How To Translate Frontier Capabilities Into Business Value

We've entered the frontier era of artificial intelligence, where the most effective organizations are taking advantage of the cutting-edge capabilities AI has to offer. AI models are becoming more capable every quarter, and access to tools is no longer a bottleneck. 

For example, through the Microsoft Frontier Program, organizations and individual subscribers can get early access to try new AI-powered features across Copilot, Microsoft 365 and Azure before they become generally available. The program is designed for customers who want to be among the first to test, learn and provide feedback on emerging AI capabilities. The company’s overall strategy has been to evolve services and platforms in a way that allows end users to access a wide variety of frontier models for different use cases.

For businesses already in the Microsoft ecosystem, this approach supercharges the data that lives there, lowering the cost of AI service delivery and increasing the quality of the outputs.

However, frontier capability doesn't immediately equal frontier value. Often, AI adoption stalls, governance gets messy, data stays fragmented and leaders can't prove ROI. A partner with expertise in strategically applying frontier AI can help organizations derive the value they need from these cutting-edge capabilities.

Organizations know that AI can do a lot of things, but they struggle to define the ROI. Many are still trying to understand the full capacity of these tools and how they can work together. It's very easy to use AI as just a brilliant search engine. But to realize the full advantage of these tools requires a deeper understanding.

• Governance issues: Many organizations are still wrangling to put in place the governance needed to ensure frontier AI does not overstep its boundaries, share sensitive data or compromise compliance. As a result, people don’t want to push the envelope.

• Integration challenges: Organizations are still learning how to integrate frontier AI in a way that actually provides significant value. IT teams typically don’t have the skills needed for business process mapping or know how to prioritize use cases. 

• Stalled progress: As a result, even successful pilots or proof-of-concept projects don't feel like they're materially impacting the business in a positive way. Organizations may end up with a solution that looks amazing but doesn't actually do anything.

Many organizations can benefit from assistance through a trusted partner. CDW’s Frontier AI Engagement leverages engineering expertise as a forward-deployed resource, with assessments, workshops and adoption services.

Our technologists provide an AI blueprint, a mapping exercise and business process prioritization that ranks how processes can be automated, how accessible data is, and how ROI can be measured. These steps help to identify the places where AI can solve pressing business challenges, and then map solutions to practical outcomes.

Next, engineers go to work on the highest-priority goals, those that can deliver demonstrable ROI in real-world production. This provides immediate impact as well as a path forward toward true transformation.

CDW’s holistic engagement assesses both the business and technology maturity of the organization, and we help make a frontier implementation cost-effective. Some Copilot services are “all you can eat” for a set fee per month, per user, while others are based on token usage. Our Copilot enablement workshops help improve the economies of AI use by ensuring a business is using the right tool for the right purpose.

CDW’s strong relationship with Microsoft positions us to help organizations stay on the cutting edge. We take the unique variables of a business and applying technology to solve its specific problems. In this way, CDW can help organizations keep their frontier AI costs down while driving measurable business value.

New AI capabilities are rolling out faster than businesses can adopt them. In the frontier era, the winners aren't the ones with the best tools — they're the ones who strategically put them to work. Professional services from CDW help make effective AI happen.