AI Partner Summit Reality Check: The AI Business Solutions Partner Executive Summit recap with Carol Livingston and Bob McAdam

Welcome to this ISV Talks special edition. Today I have Bob McAdam from TASLIP. Welcome, Bob. Thanks, Carol.

It's great to be back on ISV Talks with you. I know. You're getting to be a regular. Hey, I know.

That's good. Yeah, so today we're here doing a recap. We just last week attended the AI Business Solution Partner Executive Summit. Still too long, guys.

Event in Seattle, Washington. And Bob, you know, first, why don't you introduce yourself? You know, I said before we get on, who doesn't know Bob? Let's introduce yourself.

Okay. Bob McAdam, head of strategic partnerships at Tasklit, which is best in class mobile warehouse management for Dynamics 365 and their on-premises predecessors. Perfect. This year we both attended the AI Business Solution Partner Executive Summit, formerly known as the ZAPS Partner Summit.

Right. I think a lot of people still calling it that. Yeah, it's convenient. It rolls off the tongue better.

You're right. Rolls off the tongue. Yeah, I know. Uh maybe, maybe they could short it just the partner executive summit, PES.

Yeah, or you gotta have AI in there. You gotta have that first, right? AI first. Yeah, I know.

I don't know how you fit that in. AI. I don't know. Maybe I can shuffle it around and come up with a better acronym that we could use.

Yeah, so this year it was held. Do you want to go through the details where it was held? How many people attended? Sure.

So this is the third time that John Seaford and company have held this event. They started it in 2024. They got about 300 people at the Hilton and Bellevue, but this year they couldn't go back to the Hilton and Bellevue. So they ended up at the Hyatt Regency on Lake Washington.

I mean, you walked out the back doors, and there's Lake Washington, and what a beautiful scene. It was it was great. The weather was perfect and low humidity. We Floridians, we appreciated a few days of low humidity.

So, you know, back in the old days, Microsoft had inspired. They would kick off the new fiscal year with partners coming in from all over the world. And then, like the old convergence, they just discontinued that event, and that was it. So John Seaford, being a smart guy, says, Hey, we'll gather near the mothership in Redmond, and we'll get Microsoft to come out to talk to partners and ISVs as the new fiscal year kicks off because everybody's had a little time off for Independence Day and whatnot.

And it's time to start gearing up for a new fiscal year with Microsoft and talking about some of the things that they want to implement and some of the changes that they've made and whatnot. So they had their highest attendance ever, right? 450 or so at Lake Washington, right? And highest number of sponsors ever.

And and the hotel fits everybody. So it's it was a nice event. It's it's a long trip for we East Coasters for just a three-day visit, but it was still good. I I like I think a formal sales kickoff with partners only and not end users is helpful.

And that's why I do. Yeah, I I yeah, this is the third year that both of us have attended, the third year that Dynamax Communities has hosted this. Yeah. Um, co-hosted now by with Mark Microsoft, of course.

They're kind of the key speakers and uh content for those conferences. Like, like you said, what's new in the fiscal year, new incentives, new priorities. So it was always good to hear from Microsoft directly. So good timing at the end of July this year.

Maybe next year they I heard they might move that out to just a little, but a little bit. Yep. Next year, same location. Actually, I heard some people didn't get rooms in the Hyatt, and uh, I think they have the Seahawks, the Seahawks were the way in defending, getting ready to defend their Super Bowl championship.

So they were at the hotel. There were some big guys, uh tell you walk around the hotel. But yeah, I mean that location in this the Lake Washington, there's Boeing on one side, so we can literally look one direction and see Boeing, and they're working on planes there, and then just a few minutes down the road is the Seahawks Training Center, so it's a good location for Seahawks training. They're bringing in probably their new their new uh players and so forth.

So, but it was a great location. I mean, it was the bomb, I have to say. And next year I want to see a party tour, you know, like take boats out with the tour Lake Washington and come back. Yeah, so you could rent boats, and some people got there early enough.

They did that there from the pier or next to the hotel, but paddle boarding and pickleball on Lake Washington. I never seen the pickleball, literally, yeah, floating court on Lake Washington, yeah. And of course, you have to have a net because the pickleball does not stay inside of the little floaty thing, so yeah, people are out there fishing it out so they can keep going. Yeah, they had the fire pits that you could go kind of hang out, and they had in the little packages of spores you could get.

So it it's a really kind of the Seattle vibe. It was really cool. The other thing was we had hit this was Seafair Weekend, which former Seattleite than I am. It was very fun to be there and see the blue angels, the U.

S. Navy Blue Angels are always fun to watch, and they were there while we were having our conference. So we had a little bit of that boom sound as they're jetted across the flybys. So those jets are loud, and you could be in the hotel and hear them going by.

And by the time you come outside, they've long since gone past. It's alright, it's already gone by, but yeah, that was really exciting. Probably next year it won't be during Seafair. Seafair has those hydro lane races this last weekend, so the entertainment blue angels and others.

I actually saw a trick plane uh also practicing out there with a little smoke, and they were doing the dives and everything. So anyway, pretty fun. Yeah, it was great to be here. Yeah, location's good, you know.

We approve that location. It's a little further if you're going back to the mothership. As you said, Microsoft is probably a 20-minute Uber ride, wouldn't you say? So downtown Bellevue is more convenient and looking for you in downtown Bellevue.

All right, well, Bob, so what were your thoughts this year with AI business solutions? Where are we at a year later? Last year, the kind of big shocker was they saw uh somebody that was hosting one of the panels said, Hey, you know, if you're not in the AI, you won't be here in the next 12 months, 18 months. I was like, okay, so now we're here a year later.

Who's not here? And what progress have we made? So what what are your thoughts about that? Well, to me, there were a lot of things that were have changed, right?

Uh a year ago, it was just like you said, we're gonna we're gonna get on top of this quick, otherwise we won't be in this business. This year it's more like they're asking some of the larger partners, how are you dealing with all these changes in AI coming out so quickly? And how is it affecting your business and and how is it affecting outcomes? And and how are customers, are customers asking you good questions, right?

Because if you ask me, while partners have been inundated by Microsoft to get on board with AI and practices as of yesterday, customers are also hearing about it. Customers are seeing AI applications in real life at home on their phones and whatnot. So they're asking better questions about how it can affect their business, right? How can I take all this stuff that you people keep mentioning to me and keep talking about and make it work for me and my business so I can be more efficient or maybe move some of my really good users around and put them on different responsibilities and take some of these monotonous tasks away and let AI agents do them.

So it was a good discussion. My favorite discussion is the big panel that they have at the end of the first day. They've got some of the largest resellers in our space, right? RSM, Alithia, Velacio.

They got some of the big ones in there because you know Microsoft is hounding these people to get out front so that the other reseller firms will see what they're doing and follow along. And and that panel, this year they snuck a few ISVs in there, Truvio and Binary Stream Lock was up there, and they made it and they mixed it up nicely. So that's a good panel. And and Mike Gillis had a really good comment.

He's like, we're looking at outcome, we we want to be an outcome-based firm, which reminded me of the people that have tried to slay the timesheet and build blowers the past 10 or so years, right? TM, right? Yep. It's like, are we delivering value?

Are we delivering an outcome with AI that the customer is looking for? Right. And if we do that and they're seeing that that improvement every month, that could be a recurring revenue resource, right? Hey, we fixed this problem that you told us you had, and now you're gonna see improvements on your bottom line each month.

So we're we're gonna bill you for the value, and you're not gonna complain because you're getting so much value out of our AI-based solution, right? Savings or revenue improvement. I I guess I struggle with it. I love the idea of like let's get built um based on outcomes or providing value, right?

That totally makes sense. And what client wouldn't say, yeah, go build it and I'll pay you if you succeed, right? Like, what client wouldn't say that, right? As a bar and a business that's based on professional services, and as you know, professional services, kind of your major metric is utilization and hours and tracking hours, and making sure you're maximizing your team's time to an kind of commission base.

How do you how do you yeah, how do you run a business on that? What would I kind of like the idea though of maybe doing that proof of concept? All right. So I've got this, I do a discovery with the client, I find an area that, hey, if we made this process work 10 times, you know, or scale it up to 20 times, and you get us extra savings of dollar amount of X, then we'll uh you know, once we solve that, you pay us a percentage for the next, you know, whatever.

I like that idea. Let's do a proof of concept of how we can save you money and how we can provide an outcome. And I love that. I love that idea.

But and if you change your entire business from utilization, time of material, timesheets, right, to that. The logistical changes inside a reseller firm are huge. They're gonna have to change not only the process, but everybody's mindset at the same time and make money, right? They're all trying a lot of these firms are owned by PE firms and and they're expecting growth every year.

Yeah, okay. So predictable growth. Let's just say that. Like, how do you predict based on kind of a commission-based outcome business, right?

Like, yeah, I don't know. And then maybe they can grow that into their more permanent revenue model. I just don't know. Interesting, interesting concept.

I do think one thing I did hear is there's kind of a transition from last year was like be AI first, right? Be a frontier firm, right? And there's still that talk, but now I feel like we moved in how do we practically implement and use AI for customers. And I did hear that customers are asking, well, what about how what are you doing with AI, right?

And it did seem like a likely response from the partners would be, oh, we're doing AI, we could do an AI workshop or a readiness assessment or a technology workshop, and we can bring in Microsoft dollars and and expertise and think people are still kind of in that, let's do a discovery, right? Right. And see how we can use AI in your business or organization. So that that was the and you're right, they did have on that big panel a couple of the ISVs, Truvio, which is now rebranded from several different ISVs that are well known in the dynamics channel and the binary stream.

And uh Locke, uh is it Shahell? He said, Yeah, I think ISVs are in a fight for survival because some of the things that were filling those gaps using uh ISV could be maybe an AI solution, right? Very interesting. That's that's kind of a scary concept, isn't it?

Like, yeah, you know, well, and did did you not, Bob, see some new words from Microsoft on what what were some of those new things that like new concepts that they talked about? Well, well, they're talking a lot about co-work, right? It's not just co-pilot or co-pilot studio, it it's co-work. And that's um that's an interesting concept.

I do think there's gonna take some time for everybody to kind of figure out what that actually what Microsoft's trying to get across with that. Yeah, and it's a lot of working uh within that organization, providing plug-in connectors, using MCP server. So you got that security built around your data and your processes. So there's a lot of maturing, I guess I would call it.

And so understanding what co-work is. The other thing, kind of along with just in general, is understanding and and having to help customers understand when you're using AI, there is a the way that you pay for it is on a token basis, right? So if you say, Well, I'm gonna use 500 tokens this month, well, that could get used up pretty quickly, right? Some of these solutions are people experimenting, even the partners.

I think Mike Gillis from R SM said, whoops, you know, after like, hey, everybody go out and use this. We've got this now. And then a month later they'd pull it back, right? Because it's like pricey.

Yeah. A thing that might be kind of uh token optimization, I think is what he called it, might need to be investigated, make sure that clients and Microsoft too can help understand how they can kind of optimize the tokens that they're using around AI. So yeah, uh, it seemed like they highlighted some new firms. Maybe I don't know if they're outside the dynamics channel, but like they had lovable as a sponsor and on stage.

What what were your thoughts about that? Well, I think lovable, that's Olaf's company, right? And he was part of the he was part of the Truvio mix, if I'm not mistaken. So he set up a new firm and he's working with his old pals on and they had a was it a demonstration or an opt opportunity to have a panel together on that final afternoon.

Yeah, I I just sat in that uh session with Truvio and Lovable. And if you don't know what Lovable is, I I didn't, I got really excited because I met them first time, but I guess it's not a new thing. But you know, it's it's you know, you don't have to have AI technical knowledge to code in AI use basically that term vibe coding. So you're talking to Lovable and just playing English, and it creates and builds an application.

And yeah, go out to YouTube and watch some lovable reviews because I was like blown away. It's like he he talked about a lot talking about like a nurse solved a problem for a hospital where they needed to bill patients and they wanted to send the notes along with that bill, and it integrated two different systems, right? They're their billing system, and then their you know, their uh notes that are in the kind of HIPAA-protected environment and their uh medical record. So, anyway, yeah, some really cool things that are coming of that, or you want to build a website.

All this vibe coding, though, it sounds really hip and cool, but you know, it's frightening at the same time because it's uh governance topic doesn't always come up and governance AI is very capable of doing things and integrating the things, and we gotta make sure that certain data doesn't make its way, you know, into a large language model. It's just you know, private privately held companies are privately held companies. Yeah. Well, interestingly enough, lovable had a quote from uh CEO that he said, I love lovable, and they use it in their organization.

And Microsoft actually, I saw a chart at that breakout session. Uh Microsoft has the highest number of, I don't know if they call it tokens, but you know, the highest usage is actually Microsoft. They're they're their largest customer. Okay.

That's at the same particular. So anyway, so that was kind of fun to meet them. The other thing is, and I don't know if you noticed this, is I met a lot of more international people. So we had people from Ireland and the UK and Australia.

So what did you see that too? As far as like it does seem to be now pulling some global people from Quebec. Back in the old Inspired days, you had partners from all over the world coming to Seattle or Las Vegas. So they probably just needed a couple years for this event to get its feet wet and then come.

But that's good. I think international partners want to listen to Microsoft, want to work with North American partners and and have an event where it's just them and and their peers. So I glad to see that. The breakdown of attendees, again, no users, so it was about 35% ISVs, 12% Microsoft attendees, and then 53% was really the VARs slash consultant slash service providers.

Yeah. So yeah, or the system integrators and whatnot. Yeah, they're the ones that are the main audience for this, but I still like the ISV component. There's ISVs in the sponsor area.

You know, we're we're we're curious too. What's Microsoft gotta say? What are they telling the reseller partners? How does that trickle down to the ISV level?

You know, we want to hear it as well. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and one thing, and just the other part of going to these conferences is just listening to what partners are saying or just anybody, right?

The speakers and so forth, of course, on stage, but just having those conversations in the hallway. I I definitely picked up on some things, you know, like Microsoft itself is having a hard time keeping up with their engineering changes, right? So they have outsourced the preparation of materials for the training and so forth internally. So partners are having a hard time, you know.

Microsoft itself is you know trying to keep up with their velocity, you know, of how fast things are changing. It's exciting, but it's coming, it's it's it's rolling along very quickly. So keeping up with it is not easy to do. No, right?

And where are we gonna be at in a year from now at this conference? It'll be interesting, but I do see overall some progress, right? Partners are actually working with AI, with Copilot, you know, trying to help solve customer problems, which is what we always do, right? Yeah.

And a year from now, all the things that we're talking about on a recap like this will be a hundred percent different than than what we're doing now. It it's moving that quickly, and and everyone's trying to keep up, including the publisher. Exactly. Yep, exactly.

Things are moving, and there's a lot of probably pressures, right? With other AI being public as well as other ERP publishers, right? You know, they're everybody's in a race to to be first, right? All these all these publishers, big and small, are working overtime to bring AI into their ERP and and make it work for their for their ending or prospects, because that's a big selling.

Yeah, I think you and I saw that at Acumatica Summit earlier this year. They had their rollout plan for the next two, three years. So yeah, they're they're definitely thoughtful about it as well. So and you know, the other interesting thing, which we didn't touch on, is even at partners, I met like people that were head of VP, you know, VP of AI at partners.

And yeah, a new practice in the firm. A new practice, exactly, exactly. And there are plenty of service firms to help provide those AI workshops or AI development while partners are ramping up. So there seem like a lot of service providers are coming in and going, Hey, we can help you while you're getting your team up to speed.

So that's good. Tons of new possibilities and opportunities, no doubt. Yeah, very exciting. So next year, back at the Hyatt Regency, Lake Washington, in Renton, Washington, aka Seattle.

So if you haven't already, look at reserving. What's the dates again, Bob? August 3rd and 4th. And the website is bizaps.

summitna.com. Ah probably another 36-hour immersion. It's a Monday, Tuesday, so there'll probably be a cocktail party if you fly in on Sunday from as far away as I do, and then Monday all day long from breakfast through dinner, and then Tuesday breakfast through like mid-afternoon, and then fly home.

Like it's it's a it's a lot in a short period of time. It is actually. Oh, really? Okay, full days.

Okay, good. Two full days, yeah. We went from 24-hour merge immersion to 36 to next year, likely 48 hours. So hey, if the weather's as good as it was last week, I won't mind.

And the Seahawks won't be running around, taking up all the room and eating all the food. So, you know, we'll get our shot on there. Yeah, exactly. We'll have the hotel to ourselves, which will be nice.

Yeah, it is a very nice hotel and a very nice location, no question. Okay. All right, Bob. Well, thanks again for joining me on this episode of ISV Talks.

And you're always welcome back. And we'll see you next uh Dynamics Community Summit in Orlando Nashville. Almost at Orlando, in Nashville, Tennessee. That's right.

Bring your hat in your boots, and we'll see you in mid-October for a summit. It's gonna be first time in nine years in Nashville. And it's only been there once before. And if you recall, it was quite entertaining and fun.

So it's a summit event people do not want to miss in this channel. Yeah, agree. We'll see you there. Okay, see you there.

Thanks again, Carol. Thank you. Bye. Bye bye.