Recent public market gyrations have people believing that AI is a fast-moving, disruptive wave that will wreak chaos on many business models in the technology world. The problem is knowing exactly which businesses will be affected, and how – so investors are simply selling the lot. Alongside this chaos is organisations’ continued, burning need to embrace and get value from a range of technologies and ways of working that encompass AI as it currently stands… the issue being that it is far from standing still.
The hue and cry across boardrooms and executive teams is “We need an AI strategy!” – in part to assuage the feeling that all around is chaos, and that we are largely unprepared for it. The core issue with having an [insert new wave] strategy is that, by its nature, it isolates and compartmentalises the new wave into something that can be dealt with by an executive, a department or an external consultant, at least for now, until we figure it out. What flows from this approach is stepwise, incremental change that delivers cost reduction or efficiency, but doesn’t really change the game for the organisation. It’s still doing what it did yesterday, only better.
We argue that many organisations in fact need to rebuild their strategy, with AI as a cornerstone of it. While today’s AI can certainly deliver efficiency, speed and cost reduction – table stakes, just to keep up – strategic thinking is needed that leaves room for the market-shifting upside AI can bring. The result could be an organisation doing something tomorrow that is quite different from what it does today.
Zooming in on the technology services industry, service providers find themselves on both sides of the AI revolution: on one hand, the de facto expert helping customers with their own AI strategy (which is usually technology-bound); on the other, needing to reinvent their own strategy and business models using AI. Being a Strategic Technology Partner involves much more than technology. And this is an area where many technology providers don’t have the capability, capacity or track record to work with their clients to truly embrace AI for material business change.
The alternative to becoming a strategic partner for customers is to remain a technology service provider, relegated to the AI infrastructure, connectivity and security layer on which Strategic Technology Partners and consultants build their higher-value business. Customers will go direct in this commoditised world, using automation and AI to disintermediate traditional service providers. As we have seen in many areas of technology, AI and automation will rapidly commoditise these broad, baseline services, pricing out those who don’t have scale or automation in hand.
As service providers rebuild themselves into that strategic partner role for their customers, the core question is: what are we doing inside our own business to truly harness this revolution? How many have taken the time to go away for a strategic reset with their owners, boards and executives, and think hard about their position in an AI-dominated world for their customers? The coming months will be critical for this reset. An AI strategy on its own avoids the issue: what’s needed is a whole new strategy that embraces AI for a sustainable business into the future.
This article first appeared on LinkedIn on 26 February 2026.