The process behind the Chatbot
Championing the chatbot!
At TD SYNNEX, we’ve always been ambitious to set new benchmarks on what it means to be a Value Added Distribution partner to our vendors and partner community alike. As a result, we’ve been working behind the scenes for quite some time to define a use case that would allow us to develop a tool based on IBM watsonx technology. At a time when we’re striving to help our partners understand how to best serve their customers via emerging AI solutions, what better way to do it than to develop one ourselves?
Always on (even when we’re off)
As anyone in the channel community will know, doing business in partnership requires the uniquely human skill of building relationships built on trust. So the question was: what couldwe build that would be valuable to our teams and our partners in the event that they couldn’t contact a person?
We settled on one key operational resource that was valuable to partners, the TD SYNNEX team and IBM alike: the IBM Partner Plus Incentive Program for Business Partners guide. This document is relied upon by all parties involved and generates questions from a wide spread of individuals on a regular basis. The kinds of questions that need a rapid and accurate answer – something that is difficult to provide if you’re out on the road or off on your hols.
We had found our use case!
Efficiency gains for all levels of experience
In investigating the potential of watsonx Assistant, we realised this solution would allow us to not only meet our immediate needs but also enhance efficiencies across our business operations.
At the same time, it would support newer staff in expanding their knowledge whilst simultaneously allowing more experienced members of the team to concentrate their time on business development activities, developing/executing key IBM initiatives, and winning/closing large complex deals.
With these benefits applying to both TD SYNNEX and our partner community we get an ripple effect where our investment benefits the entire community.
Expectations vs reality
We entered this process with a clear expectation that the chatbot would streamline communication, automate repetitive tasks, and free people up to focus on more strategic initiatives. What we’ve learned in addition to this is that there’s a big difference between a generic customer service virtual agent vs a specialised chatbot where the reference material is a factual, commercially sensitive, document that needs to be carefully protected.
Walking the walk
As a team of sales professionals, diving into chatbot development has been incredibly enlightening. By “walking the walk,” we’ve gained a deeper understanding of how chatbots function and the potential they hold for our organization. This hands-on experience has also allowed us to better comprehend the IBM systems and processes involved in deploying these services, which will be invaluable to us (and our partners) as we move forward.
The power of the right partnership
And if you haven’t figured it out already, I didn’t develop the chatbot myself! A key learning, and enjoyable part of the process, has been partnering with one of TD SYNNEX’s very own IoT and Analytics Solution Architects; Sam Sainty.
It’s through Sam that we’ve made a journey that began with IBM Watson Discovery and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), took in watsonx Assistant, added Elasticsearch and then went on an adventure with JSON and CSV formats!
We’ve been through iterations (and hallucinations) and what’s been perhaps the biggest bonus of all is that, whilst we were learning; IBM was adding functionality. Over the course of the project, we’ve been able to build in updates that have given us additional models and tuning options which have further enhanced our chatbot’s performance as we get closer to launch.
Putting the chatbot through its paces
With our internal UAT almost done, we’re now inviting selected partners to join us in embedding what we believe is a first-of-its-kind solution into the way we do business – all day, every day.
If you’re an existing IBM Business Partner with TD SYNNEX, contact your BDM to find out more. And if you’re not partnering with us yet – get in touch.
