AI is a “blessing and a curse”: Skie managing director

Adam Troughear at the Salesforce partner told CRN Australia how they view AI as a solution provider and the challenges they see in the market.

When organisations implement AI, they are expecting a gain or efficiency that comes from implementing the technology, which Adam Troughear, managing director at Salesforce partner Skie says is a “blessing and a curse”.

Speaking to CRN Australia exclusively, he said it is a blessing because organisations want to have those conversations with him as a partner.

“They are having those conversations, but there is also an education and a level of maturity that needs to that needs to come about to be able to practically take advantage of this stuff,” he explained.

“Pretty much every board everywhere has AI on it in some way, shape or form. The unfortunate thing is, because it's not a very mature topic, it starts to become, in a lot of places, a bit more of a box ticking exercise ‘yep we've done AI’.”

He reiterated that AI is not a box ticking exercise.

“It needs to be embedded, and part of the way that you change, the way that you operate, the way that you go to market,” Troughear explained.

“It should be a very measured, intentional and incremental approach, so that you're flexing that muscle, but doing it in a controlled fashion, and setting expectations about what it will bring you the change, it needs to be controlled and incremental.”

Looking at the market, Troughear said AI is pervasive and it is everywhere.

"It's always been around, especially in the Salesforce space, it's more public now because of Agentforce and how much of a household name ChatGPT and all of these things have become,” he said.
AI, in itself, or in its various forms, has been a part of the platform and a part of what Skie has been doing for quite some time.

“What is changing now is people are more aware of it, even though they're not like definitely are not mature enough. A lot of companies are not mature enough to adopt it, and then you've got a whole challenge with change management and whatnot.

Not a “silver bullet”

With the boom in AI, Troughear likens it to the consumerisation of apps where everyone expected every website and tech company to produce an app.

“We're seeing the same exact thing happen with AI, where people are playing with it, and they're doing some really cool things on ChatGPT,” he said.

“They’re saying ‘this should be so simple to put into our business’, come up with a use case and for various reasons, because it's business process, compliance and restrictions within regulated businesses an expectation of an AI silver bullet is almost never met.”

Troughear said because of this, people drop into that valley of disillusionment on AI and call it a fad.

“It’s not, it is extremely powerful, but it just needs to be controlled,” he explained.

To counteract this, Troughear said “tackle the low hanging fruit”.

“Genuinely tackle the things that have the least amount of variables that will have an impact, but you can measure it and then get used to how that changes your business, changes your processes, get it right, iterate it, and then move on to something which has more net effect on your business,” he said.

The Salesforce partner was acquired in February by UK-based BlueprintX, a digital transformation house.

This interview was conducted prior to the Salesforce data breach.