But for many CIOs spearheading AI’s next chapter, the ability to achieve quantitative ROI from AI projects remains somewhat elusive. According to CIO.com’s 25th Annual CIO Survey of 662 IT leaders and 249 business users, fewer than one-fifth (19%) of respondents say their AI initiatives meet or exceed business goals, and 18% acknowledged that less than one-third of AI use cases meet defined expectations.
CIO.com / Foundry
A lack of clarity around business strategy and metrics is proving to be a major barrier to driving CIOs’ AI agendas forward. Almost a third (32%) of respondents to this year’s CIO report cited unclear ROI metrics as a hurdle to AI expansion, along with an unclear corporate AI strategy (31%) and a lack of in-house expertise cited by 40% of this year’s respondents.
“Nobody measures ROI continuously because they face counter-pressure from every vice president and line of business to deploy AI for their own optimizations,” says Andrea Ballinger, CIO at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). “We are saying yes to everyone without taking a step back and focusing on the business case that shows real value.”
CIO.com / Foundry
Building the infrastructure to achieve AI ROI
This dynamic is starting to shift as organizations prioritize targeted use cases and lay the foundation for scalability and ROI. Cross-functional steering committees and specialized task forces are emerging as key components for identifying, prioritizing, and aligning use cases to enterprise goals. 83% of IT leaders surveyed admitted that their organization has or plans to have such a structure in place within the year. IT plays a major role on these committees, with other functional areas such as corporate leadership, security and risk teams, and to a lesser extent business-oriented areas such as finance, legal, and human resources also well represented.
