Artificial intelligence has surged to the top of the agenda for small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs), yet many organizations still struggle to move beyond curiosity and take concrete steps. In this environment, United Datacom Networks, Inc. (UDNI), an MSP headquartered in Altoona, PA, established a methodical way to lead the AI conversation, turning initial interest into readiness assessments, structured plans, and operational results. The approach combines ConnectWise’s automation backbone, the ConnectWise Partner Program’s enablement resources, GlassHive’s demand-generation engine, and the SMB AI Assessment Tool as the bridge between market enthusiasm and actionable adoption. 

Central to this motion is a disciplined focus on asking the right questions, nurturing the right prospects, and delivering with measurable impact—an approach that consistently transforms AI talk into AI outcomes. At the forefront of UDNI’s AI transformation is CTO Zach Beckel, whose vision and leadership turned curiosity into measurable results. 

UDNI has a long-standing relationship with ConnectWise and considers it the primary platform for service operations and continuous improvement. The company emphasizes a culture of advancement and process discipline: “We have constantly evaluated our ability to get better. And ConnectWise has allowed us to really expand on our growth and has really been the tool that we’ve seen is responsible for keeping us organized.” 

Over the years, this mindset has made it easier to integrate new capabilities—especially those related to AI—without disrupting the workflows and standards that serve clients on a daily basis. The connective tissue across UDNI’s AI strategy is process clarity: every step from first touch to delivery is grounded in repeatable mechanisms that ensure conversations are substantive and services are scalable.

Readiness First: Why UDNI Anchors AI Adoption in Assessment

UDNI’s AI motion is a consultative framework, anchored by the SMB AI Assessment Tool. Rather than leading with demos or one-size-fits-all propositions, UDNI uses the assessment to evaluate readiness and shape the next steps in a way that aligns with each customer’s maturity. “The SMB AI Assessment tool is a fantastic tool to use to gauge customer interest in AI,” Beckel explains. The value lies in how it structures dialogue: “And the tool allows you, as the MSP, to really have a conversation to drive. What’s the next step that we need to take?” 

This moves the conversation from generic excitement to specific planning—data governance, policy groundwork, workflow modernization, pilot selection—so customers can connect the potential of AI with their current capabilities and constraints. As the team puts it, “Having a tool to be able to guide you through the process and identify the data that you want to use and understand, really helps you think and mature. That process is critical in the next step, to using AI in your business.”

UDNI understands the market reality that interest in AI is everywhere, but practical outcomes are rare. Beckel captures this dynamic succinctly: “Everybody wants to talk about it, but not everybody can talk about it from a perspective of what’s next.” This insight drives the company’s focus on maturity-based consultation. With the assessment as the entry point, UDNI helps clients frame an adoption path that reduces hype-driven risk and emphasizes operational coherence. “The conversations get to the heart of what we want to achieve and what it have to do—across people, process, and data—to achieve it,” Beckel said. In other words, UDNI’s AI stance is not about chasing every tool; it’s about guiding clients to align their readiness to their goals and then delivering on those plans with consistency.

Of course, the consultative motion requires a steady supply of qualified conversations, and that is where UDNI’s marketing execution stands out. Instead of generic email blasts that appeal to everyone and resonate with no one, UDNI deploys the AI-focused campaigns in GlassHive to pinpoint and activate prospects who are already signaling their curiosity. “We use the campaigns within GlassHive, and they are fantastic! The AI campaigns specifically have allowed us to really target the customers that seem to be very interested in engaging with us around AI,” Beckel notes. 

These campaigns are designed to funnel prospects into the assessment-led consultative experience, ensuring marketing energy translates into discovery and solution design. “The campaigns allowed us to really expand the conversation to the next step, which is using the assessment tool.” In practice, UDNI’s marketing and consulting functions operate as a single system where targeting leads to structured dialogue and dialogue leads to action.

Turning Signals into Success: How GlassHive Powers Persistent Outreach

Sales execution plays an equally important role by turning engagement signals into sustained conversation. UDNI’s team praises how GlassHive’s journey-based follow-ups and sequences help sales stay in front of prospects who show interest but haven't responded, thus preserving momentum. “One of my favorite things within GlassHive is how the sales team uses the different components and the pieces that allow them to follow up with leads,” they explain. These tools “allow us to have a touchpoint to those who have shown interest but haven’t yet responded or opened the emails. With GlassHive, we can really hone in on our targets and make sure we’re reaching our intended customers.” 

The result is a disciplined rhythm of outreach that ensures curious prospects don’t slip through the cracks and instead move toward assessment and solution planning. GlassHive’s sales enablement reduces the “momentum tax” that many teams pay when juggling multiple prospects and campaigns, and it creates a predictable flow from first touch to qualified discovery.

With marketing, consultation, and sales aligned, UDNI positions itself as an AI thought leader within its geography and customer base. Their experience reflects that being “first” is not merely about timing, but about being prepared—ready with campaigns, assessments, workshops, and delivery capabilities. “The tools within GlassHive have allowed us, specifically, to be first to the market around being the thought leader within our community and within the area of our customer base,” the team observes. From this position, they can confidently steer conversations, educating clients on what readiness looks like and why it matters. That confidence springs from outcomes, not just claims. “We feel really empowered by using the campaigns and the tools within the campaign to be able to get measurable results, to be able to have the ability to engage with customers and produce meaningful results,” they add.

Driving Operational Excellence with ConnectWise RMM: Cutting Noise, Scaling Service

The contrast with the broader market is stark: Beckel shared, “Most of the time a lot of people want to talk about AI, but there’s not a lot of meaningful results that come from it.” UDNI’s playbook pushes past talk, translating interest into structured initiatives and demonstrable wins.

Operational excellence is the proof point that turns thought leadership into trusted delivery. UDNI relies on ConnectWise automation—especially RPA and Intellimon alerts—to reduce alert fatigue, improve response, and scale services without compromising quality. The team shared hard metrics that encapsulate this value: “By using ConnectWise RMM, we typed in, tightened up our workflows, and alerted by taking advantage of the built-in Intellimon alerts, which allowed us to reduce white noise by 50% compared to our automated alerting.” 

In an industry where noisy signals can drown critical events and bog down response times, cutting white noise in half is transformative. “It allows our team to focus on high-value work and makes service-level commitments more reliable.” 

How Automation Powers Secure, Stable Growth---Without Adding Headcount

Automation’s benefits extend to patching, alert management, and compliance—the backbone disciplines that keep environments secure and stable. UDNI credits ConnectWise’s automation capabilities for delivering scale without added headcount: “The automation capabilities streamlined patching, alert management, and compliance and enabled us to support thousands of endpoints without adding staff.” They echoed that point plainly in another formulation: “With the automation capabilities within the product, we were able to add thousands of endpoints without adding staff.” 

For customers, these operational outcomes translate into faster resolution, fewer missed critical events, and improved consistency across environments. For UDNI’s internal team, the gains are evident in calmer operations, smarter prioritization, and the ability to onboard more clients without compromising service quality.

Education at Scale: Workshops and Ready-to-Run Content Drive Go-to-Market Success

Enablement from the ConnectWise Partner Program underpins UDNI’s go-to-market and education strategies, making it easier to run events, host webinars, and deliver ready-to-go content without having to rebuild materials every time. “The ConnectWise Partner Program provides us not only value from within the software platform that we use, GlassHive, but it also allows us to engage with partner resources like Jim (Peterson) and others at ConnectWise that really help us, get the message across to our customers and help support us when we have events,” said Beckel. 

One of the most useful components—especially for time-strapped teams—is the “speaker-in-a-box” offering: “The speaker-in-a-box presentation allows us to have off-the-shelf, comprehensive presentations for us so that we don’t have to come up with all the content every time.” With full slide decks, speaker notes, and recorded demonstrations, UDNI can quickly and consistently mobilize AI and cybersecurity talks, providing SMB audiences with structured, digestible guidance on complex topics.

Education extends beyond static content into live workshops and training that sharpen sales and marketing execution. UDNI described how these sessions complement the product capabilities they already use: “We use GlassHive, not just the product set that allows us to be successful, but also the workshops that they provide. And, the live workshops in particular, my team will use and allow them to really not have to think about all the ways that. That they need to communicate with customers.”