Kennie Rotunda, VP of IT at Loenbro

In this week’s Sage Spotlight, Kennie Rotunda, VP of IT at Loenbro, explains how he’s scaling IT maturity across a fast-growing construction company — with a focus on AI, standardization, and M&A. He also reflects on how painful vendor discovery used to be. In Part 2, he reveals the standout vendors he’s discovered through Sagetap.

Part 1 Video

Part 1 Key Takeaways

• Maturing IT at a High-Growth Construction Company: As Loenbro rapidly expands through acquisitions, Kennie is focused on standardizing systems, reducing technical debt, and driving value through process automation and data strategy.
• AI Needs More Direction and Dialogue: Kennie sees major potential in AI but says the industry is marching toward it blindfolded. His team created an AI Center of Excellence to explore practical use cases and drive smarter adoption.
• Ineffective Vendor Discovery Before Sagetap: Kennie used to struggle to find the right vendors at the right time. He ignored most cold outreach, but when he actively searched, the process was slow, frustrating, and didn’t always lead to the best-fit solutions.

Part 2 Coming November 18!

Full Transcript

Kennie Rotunda: I'm the VP of IT at Loenbro. It's an industrial construction company with a specialty towards electrical for data centers. So, incredibly growing company. Over the last few years, we've doubled and expect to triple over time. 

Coming into Loenbro, my goal was to really mature IT and help mature the business in the process as well: business systems, good business processes, automation, foundational things, as well as data analytics and AI.

Meghan Lafferty: Looking at 2025, and also ahead to 2026, is there something that is most pressing for you and your company?

Kennie: Yes. Right now, we are up to our ears in acquisition work. We're seeing this trend where all these companies are kind of merging together, and I recognize the benefit of having that skill and opportunity as well. We are aiming to get our ERP system migrated together, the domain structure, as well as to continually improve the way we operate within IT. 

In 2026, kind of more of the same, I think. However, much more focus on data analytics, which we already started, as well as AI solutions.

Meghan: Are there major opportunities that lie for vendors right now within the spaces?

Kennie: I think so. Certainly AI opportunities. When we look at AI technologies, there's thousands of AI companies now. 

I really think there's an opportunity for some level of consolidation where you have, perhaps, AI agents or bots or whatever within various systems that are small components and sort of a master, a master bot, if you will, that is reading those. Instead of trying to consolidate all of your data into one lakehouse or warehouse environment and then putting AI over the top of that, which we're currently doing, it could be beneficial as an easy button, if you will, to have AI agents talk to other AI agents. 

So, I think there's a lot of opportunities in this space, a lot of opportunities for vendors to really kind of think differently and kind of make themselves stand out versus blending in with the other AI vendors.

Meghan: Is there something that you wish your industry were talking about more?

Kennie: We're all kind of marching towards AI but have no idea where it's going. So, we're doing this blindfolded, and I think it's silly. Yes, we all want to get there, but we don't know why. So, having that conversation is super important. So, we've created an AI Center of Excellence to start the discussion. It's a small group of people, and we're kind of exploring that space to understand how it's going to help us. 

I think, as well, if we think outside of the obvious AI stuff, I think there needs to be more discussion about the benefits of standardization, especially when you have M&A situations. Standardizing on technologies and processes is incredibly important, making sure you're driving towards that goal. Because technical debt is real, and it costs a lot of money. So, I think it's more about that value realization as you start developing solutions.

Meghan: Let's talk about before Sagetap. How did you identify the right vendors to evaluate before you were on the platform?

Kennie: Incredibly difficult. It's odd. So, in my position, I got business developers from all these different companies trying to get my attention, and probably 98.5% of the time, I'm blocking them from LinkedIn, or I'm not answering my phone call, or I'm blocking the emails because I don't need that product.

Ironically, when I do have a need, who do I contact? Or even if I know who to contact, how do I contact them? I have found so many problems trying to get some attention. Previous to Sagetap, it was an incredibly painful process and time-consuming, and I don't even know if I ended up with the best possible vendor.

Part 2 coming November 18!