Skip to content
Tiatra, LLCTiatra, LLC
Tiatra, LLC
Information Technology Solutions for Washington, DC Government Agencies
  • Home
  • About Us
  • Services
    • IT Engineering and Support
    • Software Development
    • Information Assurance and Testing
    • Project and Program Management
  • Clients & Partners
  • Careers
  • News
  • Contact
 
  • Home
  • About Us
  • Services
    • IT Engineering and Support
    • Software Development
    • Information Assurance and Testing
    • Project and Program Management
  • Clients & Partners
  • Careers
  • News
  • Contact

3 ways to avoid the generative AI ROI doom loop

By Bryan Kirschner, Vice President, Strategy at DataStax

From the Wall Street Journal to the World Economic Forum, it seems like everyone is talking about the urgency of demonstrating ROI from generative AI (genAI).

On the one hand, enthusiasm for getting out of “pilot purgatory” is a good sign. We know with the benefit of hindsight that under-investing in digital transformation meant leaving money on the table. And early evidence suggests that genAI has a lot to offer: Across five studies, its median impact on employee productivity was a 25% uplift.

On the other hand, there are signals that some genAI critics are hellbent on persuading themselves that those results are too good to be true, And that’s likely to become a self-fulfilling prophecy, to their disadvantage.

The risk is exemplified by the case of an executive canceling Microsoft Copilot subscriptions supposedly because “he compared the slide-generation capability of Microsoft’s AI tools to ‘middle school presentations.’”

At least as it was reported, it comes across sounding like a flip dismissal of what genAI might have to offer. Contrast that with what I heard recently from a knowledge worker about how he uses genAI in his workflow. He leverages ChatGPT 4o to help generate prompts for Perplexity. He uses those prompts to elicit data from Perplexity that he then feeds back into prompts for ChatGPT.

He did not get to the point of 100% specificity and confidence about exactly how this makes him happier and more productive through a quick one-and-done test of a use case or two. He got there as a result of willingness to test and learn, adopting a growth mindset, and management’s conviction that “where there’s a will, there’s a way” to put genAI to good use.

If your organization is ambivalent about any of these things, you’re at risk of a genAI ROI doom loop, in which people may try very little and quickly run out of ideas. Committing to three principles sets the stage for people to take similarly mindful, holistic, and, in the end, high-ROI approaches to their own genAI journeys.

These three best practices can help them on their way.

  1. Attack workflows, not just use cases

Let’s assume for the sake of discussion that genAI currently does indeed stink at making PowerPoint presentations. That presentation in question sits inside two workflows. The first is substantive: It’s presumably being used in a meeting to inform some decision aimed at some outcomes. So one line of inquiry is “could we use genAI to achieve the same outcomes in a different way (up to and including without the presentation, the meeting. or the dreaded ‘meeting before the meeting’)?”

The second is procedural: there are likely multiple people and steps involved in producing the presentation. So the line of inquiry here would be: “How might we use genAI to reduce time and toil or increase quality?”
At least in the short term, genAI is unlikely to be a “magic bullet.” But to get down to brass tacks: successfully turning any meeting in the workflow into an email is a high-yield move. (In one study, employee productivity was 71% higher when meetings were reduced by 40%.)

2. Make ‘soft metrics’ matter

Imagine an experienced manager with an “open door policy.” If you asked any more junior employee, they’d all say: “I always feel better about my next executive presentation if I run it by them first.” Or: “asking them to play ‘devil’s advocate’ always sharpens my thinking.” Now imagine telling them to end the open-door policy because it burns staff time and you don’t have hard numbers quantifying the ROI.

Any established workflow probably has some cognitive load, stress, or procrastination embedded in it. It also probably has some unrealized potential for causing a feeling of accomplishment, a sense of teamwork, or new learning too.

To be sure, the value of genAI must be articulable. But it would be an extreme case of old-school Taylorism to (for example) consider a team’s perspective flipping from “we dread preparing for business reviews” to “now we look forward to them as a time to shine” because the amount of prep time is still the same.

3. Think about ROI in terms of value proposition, not nickels and dimes

Finally and most importantly: encourage every process, product, and experience owner to approach genAI as a way to rewrite the value proposition of their workflow. Each workflow is aimed at a problem or opportunity to be solved. The “competition” is the pre-genAI way of getting that done.

Meaningful improvement is likely to include some quantifiable metrics like time savings or employee satisfaction. But the most powerful North Star is likely to be contextual and qualitative. Imagine a team that shifts from “feeling beleaguered” to “feeling like rock stars.” Or whose stakeholders move from saying they’re “hit or miss” at delivering on time to “they’re totally reliable.”

And as an added bonus: if teams literally write down how they’re using genAI and its impact (both qualitative and quantitative), that’s a great retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) use case. GenAI itself can report week-on-week progress, putting it to work across your organization–including the ROI.

It’s all the more reason that a great starting point for demonstrating immediate and meaningful value is getting the people who are already involved in each of those activities engaged in putting it to good use and sharing what they’ve learned.

Learn how DataStax enables enterprises and developers to get GenAI apps to production fast.

About Bryan Kirschner:
Bryan is Vice President, Strategy at DataStax. For more than 20 years he has helped large organizations build and execute strategy when they are seeking new ways forward and a future materially different from their past. He specializes in removing fear, uncertainty, and doubt from strategic decision-making through empirical data and market sensing.


Read More from This Article: 3 ways to avoid the generative AI ROI doom loop
Source: News

Category: NewsNovember 12, 2024
Tags: art

Post navigation

PreviousPrevious post:10 ways to kill your IT cultureNextNext post:오픈텍스트, ‘2024년 최악의 맬웨어’ 목록 발표··· 1위에 록빗

Related posts

Barb Wixom and MIT CISR on managing data like a product
May 30, 2025
Avery Dennison takes culture-first approach to AI transformation
May 30, 2025
The agentic AI assist Stanford University cancer care staff needed
May 30, 2025
Los desafíos de la era de la ‘IA en todas partes’, a fondo en Data & AI Summit 2025
May 30, 2025
“AI 비서가 팀 단위로 지원하는 효과”···퍼플렉시티, AI 프로젝트 10분 완성 도구 ‘랩스’ 출시
May 30, 2025
“ROI는 어디에?” AI 도입을 재고하게 만드는 실패 사례
May 30, 2025
Recent Posts
  • Barb Wixom and MIT CISR on managing data like a product
  • Avery Dennison takes culture-first approach to AI transformation
  • The agentic AI assist Stanford University cancer care staff needed
  • Los desafíos de la era de la ‘IA en todas partes’, a fondo en Data & AI Summit 2025
  • “AI 비서가 팀 단위로 지원하는 효과”···퍼플렉시티, AI 프로젝트 10분 완성 도구 ‘랩스’ 출시
Recent Comments
    Archives
    • May 2025
    • April 2025
    • March 2025
    • February 2025
    • January 2025
    • December 2024
    • November 2024
    • October 2024
    • September 2024
    • August 2024
    • July 2024
    • June 2024
    • May 2024
    • April 2024
    • March 2024
    • February 2024
    • January 2024
    • December 2023
    • November 2023
    • October 2023
    • September 2023
    • August 2023
    • July 2023
    • June 2023
    • May 2023
    • April 2023
    • March 2023
    • February 2023
    • January 2023
    • December 2022
    • November 2022
    • October 2022
    • September 2022
    • August 2022
    • July 2022
    • June 2022
    • May 2022
    • April 2022
    • March 2022
    • February 2022
    • January 2022
    • December 2021
    • November 2021
    • October 2021
    • September 2021
    • August 2021
    • July 2021
    • June 2021
    • May 2021
    • April 2021
    • March 2021
    • February 2021
    • January 2021
    • December 2020
    • November 2020
    • October 2020
    • September 2020
    • August 2020
    • July 2020
    • June 2020
    • May 2020
    • April 2020
    • January 2020
    • December 2019
    • November 2019
    • October 2019
    • September 2019
    • August 2019
    • July 2019
    • June 2019
    • May 2019
    • April 2019
    • March 2019
    • February 2019
    • January 2019
    • December 2018
    • November 2018
    • October 2018
    • September 2018
    • August 2018
    • July 2018
    • June 2018
    • May 2018
    • April 2018
    • March 2018
    • February 2018
    • January 2018
    • December 2017
    • November 2017
    • October 2017
    • September 2017
    • August 2017
    • July 2017
    • June 2017
    • May 2017
    • April 2017
    • March 2017
    • February 2017
    • January 2017
    Categories
    • News
    Meta
    • Log in
    • Entries feed
    • Comments feed
    • WordPress.org
    Tiatra LLC.

    Tiatra, LLC, based in the Washington, DC metropolitan area, proudly serves federal government agencies, organizations that work with the government and other commercial businesses and organizations. Tiatra specializes in a broad range of information technology (IT) development and management services incorporating solid engineering, attention to client needs, and meeting or exceeding any security parameters required. Our small yet innovative company is structured with a full complement of the necessary technical experts, working with hands-on management, to provide a high level of service and competitive pricing for your systems and engineering requirements.

    Find us on:

    FacebookTwitterLinkedin

    Submitclear

    Tiatra, LLC
    Copyright 2016. All rights reserved.