Video: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly Of AI With ABM Technology Group

we got to realize that these people are still making up the rules as they go along and it doesn't necessarily mean they're bad it just means that it's a bit fluid so uh one word of caution is I would just say remember that you know don't put your life secrets in it and then expect it to T stay completely secret hey Channel insiders I'm Katie boso and welcome back for part two of my interview with Zack Paulson director of product and strategy at ABM Technology Group if you haven't watched or listened to part one head on over to Channel insider.com right now to catch up in this half of the interview we dig into the hottest topic of 2024 Ai and we discuss what Zach and ABM are doing to help their clients harness its power you mentioned that a lot of your clients are still having a security incident before they get the security and one is causing them to be able to to jump on board with the Security Solutions is that ransomware is that what do we what do you usually see as far as those incidents yeah the biggest one lately has been business email compromise U that one really scares me because you know all of a sudden somebody's in their email sending stuff on their behalf and these clients are wiring real money to real places and I I say clients these are usually prospects you know if they're we don't actually allow any client to come on board now without security it's just not allowed like you don't you don't work with us if you don't do our security stack and the reason being is because we used did not allow that about a couple years ago and and two of our largest clients got got hit and that was ransomware in their case and it was miserable it was miserable for them it was miserable for us we ended up losing the clients over time because it was a really hard time for people to understand where the liability landed and in reality at the end of the day the clients own their own security if you don't lock your doors and if you told the alarm company you don't want the system they're the ones that own it but it's really hard to understand that when they're like well you're supposed to be the experts yes but you signed the checks so I'm sorry until you sign a check allowing me to do that I can't do it and so so all of our clients are forced to do the security not because we don't like them it's because we like them and we want them to stick around and we want them to be safe but a lot of the prospects we're talking with it starts with business email compromise uh one of the ones I heard the other day that we were in talking with a vendor of theirs had sent them an invoice for I want to say about $40,000 and the the person had wired the money and then the person came in and said hey why do this vendor want so much money uh right away and the the business owner looked at the front desk person said what are you talking about and then all the sudden dawned on them oh no that wasn't real fortunately they were able to connect with the bank the wire had not been completed and they stopped it but had that gone through that's real money $40,000 gone you know ransomware is scary but this is real money gone this isn't just business productivity and so what we're seeing is really trying to interrupt that problem right there get into that email and protect it for for the clients because we trust our email if we get an email from a vendor and it's their actual domain or maybe it's a letter off we don't pick up on that we just go ahead and do what we need to do and remind me how big are your clients typically what range should they fall into as far as number of employees yeah we have clients anywhere from just you know five users all the way up to 150 but the bulk of our clients are in that 25 to 50 users that's kind of The Sweet Spot if you will for most of our clients I think that that's so important to point out that these are the real world scenarios that you're not hearing in the headlines every day nobody is too small or too quote unquote for those listening in podcast version insignificant for a ransomware attack or a malware attack or just a scam like this one like you were explaining you don't hear about it but $40,000 lost into nothing would have been a significant blow to that company and so just because they're not making the headlines these are happening every single day it is an easy Payday for the Bad actors um so okay I'm going to step off my box now get security everybody that's all I'm saying so now that we've had a bit of a scary story I'd love to talk about some really good things is there a success story that you have in mind with a client that is really kind of a banner success story for you Zach whether it be with true it or with ABM Technology Group what's something that when you talk about this is why I come into work every day what's a success story that you can describe to me with a client where you were able to whether be protect them innovate with them and just overall do good stuff yeah oh man I've got so many but one of the ones comes to mind that I I'm really proud of is as much as it's awful to see a client have to leave you because they were acquired I always get excited for them because you know the people we work with are real America right they're they're Main Street America these are entrepreneurs that started Something That Grew their business and then got successful enough to sell it off and so we just recently had a women's clinic they were a wonderful client for many many years I want to say five or six years you if not more I mean we worked with them from the the ground up when they were when they were early on they grew their organization they opened other locations they helped deliver who knows how many babies so there's a lot of people that have entered the world because of them for real and then just recently they they were able to be acquired by one of the larger Hospital chains in in the area and I just think it's it's super cool to to see those stories happen to know that you had a part of it we're in the middle of of transitioning it and I always get excited when when the other acquiring it company is actually little surprised by the quality of technology that the organization had prior and and we're seeing that now and in fact sometimes it's funny because these big companies sometimes don't even do what we do from a technology perspective in terms of mobility and security and those type of things so so yeah that's always that's always fun uh enjoy seeing that happen of course also love growth I'm a growth guy so I love it to see uh businesses grow many of the clients we've taken on have gotten bigger and so that's always good it's always good to see them them be able to grow and expand I'm not sure if we talked about the verticals your business typically operates in as far as your clients go are there any you mentioned a women's clinic so is medical something you operate in most of the time or does it kind of span a range yeah we you know in North Dakota we've got we've kind of gota take whatever can come to us uh no we we we do have a few verticals that we we don't necessarily specialize in in terms of like tailor or marketing but we do a lot with large nonprofits so you know a nonprofit that's got 10 to 25 employees that maybe the local United ways we work with organizations that generally do Goodwill all over the place um that seems to be an area for us we work well with manufacturing U manufacturing always has a pretty decent technology spend and really when machines are down it's costing them thousands of dollars so that seems to be an area that that fits naturally with us and out of that other organizations uh a little bit of finance a little bit of education but like I said kind of all over the board what vendors if any would you shout out as far as really helping you this year being great Partners oh well one of the big ones that we work with and they're they're more of a Marketplace vendor but Pate we work with Pate a lot so we end up getting a lot of different products from them our security stack is built on many different things that they they bring to the market Sentinel one being one of them Huntress being another that we get in the marketplace not not Pates but they don't offer that they go direct but yeah a few different ones that have just been really critical and helping our organization grow would be those those two for sure another one that related to business email compromise would be iron scales that's been a fantastic partner as well so iron scales has really helped us to catch those fishing attempts before they become a problem very interesting and thinking about pax8 and thinking about marketplaces just kind of ruminating on this thought as far as the marketplace introduction into in to manage services has that been what has that been like for you do you remember even a time now before marketplaces before the pack states of the world or has it been a more difficult transition that now you feel like you're getting your footing just talk to me about experience of becoming a Marketplace partner like you are yeah i' I've tried to forget the days before oh really so um it's just a you know Cloud distribution I know they like to talk about Marketplace but let's just to boil it down to the idea of of cloud distribution has been key for us we really like being able to purchase just like you would purchase your Hardware from one place in the past we really like the idea of being able to get our our cloud services from one place and so that has been critical for us us uh we kind of had an Unwritten rule that you can buy any product you want as long as you get it from pax8 back in the day because it was that much of a business efficiency piece for our organization so we've really appreciated them we've really appreciated the market uh evolving to a place where we do have those marketplaces available and yeah we continue to go deeper and deeper with that partnership they've also helped make the the Myriad of uh of Microsoft mess kind of easier to to digest right because Microsoft licensing has always been a challenge for smaller partners and even though we buy a decent amount it's nothing compared to Microsoft's billions and billions of dollars they transact daily so they've really helped organizations like ours be able to act and and be nimble like a large organization through that Marketplace were you ever worried about marketplaces when they first came on the scene was it ever you you talked to some of those that have been around for decades in this industry and they were concerned that customers were going to be able to go to them and just kind of grocery store pick everything that they needed but I never felt that way about it but what are your thoughts on it as far as when they first came out did you see it as an opportunity or were you nervous yeah so that's the thing that's why I struggle a little bit with the term Marketplace is is that at the end of the day it's a Marketplace for the MSP I don't know that it's a Marketplace for the consumer we still have very few clients that transact themselves I would say 98 plus per of our clients transact through us first so they'll reach out so it really makes our lives easier it makes the client's lives Easier by proxy but I was never really worried that people going to go Point click and buy whatever they needed there's still so many services that need to wrap around it and there's so many more logistical challenges buying your software if you're buying something random like a Kalen Lily uh if you're going to buy that for your your calendaring system yeah you can go buy that direct and click a button and have it integrated but if you're going to put Sentinel one in place or you're going to put iron scales in place or you're going to roll out an uh an MDR that just doesn't happen by clicking a button and and nor does somebody want to just trust that them clicking a buy now button took care of everything so there's just so much more that goes into it so when when we talk Marketplace I was never really worried that this was going to we were going to lose tons of business but I was worried that we wouldn't be able to keep up with the demand so this has helped us really uh keep up with the demand I think uh this year in particular in 2024 the biggest question that everybody suddenly realized they needed to answer was what's the colonel and everybody realized oh we actually really need it people who know what they're doing to come in and be able to operate these things on our computers but going back into it what's next for ABM Technology Group this year yeah so ABM has been on quite a ride we've acquired several organizations since we've acquired true it and so just recently actually uh a few days ago three days ago I think we acquired a company called Magic City systems in Min not North Dakota most people have no idea where Min not is but it's got one of the largest nuclear Air Force bases in the country so uh that's that's a big deal but uh we brought uh Magic City systems on board and we we're going to continue to do the same so we want to make sure that we have presence in all the places we have our current print locations we want to make sure we have it presence and we do have technicians there but we want to build out the sales channels we want to build out uh all the different systems that you would expect from a local office and so that's going to be a big push for us uh additionally just continuing to expand our footprint uh print is very territorial based so you buy a territory and that's where you can distribute your equipment so that's probably going to be the growth model going forward uh for ABM and it will follow that will be how it works any Trends you're implementing strongly or strongly avoiding this year so one of the things we also rolled out is we rolled out uh what we call ABM aai it's a focus on Microsoft modern work and co-pilot as you can imagine AI is dominating uh the everybody's W Airwaves I guess is what you'd say um so we're we're going to ride that as well we're we're diving into a market that we weren't as familiar with before weren't we weren't targeting that that larger midsize Market whereas ABM is actually going to go after that market entirely so we launched an entirely new division hired up like 14 15 people and we are going headlong into the modern work and co-pilot space we know that AI is going to dominate the future and we want to make sure that we're there to help our our clients get to that point tell me more about the AI Journey that you're on at ABM Technology Group with this you were just talking about what Solutions you're building out for your customers but were you always as soon as the AI train started really taking off about two years ago were you on board already or did it take you a while to jump on so I'm always a little slow to grab technology it sounds kind of funny you would think somebody like me would be like on The Cutting Edge but I'm always I'm a natural skeptic I wish I wasn't I wish I was just like always naturally positive on everything but I'm a little skeptical of Technologies and so when AI first came out I kind of thought it was a bit cheeky I'm like we'll see where it goes right but now all of the sudden I'm starting to see that wait a minute most of the security tools we've been using for years have you been using AI to be able to stay ahead of the Bad actors and why not use that for productivity and so what I've really seen with AI is not only has it gone beyond the technology of of security and those type of things we're really starting to see where we can make people more productive that that's super exciting to me because if I give you a blank canvas and I say just just write down a job description you and I are going to struggle for a while because we don't know what frame do we write it in you know you're you're better at writing than I am but but when you're writing you got to have a tone you've got to have an understanding those type of things so where where do we start and I feel like AI is going to help with a lot of that starting points they're going to be able to get us going uh it has some challenges I had it try to do a logo for me the other day and it could spell the word on the logo right so yeah it's got some work to do but on the flip side if we can get ourselves 80% of there what can it do what can we do with the other 80% Time Savings so no very interesting have you had to put any sort of guardrails around some of your clients we've talked a lot about Security today are there anything that you notic certain new clients or or even existing ones were doing where you had to put the kabash on that like real fast yeah I I think it's it's always funny to me that I think people don't realize that in order to know all these things it must know all these things right so that seems like a very logical statement but even I was a little surprised when I found out that co-pilot the moment you procure your first license and connect it to the tenant it crawls everything like it just runs through everything well and that's before you even assign it to user so it's not even based on my permissions or your permissions it just crawls the entire tenant yeah that's that's pretty intrusive and and so what we're doing and what we're spending a lot of time on is we're we're letting people know what its capabilities are but also letting it it know what it has to know to be able to do what it does to make sure those guard rails are in place I don't know that we've had any situations maybe we have but I I don't know of anywhere we've had to like shut it down but we've definitely had moments of pause where we've had to say to clients do you realize what it's doing right now and are you sure that your permissions are set um because people don't think about that you're just naturally trusting and you know it's got It's got different ways of working a lot of people some see something new and they go wow it's so smart it's so interesting it's so shiny it must already have guard rails built in and I think that was the surprising thing about Microsoft that everybody learned thinking that this gigantic company that is backed by so many years of innovation would have something in place to keep it from like you said crawling all over the place and learning everything and that you shouldn't put very specific medical information in there or numbers or or anything personal information into it and so when people found out that that isn't behind it I think that was very shocking to a lot of people so at the end of the day just think about it as the Borg if you tell one it's going to go and tell all the others right away that's right well and we have terrible habits right I mean there's not a single one of us that haven't emailed something we probably shouldn't that had information in it that probably shouldn't have just been emailed whether it's a quick tax we've sent over or whether it's you know a social security number we've had on a form we've all done it so why would we expect that AI wouldn't find that right why would we expect it doesn't exist and so it's just getting past that and then on top of that I do have a little bit of distrust about some of these organizations you know uh speaking specifically to chat GPT you know open AI has now you know they were a nonprofit now they're not a nonprofit they you know they took investment from Microsoft and they're kind of on their own we got to realize that these people are still making up the rules as they go along and doesn't necessarily mean they're bad it just means that they're it's a bit fluid so uh one one word of caution is I would just say remember that you know don't put your life secrets in it and then expect it to T stay completely secret and then you know don't forget that what these tools can be used for good they can also be used for evil we are seeing more and more security instance where these these actors that maybe would have had poor English or or poor uh structure on their on their uh email attempts they're getting better and better it's normal language we're able to read it and it doesn't sound any different than you and I would speak in fact you can change the accent let's go ahead and put it in a Midwestern tone or let's put it in an East Coast tone if you can do that it's it's only going to get harder and harder to figure out what's real and what's not no I agree and I also think about you brought up open AI another thing that I get concerned about over there is pretty much the entire founding member the entire group of founding members the majority of them have left and not always on good circumstances the majority of people that were really fighting for there to be guard rails and safety precautions and basically doing good with AI those people have also left so I get concerned when I think about the human team dissolving Behind these huge AI uh Hive mines um so it is interesting that you bring that one up that's what I'm always very passionate about each week going what's today GNA bring us with this particular Journey a lot of great thoughts on that Zach as we move forward into 2025 just knowing that you have such a rich history within the technology business and the it space are there any suggestions you have for those listening on how do you stay safe when it comes to implementing a new AI tool I think the biggest thing is just we always like to dog food it on ourselves we always like to run it ourselves and fully understand it I think that's super important uh we can't be out there just implementing things for our customers and not really know how they perform so for us a a tool that we've always done to make sure that we stay safe and make sure our clients stay safe is is get to know it really well beforehand before you deploy it to everybody else that's probably the biggest place I'd start great advice there just everything comes with an entire Shaker of salt people just watch out right that's right and Zach if we want to learn more about ABM Technology Group where can we go yeah just go to ABM now.com uh you can learn all about our our services and I would also throw out there I'm willing to talk to anybody about all of this I'm very passionate about technology passionate about the entrepreneurial Spirit Reach Out on LinkedIn connect with me anytime i' love to have a conversation with you wherever you are in your journey I'd love to talk with you about it oh I'd love to hear that Zach thank you so much for coming on today and I hope to have you back on in 2025 absolutely would love to thank you so much thanks again to Zach for joining me today and thank you for watching or listening you can check out all episodes of Channel Insider partner POV on Channel insider.com or watch on youtube.com/ Chanel inssider for news and Trends you can also listen to us as a podcast on your favorite podcast listening platforms don't forget to like subscribe and follow to never miss an episode once again I'm Katie boso and I'll see you next time

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