Dicker Data: Partners are “not ready” for the new agentic reality

Speaking at TechX in Melbourne, Ben Johnson at the distributor gives attendees a wake up call.

As employees start to work and build more AI agents, partners need to expect that their future employees will bring their agents with them.

Speaking at Dicker Data TechX, Ben Johnson, general manager, marketing and strategy at the distributor, said partners are not ready for this new agentic reality.

He explained that workers are already telling organisations that in order to work at that company they need to bring agents with them.

“If that doesn't give you a cybersecurity coronary, I don't know what will,” Johnson said.

“Someone external bringing their agents into your workforce to play with your data. What happens to that data? Who owns it? Who manages it? Who secures it? And what happens when the employee leaves?”

He added, “We need to prepare for the new reality, which is where people will come with agents, they will come with workflows, and they will come with automations.”

As agents begin to have more of a role in organisations, Johnson said the headcount growth model needs rethinking.

“The seed economy, upon which our industry has operated for a long time, is now somewhat in question,” he said.

“Under the old model, your revenue grew when your customers' headcount grew, but in the new world, people aren't hiring as much. They're not clearing out workforces like it was predicted to be the case.

“But, they're not growing headcount as fast, and so we need to decouple ourselves from the headcount growth model”.

This means that partners need to begin to think about how they price for AI.

Johnson said, “How do you price for workflows and for automation? We need to start shifting towards outcome-based selling.”

He also noted that the user level won’t go away, but it won’t grow as quickly as once predicted.

"But on top of that, you have to layer and commercialise what the outcome looks like for your customers, with 7.2 million Australians, or 50 percent of the Australian active workforce, set to be impacted by AI in the next three and a half years, we need to move on this now, because the skills gap in our industry is actually starting to become a growth gap.”

Travelling around Australia and New Zealand for TechX, Johnson said he is getting several comments around AI adoption.

“These are some of the comments that I repeatedly get: my customers are moving faster than me. What if I get it wrong? I don't know how to position AI.

“The number is actually quite scary, 47 percent of partners are not actively positioning AI solutions. If that's you, the person next you is [positioning AI], and we know this is what customers want.

“Thirty eight percent of partners are hiring to fill the gap, which is a really pleasing statistic. So, hopefully, some of you are already on that journey.”