Unlocking ROI in generative AI investments

Companies are putting their CEOs and IT leaders in charge of generative AI budgets. They expect savings in the IT, Finance, and Marketing departments.

Despite the growing presence of generative AI tools across the software landscape, one might expect that generative AI budgets would be equally dispersed. However, our survey shows an interesting trend: only 4 percent of leaders believe the AI budget is a shared responsibility among the c-suite. Instead, 34 percent believe it is the responsibility of the CEO and 33 percent the CTO or CIO. On reflection, this makes an enormous amount of sense. The CEO and CIO are best positioned to execute a unified vision for applying generative AI, as well as establish firm guardrails to minimize risk. Centralizing the generative AI budget – and the corresponding enterprise strategy – will ensure that vision, and those guardrails, are carried out from the top down.

The impact of these investments is expected to be rapid. Nearly half of respondents believe AI will impact their bottom line in 2024, and an additional 36 percent believe it will impact their bottom line in the next 2 to 5 years.

Indeed, revenue and cost cutting are the predominant goal of generative AI programs: 56 percent of leaders are prioritizing AI use cases that have an immediate impact on revenue or cost, versus 37 percent who are prioritizing risk management use cases.

When asked where they expect to realize savings across business functions, executives see the IT, Finance, and Marketing departments as the top three areas for immediate savings. Interestingly, these areas beat out procurement, despite its central involvement in spending; and legal, which was identified by many commentators early in the generative AI hype as a prime target for gen AI-powered efficiencies. The focus on IT, finance, and marketing could represent an opportunity for creative executives to differentiate from their competitors by exploring generative AI use cases for procurement and legal.