Dell Technologies World: If there is a major talking point to emerge at Dell Technologies World this week it is generative AI. Dell CEO Michael Dell earlier in the week weighed in on the risks and rewards of generative AI. Elsewhere, the vendor announced a collaboration with NVIDIA to deliver generative AI to on-premises environments.

Now partners are being urged to adopt the technology – or risk being left behind. That’s according to Steve Brazier, CEO of channel analyst firm Canalys (pictured above, onstage during his presentation) who was hosting a panel at Dell’s Global Partner Summit at the event in Las Vegas.

Brazier urged partners to embrace ChatGPT in their businesses, telling them that their strategies from just a few months ago are no longer relevant.

“If you set your plans in November, December of last year, and you are still running to those plans today, you’ve made a mistake. You need to reset those plans because the world has changed. Generative AI is changing the world. If you don’t get on that journey today and tomorrow, you will be left behind by the partners whose leaders are more inspired and move faster.”

Brazier listed ways in which partners should be utilising ChatGPT in their businesses.

“Your sales team can use ChatGPT to ask about the customer they’re visiting that day: ‘Tell me what this company XYZ.’ In marketing, you should use ChatGPT for writing a blog or tweets. In finance, you should be reviewing your financial results and … you can even start to prepare quarterly reports.”

Customer service is likely to the first function that is transformed by AI, said Brazier. This is because you “could use all of your data to provide much faster and more intelligent answers to your customer support. Whether it’s technical support or information around delivery, payments or whatever.”

Selling AI Advisory Services

Brazier also said that aside from making their business more efficient, partners should be considering selling AI advisory services to customers. “This is a wonderful gift for all if you. One, because it’s going to pull through an enormous amount of spending on data, on storage servers, networking – Dell will be one that major beneficiaries of that. That’s a big opportunity in itself. Also, because a lot of the expertise required. What is it sensible to do with our data? That expertise of what to do with data and what to keep private and what to go public [with] will be a key battleground.”

However, the exec also addressed the challenges facing partners about adopting generative AI. He said it was difficult to recruit experts in AI as there are so few of them. “And those who are, are earning a fortune and probably working for Google Microsoft and one or two others. So, you need to get expertise fast, and recruit.”