
In the meantime, channel partners should proactively consider how they can use AI to benefit their own operations. They should also consider how vendors and end customers might utilize AI to their advantage, potentially at the partner’s expense.
Photo: DauGyung / Shutterstock
This post originally appeared on Smarter MSP.