The hackathon ended Tuesday. The customer meeting is next week. A regulated utility. A problem set compounding for years. A 2028 deadline that has everyone's attention. Six people from Robots & Pencils spent one day at Amazon's Chicago office building on #AmazonQuick to find out how fast a concept could become something worth showing. Faster than expected. Adrian Bird has the full story. Read it here: https://buff.ly/02gKqPZ Photo by Scott Young: L-R, Lisa Bayne, MBA, Stefan Deusch, Adrian Bird, Alexander Shumski, Saul Delage #QuickDesktop #AI #AWSPartners #AWSHackathon #GenAI
Robots & Pencils
IT Services and IT Consulting
Chagrin Falls , Ohio 23,878 followers
An Applied AI Engineering Partner building AI systems designed for enterprise velocity and measurable business impact.
About us
Robots & Pencils is an Applied AI Engineering Partner that builds AI systems designed for enterprise velocity and measurable business impact. The company has earned recognition as an AWS Pattern Partner and AWS Advanced Tier Services Partner. Founded in 2009 on the belief that the best solutions emerge when technology meets human-centered design, the company's approach blends the sciences and humanities—the robots and pencils—combining elite, mature engineering talent with world-class UX design. Robots & Pencils delivers production-ready AI implementations in weeks versus the industry standard of months. Operating through small, senior teams rather than massive consulting organizations, the company serves enterprises across Consumer Products and Retail, Education, Energy, Financial Services, Healthcare, and Manufacturing. With delivery centers in Canada, the United States, Eastern Europe, and Latin America, Robots & Pencils has gained a reputation as the nimble alternative to traditional global systems integrators, combining the agility of a specialized partner with enterprise-grade delivery discipline and the craft that comes from people who care deeply about the work they do.
- Website
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http://robotsandpencils.com
External link for Robots & Pencils
- Industry
- IT Services and IT Consulting
- Company size
- 51-200 employees
- Headquarters
- Chagrin Falls , Ohio
- Type
- Privately Held
- Founded
- 2009
- Specialties
- Artificial Intelligence, Agentic AI, Generative AI, Cloud Modernization, Cloud Migration, Data Readiness, AI Enablement, AI Workforce Transformation, and Production AI Systems
Locations
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Primary
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7 1/2 North Franklin Street
Chagrin Falls , Ohio 44022, US
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1507 14 Ave SW
Calgary, Alberta T3C 0W4, CA
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2818 Smallman St
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15222, US
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119 Nueces St
Suite 215
Austin, Texas 78701, US
Employees at Robots & Pencils
Updates
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Most campuses have an official AI strategy. Most campuses also have what's actually happening. Those two things are not the same. And the gap between them is growing faster than any task force can meet. Jason Lacy has been watching this play out across higher education. Episode 6 of Back to the Future of Education is where he names it. Watch below 👇 Curious how Robots & Pencils works with higher ed institutions navigating AI adoption? Learn more: https://buff.ly/uUieR7p
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The energy sector is two years from a projected AI tipping point. It is also sitting at 7% deployment. Scott Young, our EVP of Growth, names exactly what separates those two numbers in his new series, "The Fault Line." This three-parter is for the energy executive who is ready for AI to reach operations. The learning gap opens the moment a competitor goes live. Read the series: https://buff.ly/x0EAZWg #EnergyAI #AIStrategy #EnergyTransition #AgenticAI #EnterpriseAI
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The best thing an AI partner can bring to an evaluation is something running. On your data. Doing the actual thing. Presentations describe capability. A proof of concept reveals it. Enterprise buyers deserve to know the difference before they sign. Read the full take from Tim Zeller: https://buff.ly/LupAP2c #EnterpriseAI #AIStrategy #AIEvaluation
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Are you a Designer? Engineer? Product thinker? Builder of smart things and better experiences? If you’re the kind of person who likes solving real problems with thoughtful people who care about the work (and each other), you might like it here. Take a look at the open roles. -> https://buff.ly/d9bifxC Share with someone brilliant in your network. Good work attracts good people. #Hiring #TechCareers #JoinOurTeam
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Most strategic plans still put the four-year degree at the center. But that assumption has a shorter half-life than it used to. Not because degrees are disappearing, but because they’re no longer the center of the journey. Jason Lacy explores what that shift means. 88 seconds. Watch the full episode. 👇 See how Robots & Pencils builds with higher ed. → https://buff.ly/jlfQDHq #AIinEducation #EducationAI #HigherEd
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Our Payroll & Benefits Manager spent half her project asking the AI "What is a terminal command?" She finished it anyway. A 13-minute manual process. Now under 4 minutes. Built start to finish in plain English. That's how we think about building here. Curiosity over expertise. Brave enough to ask the dumb questions. Permission (and encouragement) to try. Mary Spencer-Peake wrote about all of it. The frustration. The 4-minute finish line. Read her full story below 👇 https://lnkd.in/eAMjN5mh
I did a thing. And honestly? It tested me deeply (this hippo is my brain at the end of it all) 😅. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲: A few weeks ago, I talked about wanting to use AI to actually work for us. Well, I finally stopped talking and started building. My Payroll & Benefits Administrator, Hannah Jane Vias, PCP, cleaned up an SOP for a manual process we do all the time. I took that SOP and decided to see if I could automate it. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐂𝐡𝐞𝐜𝐤: I quickly realized that an SOP written for a human doesn’t work for AI. AI doesn’t get nuance. I am not a developer. I spent half my time asking the AI questions like: 💻 "What is a terminal command?" 💻 "Can we do this WITHOUT a terminal command?" (The answer was no.) 💻 "How do I even open a folder in this thing?" 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐠𝐠𝐥𝐞: It was frustrating. There were moments where I was ready to throw the whole thing out the window. It’s hard to sit down and invest in "Future You" when "Current You" is already drowning. If I had tried this during a busy season, I 100% would have had a menty B 🥴. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐏𝐚𝐲𝐨𝐟𝐟: The old way was a mess of data exports, bouncing between excel tabs, colour-coding things manually and trying to catch duplicates by eye. On a light day, it took me 13+ minutes of clicking, documenting and data entry. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐰𝐚𝐲? 4 𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐮𝐭𝐞𝐬 🤯 𝐨𝐫 𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬. While I'm logging into the payroll software, the AI is already reviewing the data. I just verify the info, hit import and move to the next country. Boom. Done. What I actually learned: 💻 We’re a weird team: At times, the AI is like a brand-new, tiny payroll admin who knows nothing, and I’m a brand-new, tiny tech user who knows nothing. We weren't fast, but the result was great. 💻 Curiosity > Expertise: I don't need to know it all; I just need to be brave enough to ask the dumb questions. 💻 The Excitement is Back: I haven’t been this excited to learn something new in a long time. It’s not perfect, and I’m still figuring out how to make sure this works for the company (and not just me), but some automation is so much better than no automation. To my LinkedIn fam: When was the last time you were a "tiny new user" at something? It’s uncomfortable, but the 4-minute finish line is worth it. #WomenInTech (ish) #LetTheGoodTimesPayroll #PayrollLife #WorkplaceInnovation #Automation #LearningInPublic #NationalPayrollInstitute
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It looks like a win. AI comes in. Costs go down. Operations get tighter. Faster. Leaner. Everyone nods. This is working. But then something doesn’t happen. Revenue doesn’t move. Growth stays flat. The upside everyone expected… never shows up. Because efficiency was never the whole story. It was just the easy one to measure. Scott Young digs into why retail’s focus on efficiency can quietly cap growth and where the real opportunity with AI actually lives. Read more. -> https://buff.ly/ayieBM2 #retailai #retail #consumergoods #aistrategy
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Most teams hire globally for coverage. At Robots & Pencils, we hire globally for perspective. Madeleine Barthelmess says one of the best parts of her role is seeing firsthand how much incredible tech talent exists all over the world, from Bogotá to Calgary, Cleveland to Lviv. Different perspectives build better products. And even in the age of AI, relationships still matter. In Episode 4 of The Robots & Pencils Talent Perspective, Madeleine shares what global recruiting really looks like when it’s done intentionally. Global, but deeply human. 👀 Watch Episode 4 below. 🔍 View our open roles: https://buff.ly/qfYb8XK 🏷️ Tag someone brilliant in your network. #TechCareers #Recruiting #AIJobs #Hiring
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Most campuses think they have an AI strategy. What they actually have… is a reaction. Every new tool, every new release, every new headline, and the response is the same... add something else. But more tools aren’t making things better. They’re making adoption harder. Jason Lacy looks at why that’s happening, and what the institutions making real progress are doing differently. 88 seconds. Take a look 👀 See how Robots & Pencils shapes the next generation of education: https://buff.ly/6xESJdo #AIinEducation #HigherEd #AIArchitecture