Business Buyers Want Proof: AI's ROI Reality Check

The tone around AI is shifting. Business buyers are less enthralled with AI's hype and instead want to understand its real-world benefits.

This shift was evident at the recent Enterprise Connect conference in Las Vegas, where AI advancements were at the forefront of just about every vendor's story. Even absent vendors like Google and Microsoft used the week to make AI announcements focused on their office productivity suites.

The ROI Challenge

A global study of approximately 1,100 organizations found that AI adoption is high, with nearly all companies now using it in some way. Despite this widespread adoption, ROI remains somewhat elusive—just 54.2% say the benefits of AI have outweighed its costs.

Companies currently see AI's biggest value in helping employees be more productive, which in theory leads to measurable reduction in operating costs, as well as benefits in customer service metrics and increased revenue.

The challenge is real. News recently broke of OpenAI shutting down its Sora video generation tool due to lack of revenue. While Sora had the "cool" factor and filled social media feeds with occasionally-amusing videos, OpenAI was never able to turn it into a revenue source that justified the billions of dollars in investment.

Solutions That Deliver Business Value

IT and business leaders want to see AI that delivers real results, often specific to their industry. AI marketing that simply touts new features are non-starters. Instead, vendors are delivering specific solutions, powered by AI, that deliver real business value.

Examples from Enterprise Connect include:

• NiCE's agentic AI innovations that allow agents to automatically identify and implement opportunities for business improvement based on signals identified within customer conversations
• RingCentral's AI Receptionist (AIR) Pro with capabilities that improve companies' ability to capture leads and reduce appointment cancellation, while allowing customers to differentiate through improved customer service
• Zoom's Agentic AI 3.0 that allows for automation of workflows across front and back office, and enables individuals to turn meeting notes into actionable documents

These AI initiatives are designed to enable customers to automate and optimize work by leveraging AI as a force multiplier, which in theory will generate measurable ROI.

Industry-Specific Focus

Another notable shift at Enterprise Connect was toward industry-specific AI solutions. Vendors including GoTo and RingCentral made healthcare-related announcements, applying AI to optimize healthcare-specific workflows that offer the potential for measurable ROI.

Beyond the conference, Google delivered new AI capabilities within Workspace designed to speed document creation through natural language interfacing with Sheets, Docs, and Slides. Microsoft announced Copilot Wave 3, adding similar content creation capabilities, agent management, and a new bundled E7 license that potentially reduces the entrance cost for customers looking to take advantage of Copilot.

The real value may come from leveraging AI to optimize the design of workflows themselves. Just automating a poor, inefficient process will not deliver the value of optimizing the process in the first place. AI offers the promise to deliver measurable benefits through reworking processes as necessary.

AI can only be truly beneficial if it's part of an open ecosystem and not existing in silos, with access to data both within directly connected applications and third-party data sources. Fortunately, vendors are increasingly heading in this direction.