How Lenovo Is Helping Businesses Turn AI Strategy into Real-World Results

AI has moved well beyond buzzwords and experimentation. Today, business leaders are under pressure to deliver real outcomes from their AI investments. But while interest in AI is high, execution remains a major challenge for many organizations.

CRNtv’s Jon Alba spoke with David Kunttu, Workstation Portfolio Manager at Lenovo, to discuss the real problems business leaders are trying to solve with AI, where many AI initiatives tend to stall, and how Lenovo is helping customers and channel partners move from ideas to impact with confidence.

Jon Alba: David, when you talk to business leaders today, what are the core problems they’re trying to solve with AI beyond the hype?

David Kunttu: A big focus right now is on productivity, which is low-hanging fruit for AI to solve.

Leaders want to reduce the time their people spend on busy work. Simply, they want to empower their teams to do bigger and better things with their time. They're thinking about decision velocity. We want AI to help us spend less time getting those inputs, make decisions faster, and then do it with confidence that the right information was used from a trusted source.

In theory, when teams move faster, you get to the outcome sooner. Leaders should aim for agility across the business, not just setting up a team of AI people in one corner working in a silo. AI should affect and impact productivity across the entire business and different functions horizontally.

Jon: Where do most AI projects stall, and how does Lenovo then help customers overcome these roadblocks?

David: It's an exciting time. There are a lot of really impressive AI demos out there. The tricky part is turning that cool demo into a structured path toward real implementation and having clear success criteria.

Most of these projects stall at the handoff between business and IT. Who is going to own it? How are you going to roll it out? How are you measuring success? And importantly, how are you going to keep it secure? All of that governance is really important.

We help customers with an enterprise AI journey. It's practical and scalable. You start small, you prove value quickly, and then you can scale incrementally with clear next steps as your needs change. We align that journey to the right tools at each stage, starting with everyday productivity devices like our newly announced ThinkPad P14s Gen 7, and expanding upward to infrastructure for more power and broader deployment.

Jon: If a company is launching an AI initiative, what does early success look like? Specifically, what should leaders expect to see within the first 30 days of a successful AI project?

David: A lot can happen in 30 days, often more than you would think. Leaders should expect to see a usable pilot built on real, trusted data. Not just a slide deck proposal. Pilots should be something business users can try themselves and react to and give feedback on. This can happen on a ThinkPad or a tiny desktop workstation.

They also need to start thinking about, by the end of that month, a baseline for return on investment. Where specifically is time going to be? What does a good enough solution look like, and what kind of guardrails need to be in place to make sure everything is done securely by the end of the month?

Have a clear decision point. Customers should think, are we ready to move to scale? Do we need to adjust our approach? Or was this a learning experience, and we should pivot direction entirely? This makes sure that you keep momentum high and avoid wasting time and money on runway projects.

Jon: Let’s talk about the partner opportunity. What’s in it for channel partners when it comes to AI, and how can they get started and sell with confidence alongside Lenovo?

David: For our partners, AI is a services multiplier opportunity: Assessment, pilot, roll out, and then ongoing optimization of that solution. This can become a repeatable packaged offer.

Getting started is simple. You pick one high-value workflow within one team, and then you run that structured 30-day pilot with clear outcomes. Be sure to lead with business value, things like faster proposals, quicker support, resolution, better access to institutional knowledge, or just more consistent execution. That's where you want to focus, instead of with specific products.

Lenovo helps partners sell with confidence by providing that clear journey for enterprise, AI-proven device options at each stage of the way. And then we also provide partner-ready enablement that takes you from that first demo to a broader deployment.

To learn more about Lenovo’s AI PC offerings, visit its partner hub or contact your account manager today.