Gartner Urges CFOs To Set ROI Criteria Before Full AI Rollouts

The Common Question

How long does it actually take for AI investments to pay off?

The Lesson in This Case

Most AI investments take longer to pay off than finance leaders initially budget for, and Gartner is now pushing CFOs to build that delay into their planning rather than treat early pilots as proof of scale-ready returns. The gap between pilot success and enterprise-wide value is where AI budgets quietly bleed out – driven by underestimated integration costs, change management friction, and unrealistic deployment timelines. Senior leaders who set hard checkpoints and predefined exit criteria before committing to full rollouts will protect their organizations from compounding sunk costs on initiatives that show promise in the lab but stall in production.

Originally reported by CFO Dive. Read the full story here.