TRANSCRIPT:
Brian: Today we want to talk about our report from the field Master B2B roundtables and AI of course was a big topic here amongst other things. we you and I this fall have been all over the place  in different markets around the country talking to and meeting with our chapters across multiple markets. We were in Cleveland, I guess that was about a month and a half ago now. Andy, there was a great group there. Any notable  folks or or , kind of comments on the the venue. Looks like a beautiful venue. 

Andy: Yeah, it is right next to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. That’s why we had the Cleveland Rocks thing there. But no, what we consistently find is that there’s some folks who either don’t have the budget for travel, they don’t have the time because they’ve got kids in school, whatever to go to big conferences on a regular basis. So when we go to them, they show up and so we have net new people that come to these things that don’t go to other things. But yeah, it was a really  really all three all three of the events I did were fantastic conversations. There’s one thing that kind of jumped out at to me when they’re talking about AI. First of all, the theme of this was budgeting, but was really prioritization, right? And the thing that’s upending a lot of this prioritization besides the macroeconomy is the emergence of AI. And the one thing that I heard and I I’m curious what you heard about AI is that people said we need to do stuff that can increase efficiencies. That’s the no-brainer application of AI. It isn’t this broad, , overarching systemic stuff where it’s going to change how everybody works. How do you define that as a proof of concept? But if you can, for example, make the salespeople more efficient, if you can make the customer service people more efficient by giving them more information, that’s what I kept hearing. 

Brian: I did a round table recently in Minneapolis and those you see the screen here see the fantastic group we had there and it was a lot of the practicality of AI is what came out to me. It was where people are actually using and there was descriptions of data  descriptions of the digital experience using AI to help with things like product recommendations and some some standard some things that we as e-commerce merchants have worked on for for years  but AI being one of those things that it’s almost it’s a democratization meaning that the folks that  at the top may not necessarily know where to invest but people at the with their hands on the wheel are experimenting with it. They’re playing with it. They’re finding places that can make their jobs easier  and in some ways  almost  accelerate the stuff they they were already doing. So it’s really more of a tool than a threat.  You did one recently in Chicago also, right Andy?  Across all of these different markets I think we heard some consistent themes and we started by asking it was all about it was all about budget securing your budget and we started by  asking the questions around making the pitch right so the first topic and the way we run these roundtables is we do three three rounds of discussion and people get up and they talk at their tables and they move to a different table. Our first discussion was about making the pitch to  to to get the investment necessary and the priorities and when we looked at and talked about the priorities certainly AI fell into that but it was other things like e-commerce platform investments, PIM investments investments in data investments in analytics these were some of the top things we heard. Andy what did you take away were some of the themes you heard from the audience that you were working with?

Andy: Well one is the perennial issue around data. Everybody’s got a data problem and nobody’s got a good solution for it. The other thing I heard was, and this was a bit inconsistent at times, but I’d say generally the trajectory was in this one direction of there was enough money, let’s say plenty of money in some cases to spend on AI. Funny enough, not a ton of money to spend on people. So, , people have characterized this as a no hire, no fire environment. So, for now, people are not necessarily being let go, but there’s not a lot of hiring taking place. I think we’re going to start seeing that in the economy as well. So, if you’re going to spend a dollar  getting an AI project up and running, apparently, there’s no money to spend on the person for that, but there’s a ton of money to spend on the tool for that. And I heard this repeatedly. It’s interesting. 

Brian: I heard the same things during the roundtables I was doing and was fascinating when you look at  even like for example that remember we heard Shopify CEO talk about this earlier in the year where hey you need to if you’re going to if you’re going to look to do something or make a hire you have to convince us meaning the management that AI can’t do the job which is interesting so it’s an AI first environment  and in fact what was interesting when we when we interviewed  Dr. Lisa a few weeks ago  about this topic. She also said it was the organizations that are successful successfully embracing AI are actually encouraging people to use it within the organization and upskilling the people that are in the company versus hiring new people to do it. So it’s more about hey work with AI and figure out how it can help you in your tasks and how it can become an asset for you in in in doing your work. So when we think about, , , the making the pitch piece, , Andy, which is our first round, , part of making the pitch is in learning, , AI and how it can potentially accelerate some of the things you’re looking to otherwise invest in. That’s something was very interesting. And I I I did hear some common themes though in the roundts I did, Andy, around making the pitch, which was there has to be some kind of, , real return to it. , , there’s still the CFO is still looking for nbers and a return.  an ROI calculation that shows a benefit back to the business.  there’s still questions of incrementality of things like e-commerce versus other channels. So there’s still a lot of sort of traditional thinking and process in this making the pitch process. Anything else you want to share on making the pitch? Well, you reminded me of something the comment somebody made in Chicago which everybody sort of laughed about  which is he recently this person recently purchased a software tool and the CIO said hey  where’s what’s the AI dimension to the software tool and he said well there is no AI dimension because it just it’s not relevant. He goes are you sure? and he’s like well why does it matter? Like well because I can get that approved much more easily. Are you sure there’s not some AI dimension to this? I mean, this is where it’s getting kind of fascinating kind of weird. Well, that and that’s kind of this topic of the second round of our discussions at these roundts, which was the impact of AI. And you just said it, , it’s really interesting. Every everyone’s putting AI at the end of everything to get funding, right? , which which is, , I mean, there’s something to it. But one of the things that came out at the round tables I I facilitated Andy was was that ultimately  the the the practitioners are looking for the solution providers to be addressing some of these AI tools. There was there was a t whole theme we talked a lot about e-commerce platforms because turns out that ecom platforms are the nber one thing that our our our community when we survey them are saying they’re investing in over the next year. they they want to improve, enhance or replace their existing ecom platform. And the and what came out in the roundts that I talked about was, , you should be asking your e-commerce platform provider, what are they doing with AI to make their the whole process, everything that they deliver on print and digital experience, process of publishing product, merchandising and personalizing products, marketing, all the things that you have to do with your ecom platform. How are they using AI to make those things more efficient, easier, and better? and hold them accountable to telling you because ultimately, , they’re a software company. They’re a technology company. Did you hear the same thing? Well, I’m I’m gonna laugh because we forget that these are companies, too, and they’re behind the curve in terms of integrating AI in saying platforms are all software companies are. Yeah. , I talk to these companies all the time and what I often hear is like, oh, we’re using Copilot, like Microsoft Copilot. like yeah that’s what we’re using for our I’m like okay well that’s pretty powerful or we partner with open AI and we haven’t really final it’s a lot of talk but I’ve already decided and I’ve announced it on this show that next year’s paradigm B2B combine is going to be different it’s going to be different in that I’m going to force these companies to tell me how are you now an AI centric not AI adjacent or AI in name only an AI centric platform because everybody else is transforming around AI. What are you doing? And you can’t just bolt some stuff in. Now, it is a fair argent that maybe it’s not relevant everywhere, but you just named a few things. Certainly, give me a module where it doesn’t really apply. Personalization, yes.  PIM, yes.  shopping cart, yes. I mean, I can keep going down the list. So, they need to systemically rethink their platforms. And there I’m still waiting for the AI native platform to come along. Somebody in his bath is his is basement who creates a basically a an e-commerce platform that’s AI at its core. What we have is a bunch of platforms that were non AI that are adding AI in which it’s like a hybrid car versus a pure car. I I don’t know. It’s it’s going to be interesting to see but for sure the platforms are behind the curve. Well, I’ll give you one that is native. It’s it’s Amazon. I mean, I I remember going back to my, , to the  Accelerate conference I went to back in September and my goodness, it was all about AI. We have a whole podcast about it where, , at the end of the day, Amazon, and I know it’s not an independent platform, but they are once again setting the bar for what it means to have an AI platform. And I’m not talking about the front end with things like the Rufus tools and search tools and relevancy, but I’m also more even more importantly talking about the seller tools like that the administrative tools that sellers use on that platform to create content to process returns to forecast everything related to the supply chain with fulfillment by Amazon. I mean, just go across the the entire workflow of working with Amazon. they’re adding AI everywhere and it’s setting a precedent for the rest of the market I think. So the last one of our rounds Andy was building your business case  for building your ROI case. So was interesting here is again as I mentioned a lot of these fundamentals that we’ve always talked about seem to remain in place but also and you’ve mentioned this from some of the the market or some of the round tables you went to if you got AI attached to it in some cases people are just sort of getting dollars and they don’t know what to spend them on right or or sort of do you even need an ROI case if you’re talking about an AI centered investment what are your thoughts or yes that’s true or you’ve got companies CFO saying, “I I won’t make any investments unless I see a clear ROI.” Well, in some cases, AI is such a change to how people operate that we’re not going to know what the actual ROI is until we execute on the proof of concept because it’s going to change how people work. It’s going to change the cost of things. And so, that part is hard to do. And so I I’m sort of of the camp that it’s better to do it than to do the business case around AI because it’s easy enough to do, but I heard many people say when they go to their management teams, these guys are saying things like, “We want to see an ROI case even around AOI. They’ll give you the money, but they need to see the ROI.” It’s like, well, I don’t have an ROI yet because I haven’t done it. So there’s a bit of that trap that people are falling into. In fact, I had some people describe it as almost like a Shark Tank like circumstance within the company where somebody’s going to get some funding and they’re all going to line up. Whoever’s got the best AI story with a madeup business case, which by the way, a lot of people they’re just making this stuff up. Let’s break it down, though. I mean, I’m reflecting back on the conversation we had a few weeks ago again with Dr. Lisa where she was talking about companies that are being successful with AI are thinking about the customer first and thinking about real use cases and breaking it down to practical use cases. So I mean think about I I heard cases of companies using AI for for very practical things whether that’s a chatbot or automating certain processes within the organization or even getting  content started I mean or data normalization I mean there’s there there are practical steps that companies can take with AI but the key is breaking it down to something that’s actually useful customer centric or and that customer can be internal too. It can be a traditional work process you’re trying to improve. But that was her advice was – this sort of nebulous, hey, AI as an investment is not the right approach. You’ve got to break it down to things that are really  practical and business use case-centric.