Artificial intelligence has dominated business headlines for the past few years. Across every industry, organisations have rushed to experiment with the technology in the hope of improving productivity, cutting costs and gaining competitive advantage.
Yet the reality has been more mixed. Last year, an MIT study found that 95% of AI pilot programmes fail to reach production, highlighting the gap between experimentation and real business value. More recently, Accenture researchrevealed that while nearly one in five UK workers now use gen AI tools daily, only 10% of UK organisations have successfully scaled AI or embedded it into core operations.
An AI shift
The conversation is no longer centred on AI adoption alone, but on how organisations can move beyond pilots and embed the technology where it delivers lasting value. As a result, Abdelkader Keddari, Director EMEA South at Fluent Commerce believes an AI shift is underway, with many businesses entering a “slightly more cautious phase.”
“Organisations are now under increasing pressure to demonstrate that their AI investments are delivering measurable returns,” he explains. “As costs mount, AI needs to bring genuine operational value.
“Simply deploying AI is no longer enough. The organisations seeing the greatest return on investment (ROI) from their AI deployments are the ones who have focused on solving specific operational challenges.”
“Clear planning is essential if businesses want to move beyond experimentation and realise a genuine return on their AI investment,” agrees Jay Fitzhenry, vCTO for AI at Node4. “Simply bolting AI onto existing processes is unlikely to deliver anything beyond incremental gains. Businesses need to be clear about which problems AI is best placed to solve and where it can drive meaningful change.”
Even where organisations identify valuable AI use cases, technology choices are becoming more complex as AI tools evolve rapidly, while geopolitical developments may increasingly influence which AI models are available across different markets.
“In this environment, retailers need to avoid locking themselves into a single AI ecosystem and instead build flexible architectures that will allow them to adopt different models depending on their current needs,” adds Fluent Commerce’s Keddari. “The competitive advantage won’t come from backing one AI provider over another. It will come from having the operational foundations and data needed to take advantage of whichever innovations will deliver the best result.
Node4’s Fitzhenry adds that strong data management is essential. “Once the initial goals and desired outcomes have been identified, businesses must build robust guardrails and strong data governance practices into AI infrastructure from the outset
“That means understanding exactly what data AI systems can access, how that data is being used, and where human oversight is required. Without this, businesses won’t unlock the true value of AI.”
AI in action
AI success depends on solving genuine business problems, building trusted data foundations and keeping people at the centre. The common principles may be the same, but AI’s role looks very different from one industry to the next. Here, five experts explain where the technology is creating the greatest impact, and where human expertise remains essential.
Manufacturing
Manufacturers are embedding AI directly into critical day-to-day operations to improve planning and decision-making.
“Manufacturers continue to manage supply chain disruptions, labour shortages, tighter margins, and changing customer expectations every day,” says Dan Abramson, SVP Americas at Syspro. “AI is radically helping them cut through that complexity, making operational data easier to interpret, surfacing risks earlier, and reducing the time teams spend on manual analysis.
“The manufacturers seeing the strongest results are leveraging AI embedded into the systems their people already rely on. Whether it supports production planning, inventory management or quality processes, AI is giving teams better information and more confidence to make faster, smarter decisions.”
Cybersecurity
Security teams are increasingly relying on AI to keep pace with attackers, according to Kara Sprague, CEO at HackerOne. “Attackers adopted AI first. They use it to find and exploit weaknesses faster than any human team could match, and that is exactly why AI has become indispensable to the defenders.
“But AI has not replaced the human security researcher. It has raised the value of one. In the first half of this year, security researchers earned roughly $47 million through our platform, up 25% from the same period a year ago, even as AI made finding vulnerabilities faster than ever. AI can flag a possible vulnerability in seconds. It still takes human expertise to prove that vulnerability is real, understand how an attacker would actually use it, and decide what to fix first.
“The organisations getting this right are not choosing between security researchers and AI. They are pairing them. Speed from the machine, judgment from the human. That is what continuous security now demands.”
Finance
Finance leaders see AI as a powerful productivity tool, but not a replacement for professional judgement.
“Finance and accounting is often considered the ideal environment for AI because so much of the work follows structured, rules-based processes,” said Hugh Scantlebury, CEO and Founder of Aqilla. “AI is helping teams process invoices faster, automate reconciliations, and generate month-end reports in a fraction of the time. That saves both time and money, while also freeing accountants from repetitive work so they can focus on the strategic thinking that really adds value.
“But efficiency is only part of the story. At its core, finance is about making decisions informed by numbers, and that’s where human judgement is, and will remain essential. AI can support that process, but it can’t replace the experience, context, and judgement that finance leaders bring. The real opportunity is not to replace human judgement with AI, but to combine the strengths of both,” he adds. “Organisations that use AI to remove manual work while maintaining strong governance and keeping people at the center of decision-making will be the ones that realise its full value.”
Tax
Beyond improving productivity, AI is increasingly being viewed as a tool to enhance employee experience, particularly in knowledge-intensive professions such as tax.
Bruce Martin, CEO of Alphatax, says: “Professionals are often managing high volumes of data, complex regulations and intense reporting deadlines, AI can help reduce workloads and remove some of the mundanity that contributes to stress and burnout. By automating repetitive tasks, like data entry, employees are freed up to focus on more strategic work. That shift can have a significant impact on motivation, engagement and overall job satisfaction.
“We are also beginning to see AI play a more supportive role in day-to-day working life. AI assistants can act as technical sparring partners, helping employees test ideas, brainstorm solutions and work through challenges in a collaborative way. This is particularly relevant in today’s hybrid and remote working environments.”
Retail and hospitality
For retailers and hospitality businesses, AI’s biggest opportunity isn’t replacing people, but helping frontline employees make faster decisions and spend more time serving customers.
Mark Williams, Managing Director EMEA at WorkJam, explains: “While much of the AI conversation has typically focused on desk workers, some of the greatest opportunities lie on the frontline.
“AI agents can help reduce this friction by acting as intelligent assistants for employees and managers alike. Employees can ask natural-language questions to AI chatbots that are integrated into frontline operations platforms and connected to operational data. The AI assistant can respond instantly and accurately, providing the necessary training assets or advising whether staffing levels would allow a leave request on specific days, for example. This ensures that the employee gets the answer they need as quickly as possible, while reducing the burden on managers to respond to routine queries.”
He concludes, “for frontline organisations, the greatest value of AI is removing friction from the thousands of operational decisions made every day. As economic pressures continue to grow, AI embedded within frontline operations platforms will increasingly become an invaluable tool for improving frontline execution, helping businesses do more with less while delivering the consistent customer experiences that set them apart.”
