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By Tom Bianculli | May 7, 2026
Winning Together: A Pragmatic Guide to AI for Your Frontline Workforce
The energy at our recent Channel Partner Summit in Orlando felt palpable. Everywhere you turned, conversations buzzed with the potential of AI. I understand the excitement around AI, but as an engineer and problem-solver, I constantly ask: What tangible results can it deliver for our customers? How does it help the person on the store floor, in the warehouse, or making a delivery?
For years, my teams and I have focused on these questions, and in this edition of our Winning Together blog series I want to talk about how the conversation is shifting from abstract hype to concrete, operational value.
The Evolution of AI's Role
Initially, many saw AI as a tool primarily for training, a way to reduce onboarding time and bring new associates to competency faster. This provided an immediate, measurable benefit.
However, the story quickly evolved. We discovered that by optimizing workflows for all employees, we could unlock significant gains. In our study with Oxford Economics, the data shows that when you focus on this optimization, you can generate a 20% improvement in customer satisfaction.
Why? Because you return valuable time to employees, time they can dedicate to direct customer interaction. This moves AI from a simple training aid to a powerful engine for customer experience.
From Knowledgeable Assistant to Active Participant
So what does this look like in practice? Imagine equipping every retail associate with the knowledge of a sommelier. We recently worked with a partner to create a sales assistant that provides deep product knowledge on demand. This democratizes expertise across the entire workforce, enabling associates to guide customers confidently. The system even helps optimize margin by suggesting cross-sell and upsell opportunities. This shows how we equip the connected frontline to improve business outcomes.
But the real leap happens when the AI moves from just providing guidance to actively participating in the workflow. A six-step returns process, for example, can shrink to a two or three-step action. The AI handles the background tasks, simplifying the process for the employee and saving precious minutes on every transaction. This involves more than just knowing what to do; the system helps you get it done faster.
Orchestrating a Simpler, More Intelligent Future
This leads to a larger vision for the future of work. One customer I spoke with manages 52 separate applications in their retail environment. No one wants to train employees on 52 different systems. The future lies not in more apps, but in intelligent automation. We envision a single AI agent that works across all these backend systems. Employees will interact with the agent in natural language, and the agent will execute tasks by interacting with the necessary applications in the background.
Our UX teams call the interface for this "contextual, dynamic, and disposable." The UI you need shows up at the exact moment you need it and then disappears. This approach makes technology frictionless. It allows employees to focus on their work, not on navigating complex software. We believe this provides the foundation for truly intelligent operations.
The Data That Fuels the Engine
An intelligent system, however, requires a steady diet of high-quality, real-time data. Feeding an AI model yesterday’s information will only give you yesterday's answers. To make decisions relevant to this very moment, you need to eliminate blind spots in your operational awareness.
This explains the growing interest I see from customers in creating data-powered environments. They want to contextualize everything happening in their facilities through a combination of mobile computers, RFID, machine vision, and sensors. Success depends on both the breadth of data streams and the frequency of the data.
With this real-time asset visibility, the AI orchestration engine can then route the right action to the right person at the right time, creating optimized workflows that were previously out of reach. For a long time, this remained just a vision, but I can confidently say the technology has now caught up.
A Pragmatic Path Forward
Everyone talks about AI. Our focus, together with our incredible partner ecosystem, is to deliver real solutions that solve our customers’ most pressing problems today. Our approach is grounded in a deep, shared understanding of our customers' use cases, and it’s a strategy we live and breathe alongside the experts who work with our customers every day: our partners. They are our eyes and ears on the front line, providing invaluable insight that shapes our innovation.
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This problem-first philosophy is the foundation of our shared success. It is the combination of Zebra’s technology and our partners' deep industry expertise that allows us to deliver meaningful throughput and efficiency gains exactly where the action happens.
Our customers don’t just get a technology vendor; they get a powerful alliance. They get Zebra’s foundation for intelligent operations, brought to life by a dedicated partner who understands their unique world.
The energy and collaborative spirit at our recent Channel Partner Summit were a powerful reminder of what we can achieve together. The journey from simple AI assistance to full workflow orchestration is just beginning, and the future we will build with our partners has never looked brighter.
To hear more about this vision and see our conversation from the summit, I encourage you to watch the full briefing below.
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