In this Channel Partners TV interview, Vonage global head of solutions engineering Nicole Colehamer summarized her Channel Partners Conference session, How To Cash in on AI’s Potential.

She offered partners several nuggets for ways to build AI into their business.

“There's definitely a lot of hype right now, a lot of noise in the industry, and it's difficult,” Colehamer said. “I think our job as a channel community is to be the proxy, or the translator between the AI, the technology, and what the customer actually needs. How to make the technology actually useful. The easiest way to do that is to start with what the challenges are we're trying to solve, and you back the technology into that. A lot of times, we find customers are doing it the other way around. They'll find a supplier they really like, and then they try to figure out, how am I going to bring this into my organization? And that's where we'll see problems.”

Colehamer said that when companies talk about lack of ROI for AI so far, that represents an opportunity for the channel.

“We're seeing a lot of companies say they don't realize the ROI on AI quite yet, but it's because they haven't started the measurements early,” she said. “So my advice to the channel community and our customers is to take that baseline measurement early, identify those use cases, and [ask] what are the business outcomes that we're trying to drive?”

Her biggest piece of advice for developing a successful AI strategy is to keep the lines of communication open.

“Talk to your customers,” Colehamer said. “Ask ‘what are your goals for this year? When you're thinking about 2027, what problems are you trying to solve?’ The customer is going to tell you exactly what their challenges are, and that's how you know the right direction to take them.”

Watch the full video at the top of the page.