Tagged with: #ai-centre-of-excellence

Even the most meticulously crafted AI business case can fail at the final hurdle - securing Board buy-in. With research showing 88% of AI pilots never reach production, effective presentation isn’t just about gaining initial approval but establishing the path to full implementation. This final article in my series explores how to present AI investment proposals to Boards, addressing their six key areas of concern while building the stakeholder confidence necessary for successful transformation. By understanding Board dynamics, anticipating objections, and structuring presentations that balance strategic vision with implementation rigour, you can navigate the critical journey from business case to production-scale AI.

Organisations are demanding disciplined, comprehensive business cases for AI initiatives that balance traditional financial rigour with frameworks capturing AI’s unique value creation patterns. In this fourth article in my series on AI business cases, I provide a step-by-step guide to building AI business cases that secure approval and set the foundation for successful implementation.

Finding high-value AI opportunities requires looking beyond the obvious. While most organisations gravitate toward trendy applications like chatbots, the most impactful AI initiatives often lie in less visible but more strategically significant processes. By applying a structured evaluation approach that examines process characteristics, strategic alignment, and implementation feasibility, boards can identify AI investments that deliver transformative value across multiple business dimensions. This systematic method ensures scarce resources target opportunities with the greatest potential impact rather than those with merely the highest visibility or short-term appeal.

Building on my previous thoughts about why traditional business cases fail for AI investments, this article explores what I consider to be the essential building blocks for a more effective evaluation approach. This foundation provides boards with the tools to assess AI’s unique value creation patterns while maintaining financial discipline - helping leaders confidently navigate investment decisions that conventional models simply cannot adequately evaluate.

In today’s AI-driven landscape, traditional business case methods fall short when evaluating AI investments. Drawing from my experience developing AWS’s cloud business case tools, I explore why conventional ROI models struggle with AI’s parallel, multi-speed adoption patterns. Unlike cloud’s sequential journey, AI initiatives exist simultaneously across different maturity stages, creating valuation challenges that standard metrics can’t capture. Boards need new evaluation approaches that account for AI’s diverse cost structures, varying timelines for returns, and how investments in one area often enable value in entirely different parts of the business.

In my previous article, Transforming the Board: Using Decision Analytics for Strategic Advantage, I introduced the concept of AI-powered decision analytics as a transformative approach to board decision-making. I explored how these capabilities can help directors move beyond traditional backward-looking metrics to embrace predictive indicators that model potential futures and enhance strategic decision-making.

The EU AI Act, which came into force on August 1, 2024, establishes significant penalties for non-compliance, including fines of up to €35 million or 7% of global annual turnover for serious violations. As regulatory frameworks for artificial intelligence rapidly evolve worldwide, Boards face a new imperative: navigating complex compliance requirements while maintaining the innovation speed necessary to compete.

In my previous articles about the AI Stages of Adoption and the Five Pillars of AI maturity and capability, I briefly touched on the role of the AI Centre of Excellence (AI CoE). Since publishing those pieces, I’ve spoken with numerous Boards and business leaders about AI adoption and the importance of board-level AI governance. A recurring question emerges in almost every conversation: “What are the practical steps to establishing an AI CoE in our business?”

In my previous article on the AI Stages of Adoption (AISA), I outlined how organisations progress through their AI journey—from Experimenting to Adopting, Optimising, Transforming, and ultimately Scaling. Since publishing that piece, many readers have asked the same follow‐up question: “How do we know when we’re truly ready to move from one stage to the next?”

The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence is fundamentally changing the velocity of business decision-making and how organisations operate, compete, and create value. With AI, boards are moving from overseeing hundreds of decisions made per day to millions made per second - and they must be confident that each of those decisions is transparent, explainable, and correct.