Solution Providers Are Seeing Rising AI Revenue Impact: IPED Exclusive Research

‘I’ve never seen numbers like this,’ says IPED Senior Consultant Mark Williams. ‘Ninety percent of you are either optimistic or significantly optimistic that AI will have a material impact on your business in the next 12 to 18 months.’

AI is taking hold at a breathtaking pace, with 78 percent of solution providers already seeing an impact on their business, including a number of elite AI specialists already driving “meaningful revenue” from the AI revolution.

That was the big takeaway from exclusive The Channel Company IPED research and two top AI partners in a “The Impact Of AI In The Channel” keynote session Monday at XChange August 2025 in Denver hosted by The Channel Company Chief Content Officer Stuart Sumner.

“I’ve never seen numbers like this,” said Mark Williams, senior consultant for IPED, The Channel Company research unit that conducted the research, speaking to hundreds of XChange attendees. “Ninety percent of you are either optimistic or significantly optimistic that AI will have a material impact on your business in the next 12 to 18 months. …The hype is not stopping.”

Don Monistere, president and CEO of General Informatics, a Baton Rouge, La.-based AI solution provider, said his company’s AI solutions are driving annual recurring revenue that is having a “meaningful” impact on the company’s balance sheet.

“We’ve just gotten to the point where we’re actually tracking artificial intelligence revenue as a line item,” he said. “It is starting to be meaningful whereas last year we were generating revenue but not enough to matter. Now it’s starting to make a difference.”

One example of General Informatics’ AI prowess: a customer that implemented one of its AI solutions to reduce order entry discrepancies and speed up order entry validation that was previously being done by a third-party company. “We created an [AI] automation that does in 11 seconds something that used to take a day with a report [from the third-party outsourced company],” said Monistere.

The CEO of the customer who had committed to 10 hours of professional services tied to the automation project immediately went all in to drive more AI productivity gains and cost savings, said Monistere.

“The CEO looked at me and said, ’Ten hours is not going to be enough,’” Monistere said. “I can’t wait to get more into this. If we can do this with one use case, we have about 100 others that we can hit on now.’

General Informatics has worked closely with customers to drive AI solutions with a “Platform-as-a-Service” offering for the tools necessary to build the AI automations, said Monistere.

“The power [that] you can provide customers with these automations is pretty incredible,” he said. “Once you provide them with these automations, you can start linking them together and the output for one becomes the input for another. It is almost iterative. Each time you solve one particular use case, the customer is coming to us and saying, ‘I know what the next use case should be.’”

Driving Dramatic Productivity Workflow Improvements With AI

Accelirate, a Dallas-based elite AI solution provider and a longtime robotic process automation (RPA) company, is also seeing a “growing” AI revenue impact, said Mike Booker, senior director of managed services for Accelirate.

Accelirate has thousands of workflows that it has deployed as AI solutions over the last eight years that have resulted in a thriving RPA managed services business, said Booker.

With the AI revolution, Accelirate is taking those RPA processes and implementing AI to drive even more dramatic productivity workflow improvements, said Booker. “With some of these [AI] tools we can show customers [that] instead of the process being able to handle X, it can now handle X times 10,” he said.

Customers are feeling more “empowered” to implement AI solutions that are automating “mundane” tasks, said Booker. “Now they don’t have to do those mundane tasks,” he said. “The [AI] process is more intelligent; it can pick up unstructured data and make a decision.”

Accelirate, for example, has proposed an AI solution for a financial services customer looking to reduce offshoring outsourcing costs by 50 percent, said Booker. “It is simplifying processes, simplifying business and revolutionizing the business to make it leaner,” he said.

Booker’s advice to partners looking to take the AI plunge: “Start small. Don’t try to boil the ocean.”

IPED’s Williams: Almost All Solution Providers Have A ‘Huge Opportunity’

IPED’s Williams said there is rising optimism among partners across a wide swath of their portfolios, including infrastructure optimization, security and risk management, and digital transformation. “Almost all solution providers have a huge opportunity, but it is going to be different depending on who you are and what you are capable of doing,” he said.

The number of partners seeing a “significant positive impact” with AI in various areas is accelerating, said Williams.

For example, the number of partners expecting a “significant positive impact” for AI on industry solutions jumped to 39 percent in 2025 versus 17 percent in 2024.

Likewise, the number of partners seeing a “significant positive impact” for AI on “infrastructure optimization” jumped to 33 percent in 2025 versus 16 percent in 2024.

Finally, the number of partners seeing a “significant positive impact” for AI on digital transformation soared to 40 percent in 2025 versus 18 percent in 2024.

As to what customers are looking for from partners as they take the AI plunge, Williams said that “IT vision” and “business” knowledge or acumen are key.

“Customers need someone that has a vision,” he said. “They need someone that can show them what they can do with AI, show them how their business can be different.”

Some customers are anxious to create a “different business” that is not currently in the market, said Williams. “They want to do something they couldn’t do before,” he said. “That is the vision part.”

Customers are looking for partners that understand their business, said Williams. “They are looking for people not just to come and tell them about cool technology,” he said. “They want to know how it really applies to their business. They are looking for folks like you to do that.”

XChange Attendees Seeing Rise In AI Revenue

Solution providers attending the XChange conference said they are also seeing a rise in AI revenue.

Brian Ruschman, president at C-Forward, a Covington, Ky.-based solution provider, said he is adding about 50 Microsoft Copilot customers a month to drive productivity gains and accountability for customer follow-up.

“AI is going at five and 10t imes the speed we saw when the internet came on the scene,” he said. “It is the next big iteration of everything we are going to do. It is taking hold at a rapid clip, much faster than the internet did.”

Stanley Louissaint, principal and founder of Fluid Designs, Watchung, N.J., said he expects his company’s AI revenue to be up around 10 percent this year, primarily through consulting on AI policies, governance and procedures.

“AI is another tool in the toolbox, and when you use it to your advantage you can have a positive impact,” he said. “Like any tool, you have to know when to use it and how to use it. That is where people struggle. It is not a tool for everything. One of the biggest struggles around AI, especially with the smallest businesses, is what is your AI policy? Folks are still struggling with policy and procedure, how they are going to use it. That is the struggle small businesses are facing, and we are helping to guide them through that.”