Seven months ago, Jon Evans embarked on a new role as chief AI officer for Impact Networking, the progressive mega-dealer headquartered some 30 miles north of Chicago in Lake Forest, Illinois. He is one of our six panelists, each of whom dive into the good, bad, and ugly sides of artificial intelligence. “AI adoption is no longer optional; it’s an imperative,” contends Evans, who goes on to explain why (see below).
Keven Ellison, marketing vice president at AIS (Advanced Imaging Solutions), a Las Vegas-based dealer partner, is another of our virtual panelists. “Dealers that fail to integrate AI into their operations risk falling behind as the industry moves toward a more tech-driven, customer-centric future,” he warns. Adds Mark Hart, vice president of business development at office-tech vendor ACDI (a PaperCut print-management software distributor): “The dealers who embrace this shift won’t just sell products—they’ll drive digital transformation for their customers.” In addition to dealer leaders Ellison, Evans, and Hart, we reached out to a trio of other industry executives (in alphabetical order):
- Cindy Bradley, senior vice president & chief data officer at leasing partner GreatAmerica Financial Services
- Jim Coriddi, chief dealer officer for OEM Ricoh USA
- Cody Walton, senior director of dealer sales engagement at Konica Minolta Business Solutions
What has been the main impact of artificial intelligence on your business to date?
Evans: Simply put, it’s efficiency. AI has significantly enhanced how we work by streamlining workflows, improving collaboration, and reducing time spent on repetitive tasks. Tools that automate meeting transcriptions, generate next steps, and summarize follow-up notes have sharpened productivity across teams. Our support center has also seen major efficiency gains through AI-driven tools that optimize ticket handling.
Ellison: AI has had a significant impact on our marketing and proposal departments. In marketing, we’ve integrated AI-driven automation using tools like Make.com. By the end of this year, many of our marketing tasks—such as article creation, image development, video scripting, and social media posting—will be fully automated. Additionally, as HubSpot continues to integrate AI into its platform, we are leveraging those advancements to enhance our sales and marketing processes.
In our proposal department, AI is being used to customize sales proposals, allowing us to deliver more tailored and compelling content to potential customers. While AI has not directly impacted our customer-facing services yet, we are laying the groundwork for its broader adoption across the company.
Hart: AI isn’t just changing the game—it’s rewriting our playbook. At ACDI, it’s our behind-the-scenes powerhouse, helping us work smarter, not harder. By understanding our partners better than ever, AI enables our teams to tailor messaging, develop new engagement strategies, and eliminate language barriers, ensuring seamless communication across the Americas so we can truly meet our partners where they are.
Coriddi: Artificial intelligence has really motivated us to revisit the fundamentals of data management. Ricoh is taking the opportunity to strengthen our data ecosystem, reviewing and updating data quality standards and governance practices to stay aligned with AI advances. A key initiative within data management is employee enablement. Ricoh is investing in training programs to equip our employees with the skills needed to utilize AI tools effectively and responsibly.
Walton: The largest impact on our business [at Konica Minolta] has been the ability to enhance customer satisfaction. In some business areas we have implemented AI-powered chatbots, providing 24/7 assistance to customers for quick issue resolution and effective call triage. These intelligent virtual agents not only handle common inquiries but also escalate cases to human representatives when needed.
Bradley: The efficiencies gained from artificial intelligence enable us to enhance service levels to our customers and increase productivity of our team members. This has been completed largely by deploying AI to automate lower level, recurring tasks and to prioritize work that would benefit from a human in the loop.
What is the broader impact of AI on the office technology industry and its partner channel?
Ellison: AI is reshaping the office technology industry in three major ways: automation, predictive service, and evolving customer expectations. For dealers, AI-powered automation is reducing time-consuming manual tasks—from CRM data management to intelligent ticketing systems that prioritize service requests based on urgency. AI-driven predictive maintenance is another game-changer. Instead of relying on break-fix models, dealers are shifting toward proactive service strategies where AI analyzes machine data to anticipate failures before they happen.
Additionally, AI is changing how businesses expect to interact with their technology providers. Customers now demand faster, more intelligent support, leading to the rise of AI-powered chat, self-service portals, and virtual troubleshooting assistants.
Evans: The next major differentiator will be customer service transformation. Not in the misguided sense of full automation, but in how AI empowers service professionals to resolve issues fluidly, with instant access to the right information. The baseline expectation for speed and quality of service is about to shift dramatically.
Coriddi: One of the broader implications of AI is the increased complexity of delivering solutions. Systems integration and interoperability will be critical to deliver on the promises many AI products are making.
Additionally, AI is changing consumer expectations. Ricoh’s own experience aligns with research from IDC and other analysts that shows many organizations are expecting AI to level up their services experience. Whether it’s delivering a more premium set of features or reducing cost in what is currently being provided, users across all industries are expecting more because of AI.
Walton: AI’s broader influence on the office technology industry and its dealer channel continues to evolve, primarily centered around large language models (LLMs) and generative AI capabilities in the area of sales. These advancements are reshaping daily sales rep engagements through AI-driven tools such as automated meeting note transcription, CRM-integrated assistants that enhance follow-ups and provide real-time customer insights, and popular generative AI applications that streamline communication and personalize customer interactions.
Hart: AI is reshaping the office technology industry, but its true impact extends beyond automation—it’s transforming how dealers engage with their customers’ entire tech stack. At ACDI, we envision a future where dealers go beyond managing print environments to integrating AI-driven solutions across workplace software, security, and document management, taking a larger role in their customers’ technology ecosystems than ever before.
Bradley: In the near term, I believe the adoption of AI can potentially provide efficiency gains that will improve margins for the industry. While the impact on top-line revenue is still unfolding, there is great optimism that AI will unlock new opportunities for growth and innovation within the industry.
What have been some of the more monumental changes you’ve seen brought on by generative AI technology in the past 12 months or so?
Ellison: One of the biggest shifts is how GenAI has democratized access to expertise. Employees who may not have had deep technical or marketing knowledge are now able to leverage AI tools to generate high-quality work, whether that’s writing, designing, or even coding.
In our industry, AI-powered document management has evolved rapidly, making it easier for businesses to automate workflows and improve data organization. Another significant development has been the acceleration of AI in cybersecurity. The threat landscape has grown more complex, but AI is helping businesses proactively detect and respond to threats in real time.
Walton: When it comes to sales, having LLM and generative AI tools at your fingertips is a game changer. Whether it’s writing assistance, creating presentations, taking meeting notes or even helping with client and customer research, these tools make life easier. At the end of the day, we’re in the business of selling, and what truly matters is actively listening to prospects and customers. Generative AI makes that process smoother by handling the busy work, so sales professionals can focus on what they do best: building relationships and delivering solutions.
Coriddi: It’s incredible to think that ChatGPT’s initial launch was already over two years ago! We’ve seen recently that AI has advanced beyond text fluency to generating voice, music and even video that’s nearly indistinguishable from human-made content. These innovations are still in their early stages, but they highlight the potential for AI to transform entire industries in ways we can’t currently imagine.
Bradley: As someone who has spent hours poring over database code to locate why it was not producing the desired results, the ability to have a conversation with a generative-AI bot to troubleshoot a complex piece of code in a matter of minutes is astonishing! Our engineers have reported that by incorporating a generative AI tool, their troubleshooting time has been reduced by as much as 70%, which gives them time back in their schedules to focus on higher level design.
Hart: Over the past year, generative AI has completely reshaped how we think and approach our daily tasks. It has revolutionized marketing personalization, strengthening customer connections like never before. It has also accelerated our ability to process support tickets, providing valuable feedback to our software partners and speeding up software development.
Evans: Three major shifts stand out: a) Multimodal AI, which is the ability to process and understand images, audio, and text together, making AI far more context-aware. b) Advancements in reasoning models—AI that prioritizes accuracy and depth, referencing multiple sources and taking the time to generate well-researched responses. c) More adoption, perhaps the most important shift.
What’s next on the gen-AI/machine learning horizon for your firm heading into the second half of 2025?
Evans: We’re doubling down on AI-assisted knowledge delivery. We’re ensuring our employees have the right information at the right time through AI-powered support systems. We’re also advancing machine learning models for customer churn and employee churn prediction, helping us proactively address retention challenges.
Beyond internal applications, we’re expanding our AI services for customers. This means refining our enablement program, onboarding new partners, and continually improving how we help mid-market companies adopt AI effectively.
Ellison: As we move into the latter half of 2025, our focus is on making AI not just an enhancement but a fundamental driver of business outcomes. We’re refining our AI-powered outbound sales strategy, leveraging AI-driven insights to better target prospects and personalize outreach at scale.
On the service side, we’re pushing deeper into AI-assisted IT management, where machine learning will help predict and resolve IT issues before they impact customers. This is particularly crucial in cybersecurity, where AI will play a greater role in real-time threat detection and response.
Walton: Konica Minolta is continuously expanding its AI-driven capabilities, integrating new tools and advancements across multiple platforms to enhance our offerings. Looking ahead, we are preparing to launch several products that will further leverage AI technology to drive efficiency, automation, and customer value.
Hart: As we push deeper into AI, our focus is clear—empowering our technical support and installation teams to deliver faster, smarter service. We’re also rolling out AI-driven training platforms that simulate real-world scenarios, giving our technicians hands-on learning experiences tailored to the latest ACDI solutions and OEM updates. And on the customer side, machine learning is helping us listen better—analyzing feedback, refining troubleshooting guides, and fine-tuning service processes to create a seamless support experience.
Coriddi: As seen in Ricoh’s industry insights, we believe AI has tremendous potential in the workplace. Ricoh is investing in generative AI and machine learning to further enhance our document management and automation solutions. Looking ahead, one other area that Ricoh is exploring is agentic AI. This includes deploying digital labor that can provide real-time assistance, which enhances user experiences and boosts productivity. More than just chatbots, these adaptive systems learn from user interactions and continuously improve their performance delivering a more personalized advisor experience.
Bradley: Our focus will be multifaceted. From foundational elements for successful deployment of AI including governance and data management to continued experimentation with vendor offerings and conducting ideation workshops, we will continue to hypothesize business use cases where artificial intelligence can provide incremental business outcomes and evolve our use as AI and our knowledge of how to best use it grows.
What have been some of AI’s more daunting challenges—and how have you addressed them?
Ellison: One of the biggest challenges has been overcoming resistance to change. AI can feel intimidating, and there’s always a fear that automation might replace jobs. Another challenge is ensuring AI is used responsibly and effectively. With so many AI tools available, it’s easy to fall into the trap of adopting technology for the sake of it. We’ve taken a measured approach, ensuring that AI is integrated where it makes sense—whether that’s in sales automation, marketing efficiency, or service delivery.
Data privacy and security are also major concerns. With AI playing a larger role in IT services, we’ve had to be hyper-vigilant about compliance and ethical AI use.
Coriddi: Generative AI is a frontier technology that makes it very difficult to predict return on investment. Companies are leapfrogging each other month after month, not just with 1% improvements in capability, but sometimes with industry disrupting advances. Costs for the different AI subprocesses like training or inference can be very volatile. One of the important ways Ricoh is addressing this is by investing in AI orchestration. This allows us to put into place an ecosystem that’s ready to take advantage of the latest AI advancements with less friction. An orchestration layer also allows us to do scenario planning to model out projected costs based on specific use cases.
Bradley: AI has faced several significant challenges and addressing them requires strategic approaches. For instance, one major challenge is governance, which includes protecting proprietary and confidential information for both GreatAmerica and our customers.
Another challenge is discerning the applicability of AI software and matching it with organizational needs. Differentiating between viable vendor offerings and those that are merely marketing hype is essential. To address this, we execute limited-scope proofs of concept in production environments. Additionally, we adopt a disciplined approach to assess vendor AI offerings.
Evans: The two biggest challenges have been fear and focus. There’s still anxiety around AI—concerns about job security, lack of technical expertise, and uncertainty about how AI decisions are made. The best way to overcome this is transparent communication. We emphasize that AI is a tool to empower people, not replace them.
Focus-wise, AI’s capabilities are fascinating, and it’s easy to get caught up in exploring what’s possible rather than what’s necessary. The real challenge is ensuring AI initiatives are driven by business analysis, not just technical curiosity. If AI isn’t solving a real problem or creating meaningful value, it’s not worth pursuing.
Walton: As AI becomes increasingly integral to our products, services and operations, it also presents significant challenges, particularly regarding privacy, security and ethical considerations.
To address these concerns, Konica Minolta has established a robust internal AI governance framework, ensuring responsible AI development and deployment. This structure includes ongoing risk assessments throughout the AI lifecycle, helping to mitigate potential risks such as data privacy breaches, bias in AI decision making and broader ethical implications.
Hart: AI is an incredible tool, but it has its limits—especially in marketing. Lean on it too much, and you risk losing the unique voice and personality that set you apart. At ACDI, we’ve seen firsthand how AI can streamline workflows and spark new ideas, but we also know that true marketing success comes from human insight, storytelling, and real connections.
