⁠The Consultant of the Future: How AI, Speed, and Bold Thinking Are Disrupting a $200B Industry | Ep 2 with Jordan Sallander Founder of IT Select

Welcome to perceived reality. I'm your host Nadia Atwal. Today we are joined by a real trailblazer, an 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. Coming from the giant companies we refer to, funny being here in the New York Stock Exchange today, they're all over the place. But Apple and Dell's so end point in where users 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 in big companies acquiring it down to the UNI buying iPhones, which is nice. Yeah. Yeah. You have 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 and takeaways that you see when you're looking at both perspectives is really about looking at the frustrations over time. I've seen 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 in a project is just highly effective and also bringing in AI. Big buzzword right now, AI, right? Big buzzword AI. So yeah, we're lean and mean, right? We're not going to be your typical consultants. Typical and traditional consultants I like to think, and I've seen have binders, right? We're here executing, we're delivering outcomes. We're not waiting until quarter three 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? In an advice they're looking, I'm looking to give, my advice don't get lost in analysis paralysis, right? It usually costs more money taking a very long time with a 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 re-evaluing the bender ecosystem across thousands of data points and projects literally daily to make the right decisions. Is that one sets you apart from the competitors? Easily. Easily. Yeah, so we are- So we don't even have competitors. Well then nobody does exactly what you do and how you do it. I like to think not. No, I like to think not. 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 moved before. What used to take 90 days to evaluate is now taking nine and we're delivering the same results. We're very much not about the fluff, we're about optimizing and helping executives reach those decisions quicker. It's all about speed and time is money, especially here in New York. And that's the stock exchange here. 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 here. 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 in 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. When, when, when, when situation, well, I'm excited that you were visiting us here at the New York Stock Exchange and I hope you come back. Absolutely, thank you. And as always, we're going 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 future holds. Thank you so much. Thank you. There was another episode of perceived reality. Join us again next time.