VIEWPOINT As a Microsoft frontier partner, Coretek uses its own operating data to demonstrate what its customers can achieve with AI BRIAN BARNES: CORETEK Being customer zero for AI transformation The Microsoft partner economy is undergoing its most significant reset in two decades. In 2026, the line between selling AI and living AI has collapsed. Microsoft’s AI frontier partner designation recognises this shift – it rewards partners who internalise AI before they recommend it, who co-create rather than resell, and who can prove transformation with their own operating data. At Coretek, we have built our 2026 strategy around exactly that premise: be customer zero, then be the most credible guide our clients can find. A frontier partner embeds Microsoft Azure AI Foundry, Copilot Studio, Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft AI Agents into the daily fabric of the business – not as pilots, but as production systems. This designation signals four things to the market: internal adoption at scale, co-innovation with Microsoft engineering, measurable return on investment and a public willingness to share what worked and what didn’t. It is a credibility badge earned in operations, not marketing. At Coretek, we made a deliberate decision in 2025 to run every AI initiative on ourselves first – to be customer zero. Three programmes anchor that work. We call the first programme ‘agents in the org chart’. We have placed purpose-built AI agents alongside human roles in finance, marketing, delivery and revenue operations (RevOps). 50 Photo: iStock/miniseries
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