- Businesses don’t know whether to prioritze productivity gains or revenue growth
- GenAI is being favored over automation and predictive AI
- More UK businesses are experimenting with GenAI than the global average
Although businesses are actively investing in artificial intelligence, new research from Gong has revealed many are struggling to quantify the value they’re getting from new technologies.
Part of the struggle to identify the benefits is the inconsistency in priorities – 53% are prioritizing productivity gains, and a further 53% are focusing on revenue growth for their key success metrics.
However, as AI becomes more integrated into daily workflows, three in five (61%) CIOs are now recognizing increased revenue alone as a justification for the additional costs. A similar number (60%) are just as happy to use time savings as a justification.
How do businesses measure AI ROI?
In terms of the technologies being deployed, 54% of tech leaders are prioritizing generative AI, which Gong suggests could be the result of the ongoing buzz. However 51% prioritize automation and a further 31% prioritize predictive AI, which arguably has more power to generate meaningful outcomes. Data-driven predictive AI can help a company analyze previous trends and prepare for the future, which brings along with it significant efficiency improvement potential.
The vagueness continues with the underlying technologies used – nearly three-quarters reportedly use off-the-shelf LLMs despite the availability of more customized models and the ability to create industry- and workplace-specific applications with minimal coding.
“Over the last two years, the AI hype and pace of innovation has created incredible excitement and confusion for CIOs and tech leaders about its potential and where to focus," noted Gong CPO Eilon Reshef.
Smaller companies were found to be among the most likely to focus on ROI, likely due to their more limited resources. Two in five (40%) small US firms (identified as those with 250-500 employees) are willing to pause projects lacking a clear ROI, compared to just one-fifth (19%) of larger companies.
Over the pond in the UK, there seems to be more acceptance of trial and error, as separate research from CGI found 87% of UK businesses are experimenting with GenAI, compared to 79% globally.
The study found a strong alignment between business and IT operations when it comes to strategy execution, suggesting that departments are finally cooperating to maximize their returns.
A third (35%) of CGI’s British respondents stated that delivering value and insight through AI and data is a key IT focus, with a similar number (32%) optimizing their processes through digitisation, automation and AI.
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