Transforming IT with AI: Jordan Solender’s Journey

Welcome to Perceived Reality.

I'm your host Nadia.

Today we are joined by a real trailblazer in IT procurement.

Welcome to the show, Jordan Salander.

Thanks for having me, Nadia.

Jordan, you have got to know your business from two different perspectives.

You worked for giant companies, and now you are basically your own boss.

Tell us a little bit about your journey.

Absolutely.

So coming from the giant companies you refer to, funny being here in the New York Stock Exchange today, they're all over the place, but Apple and Dell, so endpoint in where users are actually using computers and technology with Apple, right, with Dell the same, but also enterprise architecture, what big Fortune 500, 150 companies are using to run their businesses today.

So I've gotten to see it from the perspective of using the technology and big companies acquiring it down to the you and I buying iPhones, which is nice, yeah.

You've seen it all and you can compare and you took valuable lessons, I would say from your time when you were still working for companies and then.

Applying that to your journey that you have now as the CEO, yeah, it's been very interesting, right?

The big thing in takeaways that you see when you're looking at both perspectives is really about looking at the frustrations over time.

I've seen.

Um, people buying and acquiring technology both on the enterprise and the individual side, and I think that's where IT select, the company today that we're talking about here that hopefully is on the stock exchange one day, is really trailblazing, right, leveraging AI, helping people make smart buying decisions when it comes to building their infrastructure and technology stack.

It's a lot for you about being efficient, slimming down.

And an approach that is just highly effective and also bringing in AI.

Big buzzword right now, right.

Big buzzword AI.

So we're, yeah, we're lean and mean, right?

We're not going to be your typical consultant.

Um, typical and traditional consultants, I like to think, you know, um, and I've seen have binders, right?

We're here executing, we're delivering outcomes.

We're not waiting until Quarter 3 to make a change if something's not working for our customers.

We're doing it tomorrow, right?

We're leveraging automation.

We're leveraging AI to take those data points in for what the stakeholders who are buying technology are looking at and considering and helping them make smart and great.

Decisions when it comes to future proofing their tech stack.

What advice do you have to other leaders in your industry?

That are doing similar things and are looking to streamline their business.

If it's customers we're talking about in buying technology right and advice they're looking, I'm looking to give my advice don't get lost in analysis paralysis, right?

It usually costs more money.

Uh, taking a very long time with an evaluation cycle that might take months, sometimes even years to finally pick something good, leverage a firm like ours, right, that is not a traditional consultant that is leveraging AI that is constantly reevaluating the vendor ecosystem across thousands of data points and projects literally daily.

To make the right decisions, is that what sets you apart from the competitors easily, easily, yeah, so we are, so you don't even have competitors because nobody does exactly what you do and how you do it.

I like to think that.

I like to think that.

We're coming into the space with again buzzword AI in leveraging it to a point where we're helping customers move faster than they've ever.

Move before.

What used to take 90 days to evaluate is now taking 9 and we're delivering the same results.

We're very much not about the fluff.

We're about optimizing and helping executives to reach those decisions quicker.

It's all about speed and time is money, especially here in New York stock exchange here.

Uh, so what is your focus for the next few months for the rest of the year, looking ahead, what are the projects that you're excited about, what are you focusing on right now?

Right now we're working.

This is very top secret, but It's safe, exactly, yeah, for the world, building a proprietary AI model that is leveraging the customer's data, right?

So being able to collect there are thousands of data points and working with the stakeholders that are in the C-suite, the strategy, the operations team, and Obviously IT to digest that and then help them make decisions, right?

That's really what we're focused on on but leveraging that proprietary model is going to help speed to install, speed to execution, speed to decision, save time, save money, make people feel more confident about their IT buying journey.

That's what we're working on right now.

Win win win win win situation.

Well, I'm excited that you are visiting us here at the New York Stock Exchange, and I hope you'll come back.

Absolutely, thank you.

We want to follow your journey and want to also see since AI is changing so rapidly, I can only imagine that your business will as well.

Absolutely, yeah, very excited to see what the future holds.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

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