ROI of your AI initiatives

“Where is the tangible proof that investments in AI pays off?” This is a fair question as not getting the ROI are many e.g. Deloitte , MIT and BCG.

But “There’s plenty of AI ROI – if you’re willing to work for it!”.

(Source: Greg Shove, Section CEO, at the AI Flagship conference with 20K people, Thursday 24 Sept, 2025)

There are three levels of AI integration and workflow sophistication:

• Level 1: Individual workflows built on top of your existing Large Language Models (LLMs)
• Level 2: Team workflows involving multiple steps and data manipulation
• Level 3: Enterprise orchestration using automated systems with engineering integration

So “At which level should we start?” Answer: “At Level 1 – Not glamorous – but meaningful”. So go pick one critical process, and then analyze it. Good inspiration can be found in the documentation from Section:

AI adoption and profitability is all about People!

You can’t force people to adopt AI, but you can embrace them and ask them:

• “What great initiatives would you like to participate in – or own – going forward?”
• “Where do you desire AI agent automation?”
• “Which of the tasks you now are doing can be fully, partly or not at all automated?”

AI adoption is also about technology. So we need to:

• Strengthening Digital Workplace Leadership: Boost digital workplace maturity
• Powering Digital Skills and Adoption: Empower people for the AI era
• Assembling Digital Workplace Technologies: Optimize tools for every person
• Governing the Digital Workplace: Safeguard data and enable autonomy

The core metrics to track:

1) Cost savings (hard ROI) – track before/after changes in: Labor hours spent on repetitive tasks; Error rates / rework (quality costs); and Waste and resource consumption

2) Revenue Growth – AI can drive measurable revenue impact when applied to customer-facing workflows: Conversion rate improvements from AI-assisted sales/marketing; Higher average order value (e.g., recommendations); Higher customer lifetime value / retention-linked revenue

3) Efficiency & productivity (time-to-value) – Time savings is often the fastest signal of ROI: Cycle-time reduction (e.g., ticket response time, document production); Tasks completed per employee; Throughput per process step