ABD: Greg, you came back into the CMA Technology business in 2006. I am guessing a whole lot has changed since your father started CMA in 1979, which is sort of the point of our AI chat today.
CMA: We started off doing mail-order computer parts. One of the nice things about our business is we’ve been in computers the whole time, and so we started out with computer parts and mail order, went through networking, and then into the cloud.
So, we’ve gone through a number of transitions over the years. My dad likes to say that in this business you have to reinvent yourself every five years.
You know, ChatGPT really kind of sparked the most recent evolution of AI, and you know, over the last couple of years, we have just seen it. You know, it’s always been a curiosity. You get on the chatbot, you see how it works, and it’s just kind of amazing. But over the last couple of years, especially when you got groups like Anthropic and ChatGPT, OpenAI, they’re really starting to look toward the business aspects of it, and that’s where we kind of got involved earlier this year. You know, we decided that this is where we needed to go as a company again. That whole reinvent yourself again, and so we kind of just jumped in with both feet, treated ourselves as our first customer, and, you know, it’s just been it’s been really amazing experience, learning and growing and just doing all of the things that AI allows you to do.
ABD: Well, what are some of the lessons that you learned within your own company at CMA Technology that you think are beneficial as you start to help clients in the area?
CMA: You know, it’s a lot of what AI is to begin with. You know, how does it help your business? And at the end of the day, AI is about automation. You know, automation’s not a new thing; it’s been around for years, but it’s really kind of the latest tool to allow you to automate. So, the first thing is you just can’t start with AI. Before you automate anything, you’ve got to look at data, you got to look at connectivity of the systems, you got to look at security; and really, before you really get into AI, you’ve got to make sure you’ve set a solid foundation on all of these things to set you up to be successful with AI. I mean, you can sit down and do chatbots and all that pretty easily, but to really take the stuff, take AI to the next level and make it a part of your business, you’ve got to look at the whole process of what it takes to put it in an automated system.
ABD: Are there pitfalls with AI or things you have to watch out for?
CMA: One of the things we see is that if you put bad data into AI, it’s going to give you a bad answer. You know, garbage in and garbage out. That’s kind of an age-old rule, and that’s true with AI as well. So, you need to make sure that your data is cleaned up and it’s organized, and to put yourself in a position to be successful whenever you actually want to move forward with AI.
ABD: There’s a really neat questionnaire you have called the AI Readiness Assessment, and ABD readers can take it. Doesn’t take very long. To sign up, visit mycma.ai; that is mycma.ai
So, what are a few questions potential customers may be asked to answer?
CMA: The first question that always comes up is security. That is the first thing because that’s what you hear about: where’s my data going? You know, is it going up in the cloud? Who’s going to have access to it? And you know the first thing you’ve got to look at is this thing called shadow AI.
It’s where employees come in and just get on a public chatbot and start using AI with business data, and you have to be careful with that because a lot of the free chatbots, they’ll use that data as training data for the next version of AI.
So, you really don’t want your business data to leave your company that way. You need to get up on a business plan and make sure that you have your AI configured so that business data stays protected. So that’s probably the first pitfall.
ABD: After you take the AI readiness survey and you’re ready to get started, there’ll be an AI strategist from your company that will work with folks. But we wanted to kind of give you a sample that, if you do onboard, I guess, with CMA technology, there are four stages: fortify, amplify, clarify, multiply,
Fortify. You say lock the doors before you turn AI loose.
CMA: Yes, and just to put a little context on that, this is the framework that we’ve come up with again as we’ve gone through AI and we’ve treated ourselves as our own first customer. We discovered there are some steps that you go through in order to go on your AI pathway.
You want to make sure that you keep your data contained. You keep control of it because once it goes out to the cloud, you’ve lost control, and you know that’s not something you really want your private business data to be everywhere. Let’s look at all the places where your data can go. Look at all the systems that can consume your data and make sure that we’re operating in a properly governed manner.
ABD: Yeah, and within your company, you can amplify. So, you’re going to help turn their employees into superheroes.
CMA: So, after you fortify your business, the next step is to amplify it.
Give it to your employees and let them learn how to increase their individual productivity. I’m sure everyone that sat down with a chatbot has generated a document, generated an email, or had it look up a fact that they didn’t know. So, let’s take that step. Let’s bring it into the office. Let’s connect those AIs to your business systems per se, so that they can pull data out of your existing business systems. And instead of spending five or 10 minutes looking up a fact, maybe just go to the chatbot, type a question, and immediately have the answer.
ABD: My guess is that at different companies in the CSRA, different employees may be using one kind of ChatGPT, one kind of AI, and other employees are using others.
CMA: The most important thing is to standardize within an office and make sure that you get the business version. So, there’s usually a consumer version and a business version of the AI. So, whether you’re on OpenAI or Anthropic or SpaceX AI, everyone’s going to have their preference.
At CMA Technology, we bounce back and forth between Anthropic and SpaceX AI, and probably use Anthropic for most of our work. But you know, that’s also part of the learning process that we’re still going through is trying to understand how the different models work in different environments and which one’s going to work better.
But the key is getting your systems connected, getting it in front of your employees, and letting them start exploring and discovering what you can do. Because what’s going to end up happening is, over time, they’re going to get to a point where they discover. You know what I’ve got the same data in three different systems. They don’t match, and the AI is connected to two of them; I can’t get to the third one, and you know, those questions are gold because that’s telling you where friction is occurring in your business and the problems you need to fix. That, of course, is going to take us to the third step in our process, which is clarify.
ABD: Yeah, clarify and stop flying blind. Stop flying blind.
CMA: Yeah. And so, this is the step that really sets us up for the final step, which will be multiplying. But this is where we go into the data and start cleaning up the system. So, you’ve got to start assigning this system as a gold copy system, and the data is going to flow here. And then where the data doesn’t match, we get that cleaned up and start putting things together so that you have a nice, well-formed system with data flowing in the right way, and eventually this leads to a business dashboard. And again, this is nothing new. Businesses have been trying to do this for years, but the advantage that AI brings is that smaller businesses, small and midnight businesses, are going to be able to do this. Before you know it, it would take a team of programmers 1,000s of hours to build these kinds of dashboards, but with AI, the software development costs have just dropped. I mean, it’s pretty clear that with Claude Code and some other things, the breakout application of AI is software development. And just internally, what we’ve seen over the past six months is our own internal software development costs. We’re saving about 75% on effort in terms of building equivalent code. So, it allows you to do things you hadn’t thought about doing, and it really brings down the cost of entry so that small companies can build things that they would have only dreamed of before. I mean, all 20 years I’ve been here, there have always been people who say, “Greg, can you come and connect these two things together? You know, and then we’d give them a software development quote, and they say, “Okay, well, you know what? I can live with it. But now with AI, we can do those things at a price that folks are going to be able to absorb, and it’s really kind of exciting because it’s a whole new business area that we have great experience in.
We just haven’t been able to get into the market because, you know, it just took too much time, and AI has just really enabled us. So, we’re looking forward to it.
It goes back to clarifying, goes back to cleaning up data, building dashboards, building KPIs that they can actually manage their business off of, and so once and then the next, you know, once we get going and rocking and rolling with all of this itself, runs itself, and that’s the thing is that once you got predictable processes and good data, you know, why do you need a person doing that? Well, let’s start thinking about handing that off to the AI, and that’s where we get to with multiply.
ABD: Yeah, so it’s not necessarily cutting back on staff, but it’s becoming more efficient and doing more.
CMA: Absolutely, freeing up your people that are doing, you know, repetitive, tedious tasks- putting yourselves in a position where you can hand off that work to a machine, to a computer, to an AI, and then free up that person to make the best use of their skills, which is thinking and making judgments and interfacing with other people. I mean, that’s the thing about business. At the end of the day, Neil, it’s relationships, and if you can have your AI run the business. So, I can spend more time with my customers. That’s a win-win situation for everybody, right
ABD: Yeah, and for those who maybe don’t know what AI can do, what do I mean in general for a company? What do you think are maybe the first two or three really good benefits to using AI?
CMA: Yeah. So, well, I mean, the Amplify stage. Put an agent in front of the employees and let them write documents for you. You know, draft the documents for you. I mean, one of the things about Amplify is that the person is always making the final call on what goes out, and that’s important. But you know, drafting documents, doing research, quickly getting access to facts; those are the things that AI can really do well for you just right off the bat.
The bigger picture is that it is an automation tool. You know, so anything you want to automate on a larger scale, that’s where AI starts becoming beneficial.
ABD: Greg, I think you’ve kind of created a new job vertical, as you’ve heard of a marketing strategist, but now there’s an AI strategist as well. What will an AI strategist from your office do, maybe in partnership with a company?
CMA: So, an AI strategist, their job is really to look at where that company stands. Again, whenever you look at the AI assessment, the readiness assessment, it’s going to kind of give you a thumbnail view of where you are in terms of our framework: fortify, amplify, clarify, multiply, and then an AI strategist can come in and look at the result of that assessment, and then start digging into it. Where are the weaknesses in AI security?
Do you have a problem with shadow AI now? Do you need to fortify it, amplify it? You know, what do we need to do? What are the systems that are most beneficial to get your employees connected with through AI, and then clarify, you know, where the problems and the roadblocks are in your data? So, the big bang is that an AI specialist is going to go in and help the customers put together a roadmap of how to implement AI through their business and then start checking off the accomplishments as we go along and start realizing the benefits of AI.
Speaker 2 18:03
And you mentioned the readiness survey, probably the best place to start. Really neat website. So, it’s pretty simple to remember www.mycma.ai, and before we scoot anything else on your AI agenda?
Speaker 1 18:44
I think AI is the next wave of technology. Like I said, we’ve been around for going on 50 years now, and we’ve watched networking come. We’ve watched servers get deployed in the cloud, and this is where technology is going. And you know the time to start looking at it is now. If you want to stay at the forefront, if you want to continue to put your business at a competitive advantage, it’s time to start looking at it because there are some real gains that you can get in the short term, and I think in the long term, businesses are going to be designed around AI and the benefits that it brings to serving their customers.
