Unhappy with your firm’s AI ROI? You need a chief AI officer.
- Businesses that rush to use AI without a strategic focus on solving specific organizational problems will often struggle to achieve results and fail to generate ROI.
- Some firms are turning to a chief AI officer to help develop a firmwide AI strategy, maintain a problem-solving focus around AI adoption and create a culture of innovation that encourages team members to experiment with new solutions.
- Mid-market companies, especially, will often benefit from hiring a chief AI officer fractionally. This allows firms to implement an AI strategy without needing to invest in a full-time C-suite role.
Within mid-market firms, there’s been much talk about AI as a potential pathway to increased productivity and more effective use of resources. But while many businesses have begun exploring AI tools, one study found that 95% of companies that implemented generative AI pilots said those pilots failed to generate growth.
What’s causing this disconnect? Too often, businesses don’t have a real AI strategy to guide where and how they implement AI, which means that AI is often introduced haphazardly and without the focus needed to drive results.
Keep reading to learn why bringing in a chief AI officer (CAIO) can deliver the strategic AI leadership you need to turn it into a game-changer for your business — plus why hiring a CAIO fractionally is often an ideal solution.
When should your business consider hiring a chief AI officer?
Are your AI tools actually delivering measurable improvements in growth, operational efficiency or analytical clarity? If not, a CAIO can help you change that by refocusing your AI efforts around solving specific organizational problems.
Here are signs you could benefit from more thoughtful, strategic AI leadership:
- Low ROI on AI investments: You’ve put money into new AI-powered digital tools or systems. But you’re not seeing a significant impact on your bottom line, because your AI investments haven’t been made in the context of an overall strategic plan.
- Poor-quality AI analytics output: If you’re integrating AI into your work as an analytics tool but are consistently achieving low-quality results, this may be because you don’t have a data strategy in place to ensure that your AI is inputting from a unified source of clean, high-quality data.
- Unfocused AI efforts: You’re rushing to implement AI because you assume that’s what your competitors must be doing, rather than starting with the mindset of looking at problems within your business and asking if and how AI can help you solve them.
- Team members struggling to use AI: Your leadership is pushing your team members to adopt AI without a clear understanding of what new skills and training are needed to help your people adapt.
Should you hire a fractional or outsourced chief AI officer?
For large firms, hiring a full-time CAIO makes sense, as there will be more than enough work to justify adding the position. But many middle-market businesses will find that hiring a CAIO fractionally hits a sweet spot from a cost-benefit perspective.
A fractional or outsourced CAIO (or a similar title like a chief information officer or chief technology officer) provides strategic, problem and solution-focused AI leadership without the costs of onboarding a full-time executive. This can be an ideal way to implement an effective AI approach on a mid-market budget.
Here’s what a fractional CAIO can bring to the table:
1. Strategic leadership
The overarching responsibility of a fractional CAIO is to help your business use AI to drive results. From a strategic leadership perspective, a CAIO can set specific goals and create a roadmap to help your business achieve them.
Your CAIO can also drill down on specific AI tools that will actually provide value so you avoid costly mistakes, as well as play a major role in communicating your AI goals and creating buy-in from within your team.
2. Problem-solving focus
AI works best when it’s used to solve specific problems that your organization needs to overcome. A fractional CAIO can help not just identify those problems, but also prescribe which AI tools make the most sense for solving them.
This kind of problem and solution focus can help make your AI efforts much more successful. You’ll also have the insight to concentrate your investments on where they will create the largest impact.
3. Governance and collaboration
Your AI strategy needs buy-in and collaboration from across your business. Your CAIO can create governance structures like an AI oversight committee to lead AI implementation and raise awareness among stakeholders.
Plus, this sort of process will help an outsourced CAIO, who doesn’t work inside your business full-time, collaborate more effectively with team members who do and ensure that you integrate AI into your core workflows.
4. Innovation culture
AI won’t do much for your business if your team doesn’t embrace it. To really make the most of AI, you need to foster a culture of innovation where your whole team, not just your C-suite, is encouraged to talk about problems and explore new solutions.
Your CAIO can help lead this innovation culture by establishing lines of communication, empowering change champions to experiment with AI at lower levels of your organization and identifying specific KPIs to help your team assess AI’s impact on their work.
It’s expensive NOT to have a firmwide AI strategy
In an era of economic uncertainty, mid-market firms often think twice before investing in new hires, even fractional ones. But consider that the expense of onboarding a chief AI officer may be significantly lower than the cost of not filling the position.
If you don’t have a firmwide AI strategy led by someone who understands how to implement AI technology inside a business, you’re almost certainly going to waste money on AI solutions that don’t pan out. When you do find the right AI tools, you’ll struggle to use them effectively. And you’ll likely lack the strong data foundation you need to generate high-quality AI outputs.
In other words, inaction on AI leadership and strategy is expensive. It’s harder to and more costly to undo your mistakes around AI than it is to get it right the first time, and you’ll also begin to struggle with change fatigue or leadership hesitation if you continue to push AI tech on your organization without a clear roadmap for doing so.
How Wipfli can help
We provide AI strategy consulting services for mid-market companies. Let’s talk about your specific organizational needs and how AI can help you overcome problems blocking you from growth. Start a conversation.
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