TD SYNNEX CIO Kristie Grinnell outlined the tech distributor’s AI plans and how change management is key to driving revenue growth and productivity.
Here’s a look at the takeaways from my conversation with Grinnell, a Constellation Research BT150 member.
TD SYNNEX’s vision is to become an “AI-fluid company.” Grinnell described how the distributor’s AI strategy is built around empowering every employee to use AI tools intelligently rather than isolating them to specialists:
“We want to grow our business with the use of AI so it will augment our workforce. We envision a hybrid workforce, but we also envision that the future of distribution will become more digital as well. Now we don't think that the human will ever completely be out of the loop, but it’s imperative that we become what we call an AI fluid company where everybody can speak AI, know when to use an agent, know when to use Gen AI, know when to use machine learning and know when to even use a bot versus that toolkit.”
AI is central to both revenue growth and operational efficiency. Grinnell emphasized that AI doesn’t just save money—it’s equally a revenue driver:
“We feel it has to work for us to grow and our customers want the same experience. They want TD SYNNEX employees to be able to walk them through where they are on that journey digitally. So, there's a revenue piece to that. But we absolutely see that we're going to have to find the efficiencies in our own company so that as we grow that revenue, we're growing our profit as well.”
The “AI factory” concept will tackle tech debt and enable agility. Grinnell framed TD SYNNEX’s modernization around an “AI factory” that turns agents into the new layer of applications while gradually eliminating legacy complexity:
“We want to create what everybody's calling the AI factory. That factory is going to have to be able to talk to the data as well as the applications as inputs and create essentially new agents that become the new applications, overriding some of that tech debt that we have. Our goal would be that one by one, those agents will help us start to take a little bit of the tech debt away.”
Data discipline begins with focused domains, not “boiling the ocean.” She explained that effective AI depends on pragmatic data strategies—starting small, cleaning up legacy complexity, and proving value domain by domain:
“The approach we're using is that you just have to pick a domain as if this is where we're going to start and then we can go forward. We have so much data. It can be messy. We just have to really focus on one area first.”
The greatest challenge is change management and workforce education. Grinnell said success with AI depends more on people and learning than on technology alone:
“Every employee has an opportunity now that they didn't before. It's really not about the technology at this point. It's about the education, the knowledge and the know-how of your employee base. For us, this is more the biggest change management exercise we've ever led, rather than the biggest IT project we've ever led.”
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- Constellation Research’s sneak peak at 2026
