COLUMN: Channel Chiefs Need To Step Up On AI Partner Enablement

CRN Executive Editor Jennifer Follett says channel chiefs need to have AI enablement at the top of their 2025 priority list.

If you’re a channel chief that doesn’t have AI enablement at the top of your list of 2025 strategic goals, you need to rethink your priorities.

Solution providers across the board are eager to capitalize on the AI opportunity. They see the transformative potential this technology holds for their customers, and they want to bring those solutions to market as quickly as possible.

But many of them are still finding their way, and they need help.

There is currently a clear disconnect between vendors’ desire to capitalize on AI sales and their efforts to date to enable solution providers to make those sales.

One of my colleagues, Amy Wilde, director of data and research at CRN parent The Channel Company, described it as “a lack of connective tissue” between vendors and their channel partners, where manufacturers haven’t adequately laid out the “whys and hows” of building AI solutions.

Some of our recent research seems to bear that out.

In our 2025 Channel Chiefs project, we asked 550 channel executives for their views on the AI market. Forty-seven percent of the honorees said their companies have AI offerings right now that are monetizable by partners, while another 20 percent said they are actively developing them.

Yet at the same time, only 34 percent of those executives have a positive assessment of how ready their channel partners are to sell AI-related products. Another 34 percent said channel readiness is middle of the road, while the remaining 32 percent had a negative assessment of the channel’s AI readiness.

When asked to assess the challenges they face in making GenAI offerings available through the channel, the top answer was lack of skills among the partner base.

Perhaps even more striking: Enabling partners to develop an AI strategy and sell AI solutions was the seventh most popular choice when the channel chiefs were asked about their strategic goals for 2025. Meanwhile, respondents ranked AI and automation as the seventh most popular key area they would like to see partners invest in for 2025.

What the data shows is that the majority of technology vendors are paying lip service to AI, but are not doing enough to back it up with partner enablement and engagement in the field. It’s stunning to see the gap between vendors’ AI ambitions and AI reality.

What it comes down to is that the impact of AI on IT solution sales will be both vast and deep. But much of it hinges on successful partner enablement. In its current state, AI solution sales are vertical-market-focused and use-case-driven. The most difficult aspect is the last mile—that touch of the customer—where everything has to come together just right.

There has never been a greater need for an outpouring of channel enablement efforts from technology vendors in areas such as training, certification, resources and tools, as well as clear communication and consistent support.

The channel has always found the most success when vendors and solution providers work hand-in-hand to achieve their goals, acting not as disparate organizations but as extensions of each other.

It’s time for the channel to go all in on AI, and that means both solution providers and the vendor channel organizations they partner with.