For LBM, the AI Model Race Is Over. The Workflow Race Just Started

May 2026 made the industry pivot undeniable — and gave LBM dealers a clearer path through the AI question than they had three months ago.

By John Marshall, Co-Founder, AI Growth Partners

KEY POINTS

• May’s three biggest AI moves—OpenAI’s $4 billion Deployment Company, Anthropic’s Claude for Small Business with QuickBooks and Microsoft 365 connectors, and PwC’s 30,000-consultant Claude alliance—all signal one shift: from model-capability competition to workflow application and measurable ROI.

• Microsoft itself confirmed the multi-model thesis on May 4, when Anthropic’s Claude became the default model behind Microsoft 365 Copilot in Excel and PowerPoint for U.S. commercial cloud tenants—meaning an LBM CEO running margin analysis in Excel that week was getting Claude’s output, often without knowing it.

• For LBM dealers, the question shifts from “which AI platform should we buy” to “which AI sharpens which call”—pricing, margin, customer judgment, sales planning, hiring—until ERPs ship the embedded AI they’re marketing.

For two years, most LBM operators watched the AI conversation from the sidelines and lost very little by waiting. May 2026 may be the month the question got harder to push aside.

Start with what happened. Four major announcements landed in 30 days:

1. May 4: Microsoft made Claude the default model behind Microsoft 365 Copilot in Excel and PowerPoint for US commercial cloud tenants.

2. May 11: OpenAI launched a $4 billion Deployment Company aimed at rewiring enterprise workflows around AI.

3. May 13: Anthropic shipped Claude for Small Business with direct connectors to QuickBooks, PayPal, HubSpot, Microsoft 365, and Google Workspace.

4. May 14: PwC committed 30,000 consultants to Claude certification.

Four different companies. One shared bet.

The supporting evidence sharpens the case. Forrester’s 2026 outlook is titled “AI Moves From Hype To Hard Hat Work”—only 15% of AI decision-makers reported an EBITDA lift last year. Momentum.io found 88% of teams claim AI adoption while only 24% have embedded it into revenue workflows.

May produced its own cautionary tale: “tokenmaxxing,” unmanaged AI usage that ran one firm’s bill to a reported $500 million in a single month and forced Microsoft to cancel most of its own Claude Code licenses. Without workflow discipline, AI spend climbs faster than ROI.

Look at the pattern. No single AI platform wins every task, and the biggest enterprise vendors are openly building around that fact. The Microsoft Excel/PowerPoint default-model switch is the cleanest signal yet—the largest enterprise software company in the world is embedding two AI models and letting the platform choose. The right strategy is matching the right AI to the call that needs sharpening, not vendor loyalty.

Why this matters for LBM dealers. ERP-embedded AI remains largely future-tense—ECI’s eCommerce AI Agent is real but narrow, Epicor’s BisTrack AI is tied to a cloud migration through December 2026, and DMSi’s leadership publicly tells dealers to look past the hype. While that wait plays out, dealers can build now by pairing the right thinking partner to the right kind of decision—Claude when the work is dense analysis, ChatGPT when it’s drafting and iteration, Copilot when the decision lives inside Microsoft 365, Gemini when it lives in Google Workspace. The platform names matter less than the discipline of putting the right one alongside the right decision.

What dealers should do now. The smart 2026 move is not committing to one AI vendor while waiting for the ERP to catch up. It is using two or three platforms today to make sharper, faster decisions—pricing, margin, customer follow-up, hiring—and letting those incremental wins compound. The ROI funds the next workflow. The discipline builds the muscle. Dealers who start now will absorb embedded ERP AI quickly when it ships. Dealers who wait will still be evaluating platforms in 2027.

John Marshall

AI Growth Partners

256-426-3460

www.growthpartners.net

www.LBMSolutions.com

SOURCES

1. OpenAI. “OpenAI launches the OpenAI Deployment Company.” Announcement, May 11, 2026.

2. Anthropic. “Introducing Claude for Small Business.” May 13, 2026.

3. PwC and Anthropic. “Anthropic and PwC Expand Alliance.” Press release, May 14, 2026.

4. Forrester. “Predictions 2026: AI Moves From Hype To Hard Hat Work.” 2026.

5. Momentum.io. “2026 Voice of the Market Report.” January 2026.

6. The AI Consulting Network. “AI Sticker Shock: The Enterprise AI ROI Reckoning.” May 2026 reporting on Microsoft Claude Code cancellations and “tokenmaxxing” cost overruns.

7. Directions on Microsoft. “M365 Copilot Adds Choice (and Risk) with Anthropic’s Claude.” February 2026, on Claude enabled by default in commercial tenancies starting January 7, 2026 (disabled in EU/EFTA/UK; unavailable in government cloud).

8. Cloudswitched News. “Microsoft 365 Copilot Now Defaults to Anthropic Claude.” May 12, 2026, on Microsoft Message Center notification MC1269241 making Claude the default model behind Copilot in Excel and PowerPoint as of May 4, 2026.

9. ECI Software Solutions. “ECI Launches Built-in Ecommerce AI Agent.” November 6, 2025.

10. ERP Today. “Epicor Sets Final On-Premises Release Dates as Cloud Strategy Accelerates.” April 2026, on BisTrack on-prem final release scheduled December 2026.

11. LBM Journal. “As the world changes, technology makes it easier to keep pace.” December 2025, including DMSi VP Cort Silliman quoted advising dealers to “look beyond the flashy promises of AI.”