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While at ChannelCon, we caught up with Moovila CEO Mike Psenka and discussed the company’s ongoing channel evangelism and why AI, in its current form, will only be able to do so much in the project management space.
Moovila still ahead of the curve for some, but early adopters all-in on platform
Moovila’s platform was built initially for organizations in project-heavy industries to provide insights into workflows, timelines, and potential issues within projects coming to completion efficiently.
Over the past year the company has added integrations with leading PSAs and built out capabilities to ensure the platform can work for MSPs, some of whom are now leveraging it not only for internal operations but also to offer strategic project management services to clients. Psenka says this will give providers a differentiated offering a time when when AI might be cutting into their more traditional services.
“The idea of a larger, structured engagement isn’t going to go away. Now, what’s the rub on that? The rub here is that the idea of PMOs and project management, that’s an area where MSPs have historically not been great in,” Psenka said. “All of a sudden now we’re going, hey you have to build out these capabilities and competencies and if you do, the good news is you’ll be more immune to AI displacement.”
“The larger MSPs already want to do it, and they get it. For them, they have economies of scale and they see it and realize it’s about margins and EBITDA.”
Psenka freely acknowledges that not all MSPs are adopting AI at the same pace, and there are limiting factors for providers of different sizes and experience levels. Still, he doesn’t see a future in which you can operate in the channel without an awareness of how an MSPs’ offerings slot into their clients’ AI deployments.
“Right now, many MSPs are selling Co-pilot licenses or something like that just because they’re being asked, but there are additional projects and services that MSPs can be offering to their clients, there just has to be some form of education and then margins around that work.”
Building with AI’s limitations in mind
Psenka also freely admits GenAI has limitations, and for Moovila, those limitations provide a business opportunity.
He says recent studies have shown the leading models are not keeping up with the complexities of project work because the models are simply not equipped to handle the graph-based flows project management tasks typically possess. LLMs can’t examine an entire graph because they are trained to perform linear paths.
“In general the new models do a terrible job with graph data, and project planning is graphing. The vertices are the tasks and the edges are the lengths, durations, and interdependencies. When I say it does a “bad job,” I mean that the’re around 65 or 68 percent, and that leaves a terrible error rate when we’re expecting 99 percent in complex projects. One damaged node can contaminate everything downstream,” Psenka explained.
“If you ever type in a question for an LLM and it tells you its ‘thinking,’ that’s a feedback loop. Some of the recent hype cyce was around whether this ‘thinking’ would be a solve for the issues, but what the research shows is that if these models don’t perform well right out of the gate, it just gets worse, and the chain of thought doesn’t fix the complex problems,” he added.
For Moovila, this isn’t a problem; the company has built its own models since before the GenAI boom and does not rely on generative AI in particular within its platform. If anything, knowing a publicly-available LLM can’t master the work Moovila’s platform automates is an indicator the company has a long trajectory still ahead of it.
What’s next for the automation platform vendor
Psenka teased upcoming releases aimed at further helping MSPs leverage Moovila in their practices. The company plans to launch an internal learning system for partners to access training on the platform, industry use cases, and best practices based on Moovila’s expertise, and other resources.
The new system will also include a hub containing templates for partners to leverage in the platform as they utilize it over time.
“We have to create a cost-effective, affordable way for people to onboard themselves at their pace with interactive education and templates and processes that fit their needs,” said Psenka.
Ultimately, Psenka says he thinks Moovila is positioned to help MSPs as they shift their business models to better align with what their clients will demand within the next few years, assuming his predictions turn to reality.
“I don’t think you’re going to be able to be an MSP that only does atomic-level tasks [in a few years], I think they’re all going to get picked off by the providers who do change, and so we’re in the process now of meeting them where they are and ramping up,” Psenka said.
