What Happened:
In a recent episode of Partnerships Unraveled, Accenture AI strategy lead Harish Natarajan said only 8% of companies Accenture studied qualify as AI “frontrunners” - organizations that move beyond pilots to real deployment.
Forty-four percent remain “experimenters,” trapped in endless proofs of concept.
He emphasizes that verticalization is the future: AI’s impact depends on deep industry context. What works for software firms rarely fits manufacturing or healthcare. “You can take patterns, but you can’t take the product as is,” he said.
Our Take:
The stat about 92% of companies failing to scale AI should alarm partnership and channel leaders.
Natarajan’s spotlights value capture: scalable, repeatable outcomes that channel partners can own. His call to move from proof of concept to proof of value echoes a broader industry fatigue with demos that never leave the lab.
The verticalization thesis aso deserves attention. While general-purpose AI platforms will persist (think Microsoft 365), context is becoming the competitive moat. An AI solution for claims adjusters at insurance companies won't transfer to medical device manufacturers, even though both involve documentation and compliance.
This creates opportunities for specialized partnership plays, including channel partners who develop deep vertical expertise in healthcare AI implementations, for instance, can command premium margins that horizontal players can't match.
Natarajan's work on AI PCs also hints at coming channel opportunities. As AI capabilities move to the edge, partners will need expertise in hybrid orchestration, determining which workloads run locally, which go to nearby edge servers, and which require cloud compute. This is more complex than traditional IT architecture because it's dynamic based on hardware capabilities and real-time needs.
Listen to the full interview with Desai here.