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AI takes centre stage at GTIA forum
Members keen to get a firmer grip on deploying and supporting the technology
AI has been one of the main topics at the Global Technology Industry Association (GTIA) event for UK and Ireland partners in Dublin, with the industry group responding to feedback for more enablement around the technology.
One of the decisions that came out of the GTIA UK and Ireland Community Forum Day was to establish an interest group on artificial intelligence (AI), as well as on mergers and acquisitions to share best practices and member experiences.
Hollie Whittles, vice-chair of the UK and Ireland executive council at the GTIA, said the purpose of the interest group was to establish forums where questions could be asked and information shared by members at various stages of AI adoption.
“We’re just trying to create those safe places to have those conversations,” she said. “One of the aims of GTIA is to share and grow together in the channel and community, and that’s what we achieve through these interest groups and these forums and these discussions.”
Whittles said the benefit of having a varied membership was the ability to tap into different perspectives and approach a topic like AI from a few angles.
“I was on this AI panel, and the other two people on the panel were MSPs,” she said.
“Purple Frog, who I work for, are a data and AI consultancy, so we help people implement AI, but we’re coming at it more from a big data machine learning point of view, whereas the MSPs were coming at it more from an operational [perspective], where they have introduced automation, have signed up to this AI tool, and they were all about margins and costs, and saving money and reducing tickets, and all that kind of stuff.”
Start with the data
The advice that Whittles shared, which applied to every channel business setting out on a personal or customer AI journey, was to start with the data.
“It’s about the data in your business,” she said. “Before you start that AI journey, you’ve got to make sure your data is clean and safe, because otherwise you’re building a house of cards.”
Whittles added that the other message was to view AI as a route to improving efficiency and productivity, rather than as a way to reduce headcount.
“There’s a lot of attractiveness in things that they can innovate with things that they can automate and schedule, where they can empower people in other ways,” she said. “It’s not about taking people’s jobs away. It’s about making those people more efficient so they could make more data-driven, informed decisions.”
Whittles recently attended an AI-focused event led by prime minister Keir Starmer at Downing Street, and was encouraged by the commitment coming from the government to make the UK a leading global player in the technology. “This isn’t just a problem for the channel,” she said. “This is a thing that we’ve all got to work on together.”
The GTIA has been on a membership drive for the past year, and Whittles said forum events were part of the process of reaching out to more partners and sharing the benefits of joining the industry organisation.
