Monday Morning Impact – January 5

Published On: January 4, 2026Categories: Buzz

Gartner: 65% of Employees are Excited to use AI at Work

Sixty-five percent of employees said they are excited about using AI at work, according to a survey by Gartner, Inc.

While C-suite executives often attribute AI’s lack of added business value to workforce resistance to adopting AI tools, that might not be the case. According to a Gartner survey of 2,986 employees in July 2025, 37% of employees do not use AI even though they can because their co-workers are not using it. Gartner research indicates that the root issue is often executive urgency leading to rushed implementations of AI with insufficient consideration of workforce implications.

“Often AI deployment decisions are being made without any involvement of HR,” said Eser Rizagolu, Senior Director, Analyst Gartner HR Practice. “This leads to poor adoption, misaligned expectations between employees and executives, and ultimately, organizations not realizing significant business value from AI.”

To gain the desired value from AI investments, Gartner recommends that companies reframe AI governance to focus not only on compliance and information security, but also on planning for impacts on the employee experience. The market researcher also recommends that companies identify digitally curious and collaborative employees to pilot AI tools with and target for AI learning. Finally, Gartner recommends that employees be segmented by their attitudes and behaviors toward AI to craft personalized learning journeys that create a culture with AI-forward work behaviors.

To avoid negative impacts of AI on the employee experience, managers need to collaborate with digital workplace, security, legal, and business units within enterprise-wide AI governance teams, according to Gartner.

“To convince the C-suite of HR’s critical role in AI governance, leaders should position AI as a workforce issue and communicate HR’s ability to detect risks while serving as a partner that ensures AI tools drive productivity, engagement, and retention,” said Rizagolu.

After AI use cases have been properly stress-tested and meet the requirements of the governance team and organizational value needs, they are ready to be scaled across the organization, and then further analyzed through employee surveys.

Gartner clients can read more in the report: “3 CHRO Actions to Reframe AI Deployment for Enhanced Impact.”

Channel Impact^®
Channel partners should look to their teams to determine who among their staff are best suited to helping customers with this transition.

Front Appoints Mike Kane as SVP of Global Channel Sales & Partnerships

Front, a San Francisco company that offers an AI-powered customer operations platform, has appointment of Mike Kane as its Senior Vice President of Global Channel Sales & Partnerships. Kane joins from Dialpad, where he played a key role in building the company’s global channel organization.

At Front, Kane will lead the company’s next phase of growth through partnerships with a focus on expanding its network of technology services distributors (TSDs), resellers, and ecosystem partners.

“We’re entering a pivotal year for Front,” said Dan O’Connell, CEO of Front. “Our partner ecosystem will play a huge role in our next chapter, and Mike brings the leadership, experience, and energy to make that happen. He’s built trusted relationships across the channel community and knows how to unlock mutual growth.”

During his time at Dialpad, Kane designed and executed the company’s global partner strategy, developing new TSD relationships and growing partner-led revenue.

“Front is one of the most exciting companies in customer experience right now,” said Kane. “The opportunity to bring Front’s product and its philosophy of better, more human customer operations to the channel is huge.”

In the past 12 months, Front claims more $50K+ deals than any year in company history, expanded its offices in Santiago, evolved from a single product into a true multi-SKU omnichannel platform and introduced Autopilot, Copilot, and new AI add-ons.

The company plans to significantly grow its partner-led business in 2026 as it scales past $100M ARR, with a focus on strategic collaboration, enablement, and shared customer success.

Channel Impact^®
Kane is expected to expand Front’s global partner ecosystem and drive new revenue through TSD relationships. The move reflects Front’s investment in making partnerships a core growth driver as demand for unified customer communication and collaboration continues to rise.

DoiT Announces FinOps Alliance with Ingram Micro

DoiT, Santa Clara, California-based provider of enterprise-grade FinOps and CloudOps solutions, has announced a new strategic alliance to provide Amazon Web Services (AWS) solutions to Ingram Micro channel partners across the globe.

As part of the new alliance, Ingram Micro’s AWS customers will have access to DoiT Cloud Intelligence FinOps platform which currently offers FinOps and CloudOps data to more than 4,000 customers worldwide, according to the company. Capabilities include workflow automation, data ingestion and advanced AI insights.

DoiT also signaled plans to integrate its platform into Ingram Micro’s digital experience platform Xvantage early next year.

“For years, the IT industry has focused on costs and availability over creating true business value using technology,” said Duncan Robinson, vice president of global partnerships, Ingram Micro. “This strategic collaboration with DoiT and future integration of DoiT Cloud Intelligence into our Xvantage platform will help our customers transform their cloud investments into ROI machines, while still getting the core visibility and reporting they need to operate.”

“Our new alliance with Ingram Micro represents a tremendous opportunity for DoiT Cloud Intelligence to scale its footprint in step with a Fortune 500 company to reach a massive audience of new AWS customers ready to take the next step on their FinOps journeys,” said Vadim Solovey, CEO of DoiT. “By combining our advanced FinOps solutions with Xvantage’s powerful AI platform, these customers will be able to take full control of their cloud investments and evolve them into genuine profit centers.”

Channel Impact^®
The alliance is expected to provide Ingram Micro AWS partners and their customers with a platform upgrade and integration with Xvantage that improves governance and cloud insights.

Stay in the Know

Keep tabs on what’s happening in the channel and the impact it will have on the partner community by subscribing to Channel Impact communications.