Kenneth Corriveau, CIO at Broughton Partners

In this week’s Sage Spotlight, Kenneth Corriveau, CIO at Broughton Partners, shares how he's leading digital transformation in the law firm marketing industry through AI agents, automation, and data analytics. Sagetap has become Kenneth’s go-to resource for discovering emerging technologies, connecting with peers, and finding vendors that solve his most specific challenges, including his key partnership with Cerby.

Key Takeaways

• AI Agents Across Multiple Channels: Kenneth is focused on implementing AI agents across voice, SMS, chat, and bots to help Broughton Partners handle more conversations with potential leads and automate tasks that improve pipeline insights.
• Empowering Employees with AI: Beyond implementing AI agents, Kenneth is working to bring AI tools directly to employees so they view them as empowering rather than threatening and feel comfortable using solutions like Gemini to become more efficient in their daily work.
• Sagetap as a Hidden Gem for Staying Current: Kenneth uses Sagetap to track emerging technologies and peer innovations across different areas, giving him a broader perspective than he could gain from news feeds alone — and helping him spot patterns in vendor capabilities.
• From Nightmare to Efficient Discovery: Before Sagetap, Kenneth relied on Gartner lists and PE referrals in what he calls an "invasive" manual process. Now, he can evaluate multiple vendors quickly through focused 30-minute conversations and identify the perfect fit.
• Finding the Missing Piece with Cerby: Kenneth found Cerby on Sagetap when he had a unique need that no one in his industry was solving. Within three months (including a POC), he had signed a contract and joined their client product team as a design partner.

Full Transcript

Kenneth Corriveau: I am the CIO at Broughton Partners, and we are a law firm marketing organization. 

The law industry is going through this revival of implementing technologies. I think AI has really woken up that industry as a whole, in the art of what is possible with the technology. And being a marketing organization for law firms, they're really starting to embrace this and make some changes there. So it's been an exciting journey to work with them and help them transform.

Meghan Lafferty: So 2026 — what is most pressing for you and your company right now? 

Kenneth: Well, as I mentioned, there's a lot going on in our industry with technology from a digital transformation perspective. And I know that's a word that everybody's throwing around, but when I look at what brought them to be successful up until this point was technology. It's really moving from your traditional, let's say, CRM process (we’re a Salesforce shop) to how do you use automations and AI to improve that process? 

So really to provide live agents with digital agents in order to do their job better, faster, provide more insights into what's coming into the pipeline. So for us, it’s going to be, it is AI agents, whether it's a voice agent, whether it's an SMS agent, a chat agent, a bot agent. So it's really in that space that will allow us to handle more conversations with potential leads, and looking at, hey, what can we do in this process to automate some tasks? 

And I would say the second part of that is how do we empower the employees with the AI capabilities that are there? We're a Google shop, so how do we use the capabilities within Gemini now to become a fully AI-empowered shop?

So where I see the industry is not talking enough about it is how do we bring these tools to the employees so that they are not afraid of them, but they view them and see them as empowering to what they're doing, and then in a way that they can now use the AI solutions to make their jobs better and better? 

Everybody does something different, right? And so understanding where AI can help them on their journey, and what they do on a day-to-day basis, the capability is there. How do we teach people to use that to make them more efficient in what they're doing? I think the first six months for us is really going to be where we're using automations, where we're using AI agents. 

And we're actually doing a lot of work with Snowflake as a database as well, and some of the AI capabilities, so I'd say probably the third area is going to be in data. Our data and analytics team is continuing to grow and evolve. There's a lot of untapped information in there. That's probably the third stream that's keeping us busy for 2026.

Meghan: AI and automation are moving particularly quickly. How do you make sure that you keep up and you're aware of the highest impact opportunities as early as you can? 

Kenneth: Yeah, so that is quite a trick. There's a lot of news that's happening out there on a daily basis. A lot of news feeds. I can't tell you how many news feeds I get. 

But Sage has been one of the little hidden gems, I would say, where tapping into that, you can see where are the emerging technologies coming from, and what are the innovations happening, and in what space? Because it's like, I'll have an idea, but that's only from one perspective. But seeing from a variety of places and a variety of areas is exciting.

Meghan: Do you mostly look at what other Sages are working on in terms of their initiatives, or is it from speaking with vendors, or a mix of both?

Kenneth: It's definitely a mix of both. It's great that Sages are posting things that they're working on, so that's helpful. What are they thinking about that they're trying to solve? And so that's been a great insight. 

And then when you add on top of that now the ability to have peer-to-peer connections, it does make me think back to some of the CIO conferences you go to, and then there's almost like speed dating, where you'd meet up with other CIOs and you're exchanging information and what's going on. It's a little bit more casual and a bit more targeted, so I like that addition that's happened recently. 

But it's also great to see what vendors say that their tools are capable of. You're starting to see trends, right? Okay well, I would say maybe two years ago when I was on Sage, a lot of it was about security solutions, and that was great. And then obviously with AI, you can really see where that's going. 

But then it's even more microscopic than that. It's not just general AI, but it's in a specific area. And seeing what patterns are starting to emerge through the vendors within Sage is also very insightful. 

Meghan: So you've been on the platform for a couple years now. What was it like trying to find and evaluate vendors before that time? 

Kenneth: Oh man. I would say it's a nightmare. 

I remember doing — well, we’d go to Gartner. You’d get the list of the vendors from Gartner. Here are the ones in the space. Here's where they are on the quadrant. For the most part, those were vendors that were established and they were out there. 

It was talking to PEs, and they’d want to know what I needed to solve, and then they’d present three clients of theirs. So it was a very manual, I would say, invasive type of process. 

Where since joining Sage and having a particular need, it allowed me to see what their capabilities are, what they've done, see if there were other Sages that had used them, what their experiences were. And then I could reach out to the vendor, or two, or three, and have those conversations. 

I am busy. I can barely find a half hour to grab lunch, so to sit down for a two-hour conversation with a vendor and have the whole pitch, and then at the end go, ugh, that wasn't even what I needed.

I like the approach where we can get a half hour with a vendor. It's again kind of that speed dating kind of conversation, right? What do you do? How do you do it? What's the area? Get right into it. 

So it's really saved time, but also allowed me to quickly look at a number of vendors in quick succession without having to extend the process for vendors that will never fit what I'm exactly looking for.

I may have ten things I'm looking for, but one of them is the most important. And there's going to be two, or three, or four vendors that have nine of them. And that one other vendor is going to have that one piece that I really needed, and there we go, right? And that makes the deal. 

Whereas before, you're like, eh, all right, I'm 80% of the way there. Okay, I can do that. I think this platform gives me that ability to find that vendor that's going to have that one particular solution that I need.

Meghan: Well, I know one of the vendors that actually worked out for you was Cerby. Can you tell me a little bit about your relationship with them? 

Kenneth: Yeah, it was a great journey with them. Great company. And it was one of my early partnerships through Sage. And we had this unique need that we were looking to solve, being in the media marketing space, and there was nobody in the industry. 

I happened to be looking through Sage and ended up finding Cerby. Had some early conversations, got on the phone with the CEO, and it hit that need that we had, that unique need that they were already solving for.

And the other exciting part is that they were still young as an organization, and so we were able to be part of the client product team and provide our needs. 

From start to finish, by the time we signed the contract with them, maybe was three months, probably less than that. And that was with a POC in there, proving out the capabilities in there, adding it into our workflow, so very successful experience.

Meghan: So let's say there's somebody in your shoes who is not on Sagetap yet, but they're considering joining. Is there any advice that you would give them? 

Kenneth: Well, first I would say that if you've talked to me, then you would know about Sagetap. 

I would absolutely say the reason you need to be on the platform, outside of just the list and continuing growing list of vendors, I would say that the community that is being built there, the ability to get to another peer, and even myself, and have a conversation. Hey, you did something with Cerby, or I see you have this challenge that you're trying to solve with an AI agent. Let's talk about that. That has really helped out in a few different situations that I've gone through, and it's actually pivoted me from one platform to another in the past. 

And I probably would say the third thing is when peers are sharing the projects that you're working on, it gives you a bit of an insight into other people's challenges in the tech space, so you're not alone on the journey, and that's kind of cool to see it from that perspective.