Nashville-based ImageQuest, once a conventional copier dealership, made a sharp pivot to managed IT services in the early 2010s, a move that positioned it ahead of an industry undergoing rapid collapse. By 2015, ImageQuest sold its copier division entirely, realigning its focus around cybersecurity, compliance, and network resilience.
In a recent interview on The Wise Decisionmaker Show, CEO Milton Bartley described the decision not as visionary, but as necessary. "The old model was dying. It wasn't a matter of if, but when," Bartley said.
Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, an expert in risk management and decision sciences who hosted the interview, emphasized the broader implications. "Real digital transformation doesn't come from trend-chasing," Tsipursky noted. "It comes from organizational willingness to dismantle outdated systems before they collapse on their own."
ImageQuest's more recent focus on integrating generative Ai into its operations follows the same pattern of early, calculated adoption. Two years before Ai became a boardroom topic, the company was experimenting with internal uses, including automating tedious vendor management tasks within secure private cloud environments.
Internally, ImageQuest staff adapted unevenly. Some employees quickly incorporated Ai into workflows. Others resisted. Bartley framed the response curve as typical for technological disruption: "You get a few early movers, a larger group that hesitates, and a handful who refuse outright."
Monthly sessions were introduced to normalize best practices, but Bartley and his leadership team refrained from mandating Ai usage outright. "It had to come from the work itself," he said. "Force it, and you lose the point."
Tsipursky added that Ai adoption across industries often stumbles when leadership underestimates the cultural shift required. "Automation isn't just about tasks. It's about reallocating human attention," he said. "And organizations are rarely prepared for what that actually means."
Today, ImageQuest competes not against regional copier dealers, but within the fiercely contested cybersecurity and compliance markets. The company's move mirrors a broader trend: legacy industries struggling to reinvent themselves as digital infrastructure becomes non-negotiable.
Bartley cautioned that Ai integration, like the earlier move away from copiers, isn't a finish line but an ongoing recalibration. "There are no safe harbors," he said. "There’s only what you build next."
The conversation between Bartley and Tsipursky underscores a truth that many firms still resist. Digital transformation is rarely about innovation for its own sake. It is about survival, about rethinking the very foundations before they crack.
The companies that succeed won't necessarily be the ones that adopted Ai first, but the ones that understood what they were leaving behind.
Grayson Patrick Trent
No comments:
Post a Comment