Episode 26 with Amy Servi-Bonner of PRINTING United Alliance

AI only creates value when it hits the P&L. Amy Servi-Bonner explains why most print companies are getting AI wrong, and how to build the governance, metrics, and knowledge capture needed to make it pay off - before the hype leaves you behind.

Colin Sinclair McDermott, the Online Print Coach, continues the Printing United Expo series with Amy from Printing AI, whose career spans 30 years of business technology transformation, ERP, e-commerce, cloud, retail operations, and now sovereign AI in print. Amy shares how she moved from California to Michigan and into the print industry, how an early AI workflow for customer inquiries changed her perspective, and why she became convinced that AI is not a trend to watch, but a capability to manage strategically.

You'll discover why so many AI projects fail to deliver commercial value, why the print industry's history of failed ERP and MIS rollouts has made teams understandably cautious, and why starting with the tool is almost always backwards. Amy breaks down her MAP-style governance approach through decision authority, override ownership, baseline metrics, and review cadence, and explains why the right question is not "What can AI do?" but "What problem are we solving, and how will we measure it?"

She also makes a strong case for sovereign AI and knowledge sovereignty, arguing that one of the biggest opportunities in print is capturing the tribal knowledge locked inside experienced operators, estimators, and production leaders before it walks out the door. With the average commercial inkjet operator now around 48 years old, the stakes are real: if that knowledge is not captured, businesses risk costly disruption, lost customers, and a dangerous overreliance on tools that do not understand their workflow.

Amy also previews the Printing AI Pavilion at Printing United Expo in Vegas, where the focus is on real P&L impact, curated sponsors, deeper conversations, and practical use cases, not a vendor petting zoo. Add in her book Owning the Machine, her no-nonsense take on overhyped AI use cases, and a quick-fire round that reveals the tools and processes she actually trusts, and you have an episode packed with straight-talking insight for print leaders who want to move from experimentation to real business outcomes.

Essential listening if you're in print, operations, technology, or leadership and you want AI to do more than entertain you.