SAN DIEGO -- “What are you doing with AI?” is a question every channel partner, vendor, customer and distributor hears repeatedly these days. Sandler Partners answered that question with its ScoutAI sales engineering tool launched this week at its annual partner event.

Tech services distributor (TSD) Sandler calls ScoutAI a personal sales engineer for tech advisors (TAs) that taps into the collective knowledge base of the TSD’s engineering team. It alleviates the need for TAs to hire their own sales engineers.

TAs send an email to ScoutAI@sandlerpartners.com to ask a question, describe an opportunity, forward an email from a customer or even attach an entire RFP and ScoutAI promptly returns an answer. While human engineers aren’t available 24x7, TAs can query the tool at any time.

ScoutAI will recommend provider shortlists, disclosing why they fit the job and why other providers were left off the list. TAs can also request rates, SPIFFs and other information for the recommended providers.

“Feel free to engage it like it were an engineer, and it will give you a response beyond an engineer,” Sandler Partners’ VP of technology Cesar Navarro said of ScoutAI.

“Say it's midnight, and a client texts you about a data center move and a security question that you don't normally have. You want to call an engineer, but you're not waking anybody up at midnight, so you forward it to ScoutAI. Five minutes later, there’s your answer. The same answer you could get at two in the afternoon.”

The TSD offered up best practices to help TAs use ScoutAI:

• Describe your customer’s goal
• Include number of sites, users and locations
• Share details such as budget, contract terms and preference for number of vendors
• Flag requirements such as compliance needs, deadlines or other constraints
• Forward or attach other helpful documents or email correspondence
• Add new details and ask follow-up questions.

Sandler CEO Alan Sandler referred to ScoutAI as a “super brand” of its previous Scout tool, which ScoutAI replaces.

“One more thing about ScoutAI -- there's no pay-to-play in it,” Sandler said. “The answer comes from our own engineers' experience, not from a provider sales pitch. No provider has ever paid us to show up in an answer, and that's not true everywhere in this industry. ScoutAI tells you what's best for you and your customer.”

Sandler also said the TSD will continue to expand its engineering team. “ScoutAI isn't replacing our engineers,” he said. “We just added one, and we're looking to bring on more.”

Eclipse Telecom founder Dave Dyson, a Sandler TA partner who attended the summit, said ScoutAI is a move in the right direction, but remains a work in progress.

“It has promise, but it needs more work,” Dyson said. “The challenge I think all of the TSDs are going to have is the access to information from their many providers and the quality of that data. I do think the trend toward speed and automation is a good one. There are going to be bumps in the road for sure, but it's way past the time to be thinking about getting more efficient as an industry.”