Joel Martin, HFS

Good morning, good morning, good morning, good morning, good morning, good morning. That’s mainly to see if the mics come on. There we go. Hey, everybody. Thank you for joining us. I’m Joel Martin, Chief Research Officer here at HFS.

Dana Daher, HFS

And I’m Dana Daher, Executive Research Leader with HFS.

Joel Martin, HFS

We were talking about how many times we’ve been to this wonderful, beautiful facility. I think this is my fifth time. Such a great spot, great view. But we want you in here looking at us, the speakers, and the panelists. You can enjoy those at lunch. So now that we’ve got the opening remarks, we need to grab a clicker.

Dana Daher, HFS

So, a few housekeeping rules as we get started.

Joel Martin, HFS

First, thank you to our sponsors. This all happens because of them, all the food you eat, this beautiful facility. We really appreciate them investing in this and investing in these conversations. We ask a lot of them to bring in their executives to be very unfiltered and open with their discussions and really kind of bring out what is our big theme is, How to AI. So, thank you, everybody, for sponsoring the event.

Dana Daher, HFS

(Venue Wi-Fi login information)

Joel Martin, HFS

The Wi-Fi is set up to block you from all your work emails and only allow you to post on social media about what the cool things people are saying here. And to take active participation in a lot of the activities that we’ll have. We have several interactive sessions. So on the back of your badge.

Dana Daher, HFS

You’re going to have the event app. So you download the app. Just type in HFS or just scan that QR code on the back of your badge. (App login information)

Joel Martin, HFS

(App login information)

Dana Daher, HFS

I’m going to give you a minute to do this because this is very important. We’re going to have a poll in a few seconds, and it’s through the app.

Joel Martin, HFS

Now, we know how many people are here, so when we see the sample size on the board, we’ll know how many people are still downloading the app. Okay.

Dana Daher, HFS

And as you’re doing that, I’ll walk you through it a little bit, but we have a lot of functionality in the app. You can find out details around the agenda itself. We have the speakers, the sponsors. You can also take notes during the sessions and capture some of the key takeaways. We want you to also share your feedback on the sessions, the speakers, everything else as well, so we can make this event better every single time as well. And then you can also join live polls during the sessions. And this is critical because I’m going to ask you a poll in a few moments as well.

Joel Martin, HFS

We won’t need to track you any further than that. All right. Again, social media, very important. We’d like to point you to LinkedIn, X, Bluesky, Instagram, TikTok, whatever you use. Hashtag #HFSHowToAI. Share those thoughts. Get a photo with Neeraj. Neeraj is the number one guy here. Hands up in the back. Loves to get a selfie with everybody. So make that part of your experience. A selfie with Neeraj. You can even get one with Phil if you can chase him down.

Joel Martin, HFS

Two things that we are unveiling and going in deep at this event. Our Data Intelligence Suite. So being a research firm, guess what? We have lots of data that we collect through surveys, through our Horizon work. All this insight that we collect, we’re delivering it in what’s called our Data Intelligence Suite. In room 203, just down the hall, basically behind this room, we will have live demos where you can interact with HFS analysts on how you can leverage that. So if you are with one of our sponsors and you want to know, how can I get to more data without actually having to talk to somebody? Go check it out. If you are a buyer and you don’t want somebody calling you up and trying to sell something, but you want to look at some data for a business plan, go check it out. It’s all available to you. We have times up there. We’ll run from 10 to 11, 11 to 12, and 2 to 4, both days. So interact. Give us some feedback. Do you like it? How’s it helping you? And where can we go to make it a richer experience for you?

Joel Martin, HFS

The other cool thing that we’re doing, and it’ll happen in this room tomorrow at lunch, is an interactive workshop on what we call the AI-First Deal Lab. So Nigel Edwards and Saurabh Gupta will be running a session in here where you can see how from a buyer’s perspective, you can take that SaaS model, the Services-as-Software, those outcome-based models, everybody’s talking about how do we get to these, and actually translate this into what it means for your company. It’s research-led. It’s workshop-driven. So come on site, go to a fancy place, work together with us, maybe even your partners, to understand what is AI going to do to change the way you procure services and software going forward. Interactive problem solving. Bring in more of your team. Bring in your procurement team, your finance team, your legal team. Make it interactive. Get people on board with what outcomes are critical to have and how you deploy them. And then future-ready. This is all about thinking about how AI is going to change the way you work, the KPIs, and so how are you going to bring those into contracts? How are you going to set up those first initial agreements so that you’re getting the efficiencies and the outcomes that you want out of it and not stuck in old FTE-based models with your providers or seat licenses with your SaaS providers? So that’s here tomorrow at lunch. Also, if you do want to talk to somebody about it, Nigel, stand up. Where did I see you? Nigel. And then Saurabh is hiding.

Dana Daher, HFS

There you go.

Joel Martin, HFS

That’s not quite a stand-up, but I’ll give him a bye. So Saurabh is the other person. Talk to these two guys anytime during the next two days. They would love to spend time with that. And there was a pamphlet on it downstairs. Really, you can come to anybody with, I don’t have a badge on, but with an HFS purple tag and ask them about the AI-First Deal Lab.

Dana Daher, HFS

We are going to start our first audience poll. So pull up those apps that we got you to download a few minutes ago. And our first question is, where is your or your customer’s AI strategy today? So I’m going to give you all a few seconds to go into the app, find the polls, and click the first one.

Joel Martin, HFS

And be honest, you know. We’re not going to republish this data. You can take a picture of it and put it on LinkedIn with hashtag #HFSHowToAI. All right, we’ve got 12 people. I think there’s more people. The nice thing about this is there’s actually a similar question that you’ll see in Phil’s keynote shortly. So you’ll be able to compare how this room sees the answers versus a larger sample size of data from… it’s not worded exactly the same, but you’ll see the data. All right, everybody getting there? I’m assuming there’s more people. I don’t know if there’s a refresh. I’m seeing the apps are looking a lot bigger. There we go, 87 votes. So this is probably disconnect on the refresh. All right, main test here was to get the apps going, get you guys figuring out comfortable with using your phones, those little things. 89 votes in there. That’s interesting. Clear AI strategy we’re going for. Really large there. That surprised me, but that’s good to see. God only knows what that percentage is on the yellow pie. To work on our color coding there. All right. We’ve got 90. Awesome. Thank you, guys. Let’s do the next polling question. Oh, there it is.

Dana Daher, HFS

All right.

Joel Martin, HFS

Too eager.

Dana Daher, HFS

Who is better at using AI? Your front line teams, middle management team leaders, senior executives, or your consultants? And take a moment here again to go into the app and click the question.

Joel Martin, HFS

I’m really curious to how many people choose D.

Dana Daher, HFS

I’m more concerned about C.

Joel Martin, HFS

The consultants because they’re lazy and they want bots so they can spend more time on the beach.

Dana Daher, HFS

Middle management is taking the lead. Very interesting.

Joel Martin, HFS

That doesn’t surprise me, actually. I think middle management, again, when we talk about some of the research you’re doing, that’s how the org’s changing, the diamond shape coming out of it.

Dana Daher, HFS

But in my surveys, it shows that they’re not doing the best.

Joel Martin, HFS

Well, I didn’t say they’re doing the best. This doesn’t say, are they doing well at it? Are they using it? Frontline teams, there you go. 35% middle management. I mean, the scariest part, right, is senior executives are losing.

Dana Daher, HFS

Yeah.

Joel Martin, HFS

It’s very clear.

Dana Daher, HFS

That’s all of you guys as well.

Joel Martin, HFS

We’ve got to work on all the C-suites and the VPs. All right. Awesome. Thank you for participating in the first two polls. You will see this in our Family Feud, which is probably one of the most popular and fun and audience-engaging sessions that we’ve moved from day two to day one. That’s a really cool session run by Phil and Saurabh. You’ll see this. Saurabh has a session and Phil, very interactable with the audience, where you will be using this as well. So get ready to use the app. Please use your phone. Share feedback with us. Talk to us about the AI-First Deal Lab. Check out the data suite.