I’ve been meeting with so many challenges as I’m attempting to sell my clients to the benefits of bringing in AI solutions for their business. The biggest disconnect I’ve experienced is the users’ perception of value based on their experiences and what they’re being presented with by media outlets, peers, friends and family that utilize AI tools in their daily lives.
Eventually the majority of end users will truly understand the benefits and capabilities, but we’re a long way off from that.
A Familiar Pattern
I think back to the late 90’s and early 2000’s where reporters would grill online marketplaces like Amazon, believing they understood the value, but couldn’t comprehend the benefits when they can drive down the street (at the time) to a local bookstore instead. Not only did the public masses not truly understand the benefits of these solutions, but neither did the competition and neither did many experts.
In that case, public perception understood that you could order products online, but they didn’t understand what was happening behind the scenes and the benefits that would emerge. Their typical brick-and-mortar stores had a vendor > distributor > regional hub > store > consumer model, while the online providers were establishing a vendor > distributor > consumer model, cutting out the regional aspects of product distribution and making it easier for customers to get what they wanted sooner and faster.
Where We Are Today
While the benefits of AI are much different, it’s a similar situation in my opinion. There’s lots of ‘bubble’ talk, and while many users and businesses are reading about AI successes in enterprises and some larger businesses, many are meeting with what they would consider average success.
They appreciate the ability to quickly generate digests, review documents, or draft and craft presentations, and see the value in paying for the services, but they’re essentially getting a virtual assistant for a bargain price.
The Paradigm Shift
That’s where there needs to be, and eventually will be, a paradigm shift. Empowering your workforce with a bunch of virtual assistants is great but isn’t going to drive any significant growth.
If your workforce can accomplish 10 menial tasks in the time it used to take them to accomplish 3, that will certainly free them up to take care of additional menial tasks, get some breathing room, or in rarer cases, time to develop new and exciting ideas for business – but in most cases, you’re left with more refined materials and little measurable financial benefit. This aligns with most IT solutions introduced into businesses, which ends up being considered a necessary cost that must be budgeted.
Beyond Virtual Assistants
My goal isn’t for clients to simply adopt virtual assistants through licensing OpenAI, Claude, CoPilot, Gemini, or many others: it’s to integrate AI-driven solutions into their day-to-day operations in a way that they work seamlessly with the existing workflow employees are following.
Once implemented, the benefits should be organic and not require the employees to have to perform tasks themselves to get results; that’s just more work that takes away from the benefits of AI. There is absolutely a place for virtual assistants, and that is another aspect of implementation, and one I will discuss much more deeply later.
The important takeaway is that AI can be used as a system that works alongside your team without asking them to change and it can provide them with the benefits that could come by onboarding a new team of employees. The AI solutions can be viewed as supplemental data scientists, revenue planners, sales strategists, and so much more – not just a load of personal assistants. The challenge is directing it, so you are getting results that are making you money.
The Real Opportunity
I hope to help clients truly appreciate the surprising benefits of AI solution adoption for their companies and provide them with products that truly offer a quick and measurable return on their investment.
AI, when properly implemented, isn’t like other IT products. The AI itself is just a piece of the bigger picture, but once the solutions are architected and implemented (based on the operations and needs of the client), the impact can be immediate and the additional revenue being generated can be quite surprising, and better yet: getting them in place can be much quicker than most users can imagine.
As we work to prepare more products and demos, I’m hopeful I’ll be able to more easily communicate and show these benefits to them. In the meantime, we do offer assessments, consultations, planning, and implementation services. It truly gets me excited when the benefits click with clients and they are ready to take the leap that many enterprise-level companies currently keep as their secret sauce.
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