Despite billions in AI investment, only a fraction of initiatives deliver measurable ROI. Studies from McKinsey and BCG show that as few as 10–30% of AI use cases achieve expected financial outcomes, while Gartner estimates that up to 85% of AI projects fail due to unclear use cases and lack of alignment with business needs.
One of the drivers for the aforementioned unclear use cases and lack of alignment with business needs is that organizations are designing AI strategies from the top down, without asking the people who do the work every day for their input.
Operations staff, customer-facing teams, and process owners are sitting on a goldmine of insight. They see inefficiencies that leadership never encounters. They understand workarounds, bottlenecks, and friction points that don't show up in dashboards.