No doubt your people are already using AI. Someone has found a useful way to prepare for meetings. Another team is experimenting with drafting documents. Marketing is all over it. And now you’ve seen a demonstration that looks promising, and now the question is: where could this make a meaningful difference to the business?
That’s a good conversation to have.
AI opens up possibilities for improving service, creating capacity and doing things that previously took too much time or cost too much to consider. Deciding which possibilities deserve your attention takes a little more thought.
For IT leaders, that often means bringing together two perspectives: what the business wants to achieve and what it would take to make it work.
Start with what a worthwhile result would look like
“Get more value from AI” is an understandable ambition, but it doesn’t give anyone much to work with.
“Help our account managers spend less time preparing proposals so they can respond to more opportunities” is a more useful starting point. You can investigate how proposals are prepared, where time goes and what a better process could look like.
You can also ask the question that sometimes gets missed: what happens to the time you release?
If quicker preparation allows the team to respond to more suitable opportunities, there may be a route to growth. If every proposal still waits a week for commercial approval, you may need to look at that part of the process too.
This is where the conversation becomes valuable. An improvement in one task needs to translate into something the business can use.
Research reflects that distinction. IBM’s 2025 survey of 2,000 CEOs found that respondents reported only a quarter of their AI initiatives had delivered the expected return. That finding is about meeting expectations, rather than whether AI offered any benefit at all. It makes defining those expectations worth the effort. IBM CEO study, 2025
Give the idea a fair hearing - and a proper challenge
Once you’ve agreed what a worthwhile result would look like, the next step is to test the assumptions behind it. That helps you spot what could get in the way of the expected return while there’s still time to adjust the approach.
Take the proposal example. How much preparation time could realistically be saved once someone has checked the draft? Would the team have the information it needs? Could the approval process cope with more proposals moving through it?
These are the kinds of questions we would work through with you. Understanding why an idea matters to the business gives us a basis for assessing how it could work - and being honest about where expectations may need adjusting.
An ambitious target might be achievable in stages. A promising time saving might depend on changing another part of the process. Bringing those dependencies into the conversation early helps you build a more credible plan.
It can also lead somewhere interesting. As you examine what you’re trying to achieve, you may find a simpler route, a different application of AI or an opportunity with more value than the idea you started with.
Make room for the people doing the work
To judge those possibilities properly, involve the people who would use them. They can help you understand whether an idea would make a meaningful difference in practice - and suggest opportunities that haven’t yet come up in the conversation.
The people who use a process can tell you things a demonstration won’t.
They know which documents are dependable, which requests need special care and where apparently straightforward work becomes complicated. Involving them helps shape something useful and gives them a chance to question how it will affect their day.
Before expanding an AI approach, agree what you’ll test, who will review the results and how you’ll judge progress. Include the ongoing costs and effort as well as the potential benefits.
You don’t need certainty about everything at the outset. You need a sensible way to learn and make the next decision.
Our AI Discovery Workshop gives you space to work through those questions with a Business AI specialist. We start with your goals, explore the possibilities and assess the practicalities together.
Bring your ideas, including the ambitious ones. We’ll help you examine what’s achievable, challenge what needs challenging and look for opportunities you may not have considered.
