On September 30, I walked across the stage at the MSP 501
Gala in Orlando to accept an award I'm still a little amazed by. Framework IT
was named a 2026 AI MSP of the Year in The MSP Summit's MSP 501 Special Awards,
the recognition program run by Informa alongside the MSP 501 ranking.
For a Chicago managed service provider (MSP) of our size,
that's a big moment. We also ranked No. 217 on the 2026 MSP 501, which The MSP
Summit calls the technology channel's most comprehensive ranking of managed
service providers worldwide.
If you're evaluating an IT partner, you've probably wondered
whether "AI" is marketing language or something that actually shows up in the
work. This post answers that for Framework IT: what the award recognizes, how
we earned it, who made it happen, and what it means for the organizations we
serve.
What the AI MSP of the Year Award Recognizes
In the program's own words, the AI MSP of the Year award
recognizes "exceptional innovation and leadership in the application of
artificial intelligence within the managed services industry." The judges look
at 2 things: the AI solutions an MSP delivers to its clients, and how the MSP
uses AI to run its own business.
The field was competitive. This year's Special Awards drew a
record number of nominees, narrowed to 57 finalists across 9 categories.
Framework IT was 1 of 6 finalists in the AI category before being named a
winner.
That second judging criterion matters a lot to us. We've
always held ourselves to a simple rule: we don't recommend a tool to a client
until we've used it ourselves. AI gets the same treatment. In our experience,
AI only creates value when it's put into daily operation, governed, and tied to
results.
Why We Started Building an AI-First MSP in 2023
We started pushing Framework IT into AI in 2023. Our
reasoning was simple. We believe AI will fundamentally reshape managed
services, cybersecurity, and the services we provide. We think it will reshape
many of the industries our clients work in, too.
It felt a lot like the early days of the smartphone.
Companies became iPhone native, or they slowly lost the ability to compete. We
don't know the exact timeline for AI, but we're confident about the direction.
We also saw a responsibility. Our clients were going to
adopt AI one way or another. We wanted to help them do it securely and capture
the productivity gains that keep them competitive.
How We Use AI Across Framework IT
Before we offered AI services to a single client, we rolled
AI out across our own company and ran heavy internal training to get everyone
comfortable. Today, dozens of specialized AI workflows and agents support
nearly every team we have. Here's where AI shows up in our day-to-day work.
Governance Came First
We started where we tell every client to start: governance.
Before we launched a paid AI service, we spent about 18 months helping clients
across our base put AI acceptable use policies in place.
As the virtual Chief Information Officer (vCIO) for our
clients, we were already tightening permissions and access to data sources like
Microsoft 365. AI raises the stakes on that work, so it stays at the front of
every engagement.
Sales: The Work the Judges Highlighted
The work the judges called out started in our sales process.
We built a series of AI-powered workflows and agents on our Framework AI
platform, each one designed around how our sales team already works. They're
trained on our own standards: pre-sale documentation templates, meeting summary
formats, pricing structures, contract language, and our best-practices roadmap.
The result was a 75% reduction in administrative sales
tasks. Our team spends far less time on research, documentation, follow-up,
pricing, and contract prep, and more time with the people we're trying to help.
The same approach now runs across our whole sales cycle:
·
Prospect research and meeting preparation.
·
Request for proposal (RFP) triage and response,
plus tailored prospect Q&A drafted from our own reference library.
·
A custom website for each prospect, built around
their business and the services they're considering.
·
Standardized handoff summaries that capture
everything we learned during the sales process, so our service team starts
every new partnership fully briefed.
When prospects ask what AI can do, we show them what we
built for ourselves. It's the most credible answer we have.
Service Delivery
On the service side, AI helps our team:
·
Triage, prioritize, and route service tickets,
so requests reach the right engineer faster.
·
Prepare for Strategic Business Reviews (SBRs)
with our clients.
·
Audit client documentation for gaps.
·
Draft custom client policies and disaster
recovery (DR) plans.
·
Build custom AI roadmaps from a client's own
process documentation.
Our engineers still own the work. AI takes the sorting,
drafting, and first passes off their plates, so they can spend their time on
problems that need human judgment.
Marketing, Operations, and Management
Our marketing team uses purpose-built agents for blog
content, social media, search engine optimization (SEO) research, and campaign
strategy. Operations uses AI to maintain FAQs, build out our knowledge base,
and write standard operating procedures (SOPs).
Finance uses AI for profit and loss (P&L) analysis and
forecasting, and we're automating accounting workflows. Our managers use AI to
plan professional development and help new hires ramp up faster.
What We Learned the Hard Way
Not everything worked the first time. One early client
signed on, skipped the first 2 phases of our adoption program, and never built
the habits that make AI stick. Usage stayed flat, and they eventually drifted
to a free self-service tool.
Looking back, every one of our toughest experiences traced
to the same cause: skipping the early steps. So we changed how we work. We now
hold clients to a phased sequence, check engagement at day 30, and step in with
hands-on help when usage stalls. We also moved implementation training from
virtual group sessions to onsite half-day and full-day intensives.
We hold all of this with some humility. Everyone, MSPs
included, is still early on this curve. Whatever we believe today, we'll likely
see differently in 3 years, and we'd rather say that plainly than pretend we
have a finished playbook.
This Award Belongs to Our Team
"This award belongs to our team. In 2023 we made a bet that
AI would reshape managed services, cybersecurity, and the way our clients work.
Our people bought in, learned the tools, and built the workflows that got us
here. I couldn't be prouder of them."
I want to give a special shout-out to Eric Pitts, our AI
Strategist and resident subject matter expert. Eric has guided our AI work as
an advisor, both inside our company and with our clients.
Credit also goes to the whole Framework IT team, and many
people played a role. New tools only matter if people use them. Our team
adopted these tools early, learned fast, and kept finding new ways to put AI to
work.
And thank you to our clients, who trusted us to help them
adopt AI responsibly. Much of what we know about doing this well, we learned
alongside you.
Read here to learn about Crawl, Walk, Run - our methodology
to help clients with successful AI Adoption.
Read here for the AI MSP of the Year FAQs.
About the Author
Adam Barney is President and Managing Partner of Framework
IT. He leads with a core philosophy that technology should be approachable,
empowering businesses to thrive in their respective industries.
Since assuming the presidency in January 2020, Adam has led
a team of over 40 professionals spanning sales, information technology,
operations, marketing, human resources, and fulfillment.
Adam spearheaded the adoption of artificial intelligence in
Framework's internal operations and service delivery, positioning the company
at the forefront of AI-driven IT management. He pioneered the launch of a new
service offering to help clients implement AI and AI-based automation in their
own businesses, enabling organizations to unlock new levels of efficiency and
competitive advantage.
Adam is also a founding member of The Forge AI Alliance of
MSPs, an alliance of managed service providers working to accelerate the
adoption of AI and automation in their own companies and those of their
clients.
Under Adam's leadership, Framework IT was named AI MSP of
the Year in the 2026 MSP 501 Special Awards (The MSP Summit), recognizing its
use of AI both in client-facing solutions and in its own operations, and ranked
No. 217 on the 2026 MSP 501.
The company has also been named to the Inc. 500 Fastest
Growing Private Companies in America twice and the Inc. 5000 list at least five
times over the past decade. The company has been ranked one of the Best &
Brightest Places to Work in Chicago for five consecutive years and one of the
Best & Brightest Places to Work in the Nation twice in the last five years.
Adam's expertise has positioned him as a sought-after voice
in managed services and business technology. His insights have been featured in
the Harvard Business Review, the Washington Post, and Fox 32 Chicago. Adam is
also proud to serve as a speaker and panelist at the Chicago Bar Association
2026 AI Symposium, sharing practical guidance on AI adoption with the legal
community.
Outside of work, Adam is a husband and father of two
daughters, as well as an avid reader with interests spanning leadership,
management, psychology, and technology.
