When AI makes headlines, the conversation usually centers on large enterprises, knowledge workers, and the race between tech giants.
In a recent Bloomberg segment, Simpro Group Chairman & CEO Fred Voccola reframed the discussion — shifting the focus from Silicon Valley to something far more foundational: the trades.
The conversation began addressing the risks associated with AI. As new AI models emerge and governments explore deploying them across critical infrastructure, concerns around cybersecurity and supply chain exposure are front of mind. Fred described AI as a “force multiplier unlike anything we’ve seen before” — accelerating both innovation and threat in equal measure.
But while much of the industry is focused on managing AI’s risks, Fred pointed to something else: its overlooked potential.
Because the biggest AI opportunity isn’t necessarily in the enterprise environments dominating the headlines. It’s in the trades — an industry that underpins the global economy, yet has historically been underserved by technology.
Trade businesses, from electrical contractors to plumbing companies, operate on thin margins and complex logistics. Coordinating people, materials, and time across dispersed job sites is inherently difficult – these are “chaos variables.” Even the most successful operators are constrained by systems that were never designed for this level of complexity.
That’s where AI begins to shift the equation.
By embedding intelligence into the core workflows of trades businesses, what was once manual and reactive becomes automated and predictive. Decisions that used to rely on experience and guesswork can now be optimized in real time. The impact isn’t incremental — it’s structural.
As Fred noted, this has the potential to move margins from around six percent to closer to twenty.
That kind of change doesn’t just improve performance. It fundamentally reshapes what’s possible.
It also highlights a broader dynamic playing out across the software landscape. As AI capabilities expand, questions are emerging about the future of SaaS — and whether businesses will simply build their own solutions. In reality, that outcome is far from universal.
Large enterprises may have the resources to experiment with custom AI development. But the typical trade business does not. These are companies built to deliver work in the field, not to stand up engineering teams or develop proprietary systems.
What they need is access — to technology, to data, and to capabilities that would otherwise be out of reach.
This is where Simpro comes in.
With tens of thousands of trade businesses operating on its platform, Simpro isn’t just delivering software. It functions as a system of record for an entire industry, creating the foundation for AI to be applied in a way that is both practical and scalable.
That’s the difference between generic AI potential and real-world impact.
Simpro is applying AI where complexity is highest and the payoff is most tangible for the trades. It delivers outcomes in a segment of the economy that has been overlooked for too long.
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