What Comes Next: Dealers Evaluate Best Future AI Applications

While we wrap up July’s State of the Industry report on artificial intelligence (AI), this is only the beginning of what promises to be an amazing, exciting and somewhat nerve-wracking journey. Speaking of which, earlier this week OpenAI revealed that an autonomous agent it created went rogue during a security test and hacked into AI startup Hugging Face. Oops.

It’s clear that the art of perfection, in itself, can be quite flawed. But when scaling a mountain, some stumbles are to be expected (hopefully without a free fall). So, as the adventure continues, our dealer panel takes a look at some of the key areas of business they hope to address in the not-too-distant future.

Erik Braden, CEO and managing partner for Braden Business Systems of Fishers, Indiana, has targeted two critical areas: inside service operations and small/midmarket cybersecurity work for the managed IT business. On the former count, Braden cited predictive maintenance and remote diagnostics for the equipment the dealer manages.

“Device telemetry has been improving across the major OEMs, and the AI models are finally good enough to turn that telemetry into something a technician can act on before a client even calls,” he noted. “The dealers who get this right will deliver fewer truck rolls, longer device uptime, and better service margins. The dealers who do not will get squeezed by the ones who do. That is a real channel-level shift, not a marketing story.”

As to the cybersecurity side, the small and medium clients are confronted with the same threat landscape as its larger brethren, sans the firepower/resources of larger entities. Braden believes AI has the potential to close the delta via better triage, faster detection, faster response and better “signal-to-noise” for the people doing the work.

“That ties directly to the convergence story this channel has been telling for years: print, IT, and security all under one roof,” Braden added. “AI is what makes that story credible at scale.”

In addition, Braden has particular interest in agentic AI—systems that can take action rather than just generate text. This, he feels, is going to reshape how a lot of work gets done in the industry.

“Service dispatch. Proposal generation. Account research. Quote-to-cash. The risk profile is different from generative AI, and the governance has to be stronger,” he said. “We are doing that learning now so that when our clients ask about it, and when our peers in the channel ask about it, we have a defensible point of view rather than a sales pitch.”

Agentic AI

Nate Schaf, CTO for Eakes Office Solutions of Grand Island, Nebraska, sees deeper integration with ERP and operational systems as the next major step. He notes the agentic AI movement addresses systems that are proactive as opposed to reactive.

“Instead of requiring a user to trigger a workflow, we want AI continuously monitoring pricing changes, purchase order delays, service disruptions, and delivery routing inefficiencies and surfacing alerts automatically,” he said. “We’re also building an internal, company‑specific AI assistant tied to our data repositories. The goal is simple: let employees ask questions in plain language, about pricing, items, customers, or delivery status, and get immediate, accurate answers. Moving from report generation to conversational insight is where we see meaningful transformation taking place for dealers like us.”

An area with huge potential, notes Sam Stone, president of Stone’s Office Equipment, is proactive service and operational intelligence. He sees an opportunity for AI to move businesses from reactive support to predictive support, on both the office technology and bottleless water systems fronts. These entail:

• Identifying service issues before customers notice them
• Predicting supply or maintenance needs
• Smarter dispatching and route optimization
• Usage analytics that improve customer recommendations
• Better visibility into workflow inefficiencies

“I also think AI has enormous potential in helping small and mid-sized businesses gain access to insights that historically only large enterprises could afford,” Stone added. “A 20-person business should be able to leverage data and automation like a Fortune 500 company without needing a department full of analysts.”

Stone is also keen on combining AI with operational data — not just content generation. “The future is not simply AI writing better emails. It’s AI helping businesses make better decisions faster,” he said. “That’s where the real transformation starts.”

Making Connections

Enhancements to service and customer support are focal areas T.J. DeBello, the vice president of sales for Houston-based Stargel Office Solutions. He notes clients expect fast answers, clear communication, and minimal downtime, and AI has the propensity to deliver faster issue triage, better internal documentation, smarter service summaries, predictive maintenance insights, and more proactive customer communication.

Sales enablement presents another opportunity for AI to shine. “AI can help sales teams quickly prepare for meetings, summarize account history, identify cross-sell opportunities, and create more personalized communication at scale,” DeBello said. “That could be especially valuable in an industry where relationships still matter, but customers also expect speed and relevance.

“The next area we are interested in exploring more deeply is how AI can help connect marketing, sales and service data. The goal would be to better understand customer needs, improve retention, identify growth opportunities, and create a more proactive customer experience.”

While much of the current value is centered around helping customers complete routine requests faster (service, ordering toner, checking invoices or getting information without having to wait on a person) Jake Elliott—vice president and CRO for Spectrum Technologies—sees being able to anticipate future needs as being essential.

“We see a lot of opportunity around predictive service, supply fulfillment, customer health and account management,” he said. “If AI can help us identify patterns, understand where a customer may be headed, and alert the right people before an issue becomes a problem, that creates a much better customer experience.”

There is also considerable value in AI helping the dealer’s internal teams make better decisions. “Not just by automating tasks, but by surfacing better insights across service, sales, operations, and finance,” Elliott added. “The more AI can help connect data from different parts of the business, the more valuable it becomes.”