AI is giving us a chance to redesign how work actually gets done. Most companies are using it to go faster in the wrong direction. Reminds me of the Business Process Re-engineering push. Same failure mode, different decade. Hammer and Champy warned us that automating a broken process just gives you a faster broken process. The unlock isn't better process mining. It's designing new processes around what AI actually makes possible. I've been watching a familiar pattern emerge a

The contact center AI market is moving fast. Funding rounds are getting bigger, new startups are launching every week, and every CCaaS platform is racing to embed AI into its stack. From the outside, it looks like the opportunity is already quickly locking up. It isn't. In fact, right now is one of the best windows I've seen for early-stage AI companies to build channel traction if they move deliberately. A few observations. The integration layer is becoming the battleground

I’m excited to share that I’ll be serving as one of the judges for the Voice AI Startup Pitch Event at Project Voice 2026 in Chattanooga later this month. Project Voice has long been one of the most important gatherings in the voice and conversational AI space, and I’m looking forward to hearing from a strong group of startups building in voice AI, contact center AI, testing, evaluation, and related infrastructure. This role is especially meaningful to me because my work to

Two things happened in the last two weeks that every growth-stage AI company selling into contact centers should pay attention to. Zendesk completed its acquisition of Forethought. And Salesforce launched Agentforce Contact Center. Two of the largest CRM-adjacent platforms in the world have now planted flags in contact center AI in the same month. Both are saying 2026 is the year AI handles more service interactions than humans. Both are building native, end-to-end stacks ins

Over the last six years, I’ve worked both inside AI vendors selling into contact centers and alongside systems integrators (SIs) who design, build, and run those environments. One pattern shows up again and again: Early-stage AI founders think they’re selling to enterprises. In reality, they’re selling to systems integrators first. This isn’t a semantic distinction—it’s a go-to-market reality. And misunderstanding it is one of the fastest ways for promising conversational AI

Introduction: In the dynamic realm of conversational AI and generative AI, forging partnerships with renowned systems integrators (SIs)...