Sanjib Sahoo knows there’s a lot of allure to AI these days, but he cautions MSPs to be wary and not fall for the hype.
Rather, AI is all about agility and improving the experience for everyone, said the executive vice president and chief digital officer of Ingram Micro. When applied thoughtfully and strategically, MSPs can leverage AI to create significant value for their clients and differentiate themselves in a competitive market.
Sanjib Sahoo
“My message to channel partners in this business is to have an AI playbook strategy with your customers to understand their biggest problems, understand the capabilities of AI, and use it to solve those problems.”
Sahoo sat down with ChannelPro during the recent Channel Partners Conference & Expo in Las Vegas to share some insights on how MSPs can effectively integrate AI into their business operations. Below is an edited version of the conversation:
ChannelPro: How can MSPs effectively use AI as part of their service offerings?
Sahoo: Don’t sell AI but sell solutions to problems using AI and the capabilities of AI. Many companies today are trying to start with an AI story and try to fit their business into the AI story. That’s a recipe for failure because it’s too big. But if you do the opposite, first have your business story/strategy and fit AI into it, that’s a much better thing.
ChannelPro: What are some common pitfalls MSPs should avoid when implementing AI solutions?
Sahoo: Don’t go too big. Take the problems into bite-sized, solvable chunks that you can use to solve AI. Then, go with that strategy with your customers to say, “If you take this problem, I think you need more compute power so we can solve with this,” or, “If you take this problem, I think you put your data from RPS on the cloud. Let’s have our data on the cloud strategy. So, try to take that abstract of the nebulous AI to a bite-sized problem solution that’s important.
ChannelPro: What are some ways to leverage AI successfully in the MSP space?
Sahoo: I ask the question: Are you AI led or AI fed? You can use AI to feed your sales funnel, or you can use it to gain insights that will help gain value. … The question should not be [how do I] use AI, but how do I use AI to solve a problem? We are trying to force AI to show that we are using AI, but if the problems in distribution or industry still exist, then it’s not helping anyone.
